Lead Java Backend Engineer - Vice President

Position Overview

Key Responsibilities

• Define and enforce the API-first strategy for the FDE organization, establishing OpenAPI/Swagger contract-first development practices, API versioning standards, and API gateway governance (routing, rate limiting, authentication) across all environments.
• Lead hands-on design and delivery of production-grade Java Spring Boot microservices — implementing resilient service patterns (Resilience4j circuit breakers, retry, bulkheads) and reactive services via Spring WebFlux for AI pipeline integrations.
• Lead integration efforts with Citi enterprise systems including financial data platforms, identity/auth services (OAuth2/OIDC, SAML), and third-party providers; implement event-driven integration via Apache Kafka or IBM MQ for real-time data streaming to AI pipelines.
• Partner with the Lead AI/GenAI Engineer to expose LLM inference, RAG pipeline, and agentic workflow endpoints as hardened, enterprise-ready Spring Boot services; collaborate with the UI Engineer to define and version all API contracts powering the Angular front-end.
• Implement security-by-design across all microservices: mTLS, OAuth2/JWT authorization, secrets management (Vault), and field-level encryption — ensuring compliance with Citi API governance, OWASP Top 10, SOX, and GDPR requirements.
• Build full observabilities for all services — distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), structured logging (Splunk/ELK), and metrics/alerting (Prometheus, Grafana) — and lead performance engineering via load testing (Gatling, k6) against defined SLAs.
• Collaborate with DevOps and platform teams to build CI/CD pipelines and define Helm charts/Kubernetes manifests for zero-downtime deployments across OpenShift containerized platforms.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• An overall 10+ years of experience in the following areas:
• Core Backend: Expert-level Java (10+) with deep hands-on experience in Spring Boot, Spring Cloud (Gateway, Config, Feign), Spring Security , Spring Data , and Spring WebFlux for reactive microservices.
• API Design: Mastery of Gen AI API development (FastAPI, Flask ) and REST (OpenAPI 3.x), gRPC/Protocol Buffers, and GraphQL; proven API governance experience including contract-first design, developer documentation, and API lifecycle management.
• Enterprise Integration: Hands-on with Apache Kafka (Kafka Streams, schema registry) or IBM MQ , Apache Camel/Spring Integration, and enterprise integration patterns (routing, transformation, aggregation).
• Security & Compliance: In-depth knowledge of OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, mTLS , API key lifecycle management, and HashiCorp Vault ; understanding of financial regulatory compliance (SOX, GDPR, MiFID II) and its API implications.
• Data & Persistence: Proficiency with relational databases (PostgreSQL, Oracle via Spring Data JPA/Hibernate), NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis), and exposure to vector/search technologies (Elasticsearch) for AI use cases.
• Containerization & Cloud: Strong experience with Docker, OpenShift, Kubernetes including Helm chart authoring, and CI/CD pipelines (Harness, Tekton, Jenkins) with integrated DevSecOps practices.
• Observability: Production experience with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or ELK for monitoring, alerting, and incident response.
• Leadership: Demonstrated ability to set backend integration technical direction, conduct architectural reviews, and collaborate effectively with AI engineers, front-end engineers, enterprise architects, and business stakeholders.

Beneficial Skills & Qualifications

• Experience developing APIs for Generative AI applications using frameworks such as FastAPI or Flask, with familiarity in exposing LLM inference or RAG pipeline endpoints.
• Exposure to advanced architectural patterns including hexagonal architecture, CQRS, and event sourcing in cloud-native environments.
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Experience advising or mentoring mid-level engineers and contributing to architectural review processes across cross-functional engineering teams.

Education

Most Relevant Skills

• ------------------------------------------------------

Other Relevant Skills

• 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.
• If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review Accessibility at Citi . View Citi’s EEO Policy Statement and the Know Your Rights poster.