Staff Software Engineer/Tech Lead (Distributed systems) - SVP in Belfast

We’re looking for exceptional Staff Software Engineer to help build and tech lead our next-generation Developer Experience (DevEx) platform at Citi using Kotlin. You’ll be joining a small, high-impact team, shaping the daily lives of our 50,000 engineers globally by building the cockpit where engineers can see all parts of the software development life cycle tied together into a workflow in near real-time, being able to action and monitor agentic AI flows from the cockpit. This is an exciting technical challenge for an ambitious candidate.

Where you’ll work

You’ll sit within Development Enablement, part of Citi’s CTO organisation. A group focused on innovation, developer platforms and internal tools used across the bank, where we experiment and ship fast, like a startup inside a global bank. Our mission is to transform developer productivity saving our engineers tens of minutes per day, equating to £10,000,000s of savings at Citi’s scale.

What you’ll be doing in the first year

• You’ll be creating a near-real time platform that requests and receives data from across the bank, using a mixture of streaming (Kafka), webhooks and other integrations.
• You’ll be creating a system that can orchestrate parts of the SDLC and create a lineage from commit to prod with a mixture derived and source of truth systems.
• You’ll enable agentic workflows across the bank at scale.

What you’ll have achieved in your first year

• By 3 months: You will have created the system architecture, and established key relationships. Lead the architectural design of the system that takes into consideration our future near real-time requirements, complex data integration, and scalability. You will have created architectural diagrams that stakeholders can understand. Create core architectural principles, engineering best practices, and deliver performance SLAs for the platform, ensuring team alignment and a clear technical roadmap. Have established working relationships with 5-10 members of our organisation.
• By 6 months: You have established alignment within the team and integrated with several services. Integrated with several upstream APIs (CI/CD status aggregation, production error metrics), ensuring architectural consistency, scalable, fault tolerant, data ingestion. Be the technical authority in solving ambiguous, large-scale engineering challenges. Onboarded required technologies (Kafka, PostgreSQL, advanced observability tools) as needed, ensuring they align with the architectural vision and meet evolving strategic requirements. Have mentored fellow engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaborative problem-solving, and continuous learning.
• By 12 months: You will have delivered the key parts of the platform reaching over 1,000 users. You will have delivered key parts of the system that support part of the SDLC workflow, such as tracing a JIRA ticket's progression through build, test, and deployment into production. Ensure the platform's architecture and implementation is technically robust could theoretically scale to 10,000 users in near real-time.

What you will bring

• Deep expertise (10-15+ years) in server-side engineering: Kotlin (or Java with a strong desire to learn Kotlin), building and consuming RESTful APIs, asynchronous programming.
• Proficiency in Event-Driven architectures, and related principles.
• Expertise with relational and/or NoSQL databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB.
• Experience with Design patterns for high-throughput, low-latency data streams.
• Deep understanding of containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools like Tekton and deployment automation platforms like Harness.
• Comfortable collaborating with product, design, and UI engineers, and other stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver robust backend solutions.

Tools and technologies you might use

• Kotlin/Java, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Apache Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Tekton, Harness, OpenShift.
• Access to time-saving AI tools such as GitHub Copilot.

Why you’ll love working here:

• Be a key architect and driver in defining the future of developer experience for one of the world's largest engineering organizations, directly impacting tens of thousands of engineers.
• Lead and innovate within a high-autonomy, outcome-focused team, where your technical leadership and strategic decisions have global reach and measurable impact.
• Tackle intellectually stimulating, greenfield engineering challenges transforming complex problems into high-performance solutions.
• Operate in an environment that values technical excellence, mentorship, and continuous learning, supported by access to advanced tools and a culture of innovation.

What we’ll provide you

By joining Citi Belfast, 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

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.