Principal Software Engineer –Gen AI Platforms

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Job Overview

Job Description

We are Citi’s Application, Platform and Engineering group, a start-up with the exciting mission of shaping the direction of travel for the entire bank under the Chief Technology Office. We define the AI and engineering strategy for the bank. We are a team of talented engineers, product managers, and SMEs, taking ambiguous concepts and making them real by engineering cutting-edge products at planetary scale.

We are solely focused on the most modern technology and engineering disciplines: generative AI, cloud-native architectures, security, modern app stacks, open-source, and the latest and greatest in the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Generative AI is a rapidly evolving space. As a Staff Engineer, you will be the technical anchor and visionary for this domain. We ask that you share with us examples of projects that you have architected and scaled. Ideally, these examples should showcase clever distributed architectures, systematic evaluation of LLM behaviours at scale, and your ability to drive technical consensus across large organizations.

Technical Skillset Required:

14+ Hands on YOE is a must have.

Tech Skillsets required for the role:

Go microservices, React 19+/TypeScript, OpenShift/Kubernetes, MongoDB/Redis/S3, REST/gRPC/WebSockets, Claude/Gemini/proprietary LLMs, OAuth/JWT/Vault, GitOps CI/CD, Prometheus/Grafana/ELK.

• A Technical Architect: Expert-level Go programmer (5+ years) with deep concurrency knowledge, proficient in TypeScript/React (3+ years), and fluent in microservices architecture, clean code principles, and distributed systems design.
• A Cloud-Native Expert: Deep understanding of Kubernetes/OpenShift, service mesh implementations, containerization at scale, and infrastructure-as-code with proven experience in high-throughput, low-latency systems.
• A Production Leader: 15+ years software development experience with 5+ years in technical leadership, 5+ years with cloud-native architectures, and 3+ years with AI/ML systems in production—delivering enterprise-scale systems (10,000+ users) successfully.
• An AI/ML Engineer: Practical experience implementing production LLM applications, prompt engineering, vector databases, streaming architectures, RAG patterns, and multi-agent orchestration.
• A Strategic Influencer: Exceptional communicator who translates complex technical concepts into business value, partners with engineering, security, and business leaders, and drives engineering excellence through mentorship and best practices.
• Mission-Driven: Passionate about AI-powered systems, hands-on when needed, comfortable with ambiguity, pragmatic under constraints, and relentlessly focused on quality and innovation.
  

You might be a good fit if you:

• Bring distinguished, deep-dive software engineering expertise and a track record of architectural leadership.
• Thrive in a results-driven environment, where flexibility fuels impact and your technical decisions shape the enterprise.
• Are a game-changer and thought leader, ready to step beyond your designated role to influence the broader engineering culture.
• Love the synergy of pair programming and hands-on coding—you lead from the front and stay close to the codebase.
• Seize the opportunity to architect machine learning and GenAI applications at an unprecedented global scale.
• Possess a relentless passion to push the boundaries of machine learning and generative AI, bringing your knowledge to shape Citi’s future.

What you’ll do within the team:

• Engineering at scale: You will build scaled, robust services and platforms centred around generative AI. This may also include developing CLIs, SDKs, runtimes and more.
• Thought Leadership: Drive architectural vision and lead the 0-1 build of foundational, enterprise-grade AI platforms and products.
• System Design: Design and build high-quality, highly reliable, and secure distributed systems with developer and user experience at the center.
• Strategic Direction: Create "firsts" in the Generative AI space for Citi, acting as a core member of the team that defines the strategic technical direction for the entire bank.
• Scale & Iterate: Continually iterate and scale Generative AI products to handle massive throughput, whilst anticipating and listening to the complex needs of internal customers.
• Cross-Org Influence: You must be able to drive technical alignment across multiple engineering organizations, breaking down silos to deliver cohesive AI capabilities.

Experience That Will Help You Succeed In This Role:

• Mastery of Modern Stacks: Expert-level fluency in Golang is a must-have, with deep experience building concurrent, high-throughput systems. (Python is a strong desirable addition).
• Cloud-Native & Infrastructure: Deep expertise in the Kubernetes ecosystem, container orchestration, and modern security paradigms (e.g., Gatekeeper, zero-trust).
• Applied GenAI: Understanding of language models, fine-tuning methodologies, and RAG architectures, JIT context retrieval strategies will be useful.
• AI Infrastructure: Proven experience designing control planes, sandboxing systems for AI experimentation, and managing large-scale vector stores and search algorithms.
• Data Engineering: Extensive experience in large-scale ETL development and data pipeline architecture.
• Security & Governance: Experience maintaining and/or contributing to bug bounty, responsible disclosure programs, and AI safety/guardrail implementations.
• Startup Agility: Experience leading technical initiatives within fast-paced startup environments or driving startup-like agility within a large enterprise.

What We Believe In:

• We do not have boundaries between engineering and research; we expect our technical leaders to bridge the gap and contribute to both.
• We take a product-focused approach and care deeply about building solutions that are robust, scalable, and easy to use.
• We enjoy working in a fast-paced team tackling cutting-edge problems by constantly testing, learning, and adapting.
• We enjoy pair programming for our products; we are lean in our approach and actively remove bureaucracy where we see it.
• We believe in delivering fast, iterating, and pivoting as we go, rather than defining the perfect solution upfront.

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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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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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