Senior Data Platform Engineer - Vice President

Key Responsibilities

• Hands-on Technical Leadership & Coaching: Provide technical leadership through direct code contribution, architecture review, and hands-on guidance to junior and mid-level data engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning across polyglot environments.
• Drive & Implement Architecture & Design: Directly contribute to and drive the technical design and hands-on development of highly scalable, low-latency, fault-tolerant data pipelines, real-time streaming platforms (e.g., Flink), and microservices architectures.
• Platform Infrastructure & Operations Deep Dive: Actively participate in the strategic planning, setup, enhancement, migration, and operational excellence of critical platform infrastructure, including distributed streaming (Flink) and high-performance caching solutions (Redis).
• Open Source & Emerging Technologies Evaluation: Continuously research, evaluate, and prototype emerging open-source data and streaming technologies, leading their integration into Citi's data platform through direct implementation. This includes evaluating new streaming frameworks and caching solutions.
• Performance & Resilience Optimization: Proactively identify and implement architectural and systemic performance optimizations to ensure optimal efficiency, responsiveness, and resilience across the entire data platform, including Flink and Redis clusters.
• Cross-Functional Technical Collaboration: Collaborate closely with senior technical stakeholders across engineering, data science, and business teams to translate complex technical requirements into robust, high-impact implementations.
• Delivery & Code Quality Assurance: Drive the timely, high-quality, and secure delivery of data platform features, championing agile methodologies, engineering best practices, and ensuring accountability for code quality and robust testing.
• Technical Problem Solving: Act as a primary escalation point for complex technical challenges, providing expert diagnosis and hands-on resolution.
• Operational Flexibility: May occasionally work a non-standard shift including nights and/or weekends and/or have on-call responsibilities to support critical platform operations.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of demonstrable and highly hands-on experience in software development, with at least 3-5 years in a lead technical contributor or staff engineer role within a data-intensive environment.
• Deep Architectural & Implementation Expertise: Proven expertise in designing, building, and implementing Microservices and complex streaming/data pipeline architectures.
• Polyglot Proficiency & Technical Authority: Demonstrated ability to be a technical authority and actively contribute across multiple programming languages/frameworks, with strong hands-on experience in Java (Java 11+ preferred) , and significant expertise in Python , along with practical knowledge of front-end technologies like Angular/React.
• Expertise in Flink Ecosystem: In-depth architectural understanding and hands-on experience with Apache Flink for real-time stream processing, including Flink SQL, DataStream API, and state management. Comprehensive knowledge of Flink infrastructure setup, maintenance, enhancement, migration strategies, and experience in evaluating/integrating alternative streaming frameworks.
• Mastery of Redis: In-depth knowledge and practical experience with Redis, encompassing not only data structures, caching patterns, and pub/sub mechanisms but also strategic expertise in Redis cluster setup, maintenance, enhancement, and migration strategies for mission-critical, high-performance applications.
• Distributed Systems & Data Engineering: Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts and extensive hands-on experience with data distribution platforms like Apache Kafka, and various big data storage/querying systems (e.g., Trino, Pinot, Druid, Ignite) for low-latency access in large-scale, distributed data pipelines.
• Cloud-Native & DevOps Contribution: Proven experience with the design, implementation, and operational aspects of cloud-native applications and deployment via Kubernetes / OpenShift / ECS, specifically for managing microservices, streaming, and data services.
• Technical Leadership, Coaching & Communication: Exceptional ability to provide technical direction, coach junior engineers through hands-on collaboration, and articulate complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences.
• Advanced Problem Solving & Strategic Technical Thinking: Excellent problem-solving skills, a data-driven approach to technical decision-making, and the ability to define and execute long-term technical strategies through direct implementation.
• Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs), including fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and integrating LLMs into applications, is a plus.

Software Engineering Excellence

Education

Most Relevant Skills

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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.
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