Lead AI Engineer, Banking Technology - Senior Vice President

Discover your future at Citi

Working at Citi is far more than just a job. A career with us means joining a team of more than 230,000 dedicated people from around the globe. At Citi, you’ll have the opportunity to grow your career, give back to your community and make a real impact.

Job Overview

Discover your future at Citi

Working at Citi is far more than just a job. A career with us means joining a team of more than 230,000 dedicated people from around the globe. At Citi, you’ll have the opportunity to grow your career, give back to your community and make a real impact.

Role Overview

We are seeking an AI‑first Lead AI Engineer to define, architect, and deliver enterprise‑scale AI solutions across Investment, Corporate, and Commercial Banking.

This role combines deep hands‑on technical leadership with architectural ownership, driving the adoption of LLMs, agentic workflows, and generative AI platforms to improve efficiency, automation, simplification, and risk reduction. The Lead AI Engineer will shape both technical delivery and engineering culture, partnering closely with multiple technology and business teams.

Responsibilities:

• Lead integration of functions to meet goals, deploy new products, and enhance processes

• Analyze complex business processes, system processes, and industry standards to define and develop solutions to high level problems

• Provide expertise in area of advanced knowledge of applications programming and plan assignments involving large budgets, cross functional project, or multiple projects

• Develop application methodologies and standards for program analysis, design, coding, testing, debugging, and implementation

• Utilize advanced knowledge of supported main system flows and comprehensive knowledge of multiple areas to achieve technology goals

• Consult with end users to identify system function specifications and incorporate into overall system design

• Allocate work, and act as an advisor/coach developers, analysts, and new team members

• Influence and negotiate with senior leaders and communicate with external parties

• Appropriately assess risk when business decisions are made, demonstrating particular consideration for the firm's reputation and safeguarding Citigroup, its clients and assets, by driving compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations, adhering to Policy, applying sound ethical judgment regarding personal behavior, conduct and business practices, and escalating, managing and reporting control issues with transparency.

• Lead the design, hands‑on implementation, and deployment of scalable agentic AI and generative AI solutions for high‑impact business use cases.

• Architect advanced agent‑based systems (perception, reasoning, planning, execution), integrating multiple LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google).

• Build and deliver production‑grade, full‑stack AI applications using modern ML/LLM platforms and AI coding tools (e.g., Devin, GitHub Copilot, Antigravity).

• Champion MVP‑driven delivery, rapid iteration, hypothesis testing, and experimentation (A/B testing) to achieve fast time‑to‑value.

• Define rigorous evaluation frameworks and metrics for AI and agent performance, ensuring continuous optimization and alignment with business goals.

• Proactively evaluate and integrate emerging AI technologies, particularly in agent‑based and autonomous AI systems, while acting as a thought leader and coach.

• Provide front‑line technical leadership, guide architectural decisions, and mentor engineers across AI, data, and application teams to build an AI‑first engineering culture.

• Ensure all AI solutions are grounded in deep banking domain understanding and clearly articulate business and risk impact beyond pure technical implementation.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience with sustained hands‑on contributions.

• 3+ years of dedicated experience in AI, LLM‑based systems, and agentic architectures.

• Proven success architecting and delivering multiple enterprise‑scale AI solutions into production.

• Expert‑level proficiency in Python and/or Java (Spring Boot); solid experience with JavaScript/TypeScript (Angular, Node.js).

• Deep knowledge of AI fundamentals (knowledge representation, automated planning, decision‑making under uncertainty, multi‑agent systems).

• Extensive hands‑on experience with LLM platforms (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), RAG pipelines, MCPs, and agent frameworks (Google ADK).

• Demonstrated effectiveness with AI coding tools (Devin, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Antigravity).

• Strong experience with ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) and data science libraries.

• Proven ability to design and expose robust, scalable APIs for AI services.

• Deep expertise in software engineering best practices, including system design, CI/CD, testing strategies, resiliency, security, and operational stability for AI‑driven platforms.

• Strong experience designing API‑first, microservices‑based, and event‑driven systems, including AI‑focused data pipelines and lifecycle management.

• Hands‑on experience with Docker and Kubernetes.

• Exceptional ability to articulate complex technical concepts, influence senior stakeholders, and lead high‑impact technical discussions.

• Strong understanding of banking and regulated financial environments, with the ability to connect AI capabilities to measurable business outcomes.

• Nice to Have: Advanced data science expertise (statistical modeling, experimentation). Demonstrated experience mentoring and scaling AI‑first engineering talent in rapidly evolving toolchains.

Education:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Robotics, or a related quantitative discipline.

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Job Family Group:

Technology

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Job Family:

Applications Development

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Time Type:

Full time

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Primary Location Full Time Salary Range:

$145,100.00 - $217,700.00

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Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

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Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

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Automated Processing and AI

We use automated processing, including artificial intelligence, for our legitimate business interests (or our reasonable and appropriate business purposes) to identify and align the candidate's skills and abilities with a specific job opening. Additionally, if you so choose, or consent, we can match your skills and abilities to other suitable roles at Citi.

Importantly, all our hiring processes and decisions, including determining your suitability for a role, are conducted, checked, and decided by individuals. Our automated processing and AI do not involve relying on automatic or autonomous decision-making. Please refer to any Jurisdictional Considerations, with specific provisions for your country (where relevant) for further details.

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This job opening is for an existing job vacancy.

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Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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