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

Engineer the future of global finance. At Citi, our Tech team doesn’t just support finance – we are helping to redefine it. Every day, $5 trillion crosses through our network. We do business in 180+ countries operating at a scale few can match. From deploying advanced AI to helping shape global markets, we build systems that matter. Look to join a team where your work helps influence economies, your ideas can drive innovation and outcomes, and your growth is backed by mentorship, continuous learning and flexibility with potential hybrid work opportunities. Help solve real-world challenges that touch millions and get the opportunity to build the future of finance with Citi Tech.

We are looking for a highly skilled and experienced Lead Java Engineer to drive the design, development, and implementation of robust and scalable enterprise applications. The successful candidate will possess exceptional expertise in Java development and a profound understanding of database systems, including both relational (RDBMS) and NoSQL technologies. This role involves technical leadership, architectural contributions, and mentoring junior team members, ensuring the delivery of high-quality, high-performance software solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the architectural design, development, and implementation of mission-critical backend systems and services using Java and its ecosystem (e.g., Spring Boot, Spring Framework).
• Serve as a subject matter expert in database technologies, including advanced schema design, query optimization, performance tuning, and data migration strategies for both relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server) and NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis).
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to a team of Java developers, promoting best practices in coding, software design, and system architecture.
• Conduct thorough code reviews to ensure code quality, maintainability, scalability, and adherence to established standards.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, architects, and other engineering teams to translate business requirements into technical specifications and innovative solutions.
• Identify and resolve complex technical challenges, performance bottlenecks, and production issues across the application stack.
• Champion continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices to streamline the development and deployment lifecycle.
• Stay current with emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices in Java development, database management, and distributed systems.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Professional experience in software development, with at least 3 years in a lead or senior Java engineering role.
• Exceptional proficiency in Java, with extensive experience in core Java, multithreading, and modern Java frameworks like Spring Boot and Spring.
• Demonstrated deep expertise and hands-on experience with Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), including complex SQL queries, stored procedures, database normalization, indexing, and performance optimization.
• Strong practical experience with NoSQL databases, understanding their various paradigms (document, key-value, columnar, graph), data modeling for NoSQL, and optimizing queries for performance and scalability.
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs and microservices architectures.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Solid understanding of software development life cycles (SDLC) and agile methodologies.
• Excellent problem-solving abilities, strong analytical skills, and clear communication skills (verbal and written).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with message brokers (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ) and event-driven architectures.
• Knowledge of data warehousing concepts and ETL processes.
• Experience with build tools such as Maven or Gradle, and version control systems like Git.
• Exposure to performance testing, security best practices, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools and practices (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions).
• Experience with distributed caching mechanisms (e.g., Redis, Memcached).

What we’ll provide you

By joining Citi, you will not only be part of a business casual workplace with a hybrid working model (up to 2 days working at home per week), but also receive a competitive base salary (which is annually reviewed), and enjoy a whole host of additional benefits such as:

• 27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
• A discretional annual performance related bonus
• Private Medical Care & Life Insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Pension Plan
• Paid Parental Leave
• Special discounts for employees, family, and friends
• Access to an array of learning and development resources

Visit our Global Benefits page to learn more.

Alongside these benefits Citi is committed to ensuring our workplace is where everyone feels comfortable coming to work as their whole self, every day. We want the best talent around the world to be energized to join us, motivated to stay and empowered to thrive.

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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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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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