Senior Software Engineer – Kotlin, VP

1. Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced and high-performing Vice President – Senior Software Engineer to join our Technology team in North America. This is a key technical leadership and hands-on engineering position responsible for architecting, designing, and delivering high-throughput, low-latency, and distributed server-side systems supporting mission-critical trading and risk operations.

As a VP within the team, you will drive technical excellence across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), collaborate closely with quantitative analysts, front-office trading desks, and risk managers, and mentor engineering talent across the NAM region.

2. Key Responsibilities

Architecture & System Engineering

• Design, build, test, and deploy resilient, highly scalable, and low-latency distributed backend services using Kotlin and/or Java (Modern versions / JVM Ecosystem).
• Lead architecture decisions and code reviews to ensure scalability, thread safety, fault tolerance, and optimal memory management.
• Drive modular software design, Clean Architecture principles, domain-driven design (DDD), and test-driven development (TDD).

DevOps, Tooling & Infrastructure

• Architect and manage continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines utilizing Jenkins, Gradle, and containerization workflows.
• Package and deploy microservices and distributed workloads using Helm charts on container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes / OpenShift).
• Conduct performance tuning, debugging, profiling, and infrastructure automation in enterprise Linux environments.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Partner with Quantitative Analysts (Quants), Risk Managers, Product Owners, and Trading stakeholders to translate complex risk and pricing requirements into robust software solutions.
• Act as a technical mentor and provide engineering guidance, code reviews, and architectural leadership to junior and mid-level developers.
• Champion modern Agile practices, engineering standards, automated testing, and production stability.

3. Required Qualifications & Skillsets

Must-Have Requirements (Core Competencies)

• Significant enterprise backend engineering experience with Java (Java 17/21+) and/or Kotlin.
• 12+ yrs of experience in the related field
• Expert-level understanding of JVM internals, garbage collection tuning, concurrent programming, asynchronous paradigms (e.g., Kotlin Coroutines, Java Virtual Threads/Project Loom), and data structures.
• Proven track record architecting and supporting enterprise-scale distributed backend systems in production environments.
• Solid experience in API design, microservices architecture, and enterprise messaging systems (e.g., Apache Kafka, Solace, or RabbitMQ).

Should-Have Requirements (DevOps, Platform & Build Systems)

• Linux / Unix: Deep hands-on experience navigating, scripting (Bash/Shell), profiling, and troubleshooting within enterprise Linux environments.
• Build Systems & Dependency Management: Advanced expertise with Gradle (including multi-module builds and custom plugins) and/or Maven.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Practical experience configuring, securing, and maintaining automated build and release pipelines using Jenkins.
• Containerization & Deployment: Strong proficiency with Docker and Kubernetes deployment automation using Helm.

Nice-to-Have (Domain Knowledge, Frontend & Specialized Skills)

• Capital Markets & Financial Domain: Background in financial services, specifically with Equity Derivatives, structured products, or pricing and risk engines.
• Financial Risk Concepts: Familiarity with Greeks (Delta, Gamma, Vega, Theta), PnL attribution, scenario analysis, stress testing, and real-time/end-of-day risk calculations.
• Desktop / Frontend Development: Experience with C# / .NET and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) UI development for front-office trading or risk management desktop tools.
• Modern Database Technologies: Experience with high-performance distributed caching and time-series/columnar stores (e.g., Redis, Hazelcast, KDB+, ClickHouse).

4. Educational Background & Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Financial Engineering, Mathematics, or a related quantitative/technical discipline (or equivalent practical experience).
• Extensive professional experience in software engineering, with demonstrated progression into senior/lead or VP-level technical responsibilities.

5. Behavioral & Leadership Competencies

• Problem Solving: Strong analytical, problem-solving, and algorithmic thinking skills.
• Communication: Exceptional verbal and written communication skills with the ability to bridge technical concepts and complex business logic for diverse stakeholders.
• Ownership & Delivery: Proven ability to take end-to-end ownership of critical systems, from design and implementation to operational support and reliability engineering.
• Culture & Mentorship: Passion for fostering an inclusive, collaborative, and high-performance engineering culture.

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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:

$120,800.00 - $170,800.00

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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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