At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and maintain a high-performance calculation engine for large-scale financial systems.
- Company: Join Citi, a leading global financial services company with innovative tech solutions.
- Benefits: Enjoy competitive salary, health benefits, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in finance by optimising cutting-edge technology for risk calculations.
- Qualifications: Experience in Java development and building distributed systems is essential.
- Other info: Collaborative environment with mentorship opportunities and a focus on continuous learning.
The predicted salary is between 54000 - 84000 ÂŁ per year.
Team Overview
XiP is building a next‑generation cross‑asset calculation system for Citi trading desks and enterprise users in the largest global financial markets and exchanges in New York, London, and other major financial hubs. Our team owns multiple Java Spring Boot Services that execute, partition, and track quantitative risk graphs/trades in a distributed environment. These graphs can fail due to their complexity and our system must adapt quickly to these failures to provide a seamless experience for clients. XiP Compute Services are deployed onto OpenShift and Amazon’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). An important initiative in 2025 will be onboarding Google’s Kubernetes Engine to further expand our coverage. Our system scales on‑demand, and we can run up to tens of thousands of replicas of our services across all asset classes.
Role Overview
We are seeking a Senior Engineer to fill the role of “Applications Development Technology Lead Analyst” on the XiNG large‑scale distributed calculation platform (XiP). In this role you will design, build, and maintain the calculation engine at the heart of the XiP platform. This engine is responsible for c. 0.5 billion risk & suitability calculations at Citi every day. A single customer run compresses 17 million minutes of compute into a single 90‑minute execution. Run on hundreds of thousands of pods across the entire XiP platform every day, this calculation engine is both highly performant and rapidly changing to support new scenarios, technologies, and infrastructure. As an engineer working on the calculation engine, you will work closely with software engineers, DevOps, and our customers to ensure reliable, secure, and scalable operations of our platform.
Responsibilities
- Take part of the shared responsibility for the long‑term strategic direction of the XiP Calculation Engine: Apply your experience and skills to develop the future versions of the calculation engine. This means making it faster, utilising resources better, and scaling to even greater sizes. This means adding new features without impacting performance of the platform in an undesirable manner – small changes multiplied by millions of calculations have a high cost. This means solving hard problems like transferring small amounts of data to a huge number of machines.
- Serve as advisor or coach to team members, allocating and overseeing work: Mentor and guide mid‑level developers, providing technical advice, code reviews, and career development support. Allocate tasks based on skill sets and project priorities, ensuring balanced workloads and timely delivery. Foster a collaborative and growth‑oriented team environment, encouraging best practices and continuous learning.
- Implement changes and improvements to Citi’s Risk Calculation Engine, including analyzing and designing improvements to the distribution mechanisms of the engine which regularly parallelises 250,000 hours of compute into a single 90‑minute execution: Lead the design, development, and implementation of enhancements to the Risk Calculation Engine, focusing on optimizing its distribution mechanisms. Analyze current parallelisation strategies and identify opportunities to further improve efficiency, scalability, and throughput.
- Operationally support the optimisation of Risk calculations by examining and providing SME level insight into the distributed execution of extremely large calculations: Monitor and analyse the distributed execution of large‑scale risk calculations, identifying performance bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Provide subject‑matter expertise to guide operational improvements, leveraging deep technical knowledge to recommend and implement optimisations that enhance calculation speed and resource utilisation.
- Plan, coordinate, and execute strategic changes to the engine to reach the next scaling milestone: Develop and manage strategic initiatives aimed at scaling the Risk Calculation Engine to meet future business demands. Coordinate with stakeholders to ensure that all scaling efforts are aligned with customer needs.
- Provide specialised customer support to optimise and improve large, distributed calculations: Act as a primary point of contact for clients to address issues and optimise inefficiencies that arise during distributed workload execution.
Qualifications
- Multiple years professional software development experience with Java.
- Solid experience with Java frameworks (e.g., Spring, Spring Boot, Quarkus).
- Experience designing, building, and maintaining large‑scale, distributed systems.
- Experience with RESTful API design and implementation.
- Strong understanding of object‑oriented programming and design patterns.
- Exposure to NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra) is a plus.
- Exposure to cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerisation (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) is desirable.
- Experience with unit testing, integration testing, and test automation frameworks (e.g., JUnit, Mockito).
- Experience working in Agile/Scrum development environments.
- Practical experience with Python for scripting, automation, or data processing tasks.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices is a plus.
Education
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
Senior Software Engineer, CalcGraphs - Vice President in London employer: Citi
Contact Detail:
Citi Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Software Engineer, CalcGraphs - Vice President in London
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to current employees at Citi or in similar roles on LinkedIn. A friendly chat can give you insider info and might even lead to a referral, which is always a bonus!
✨Tip Number 2
Prepare for the technical interview by brushing up on your Java skills and distributed systems knowledge. Practice coding challenges and be ready to discuss your past projects in detail – they want to see how you think and solve problems.
✨Tip Number 3
Showcase your soft skills! During interviews, highlight your ability to mentor others and work collaboratively. They’re looking for someone who can lead and inspire the team while tackling complex challenges.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen. Plus, it shows you’re genuinely interested in being part of the Citi team.
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Software Engineer, CalcGraphs - Vice President in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your CV: Make sure your CV reflects the skills and experiences that match the job description. Highlight your Java expertise, experience with distributed systems, and any relevant cloud platform knowledge. We want to see how you can contribute to our XiP team!
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter: Your cover letter is your chance to shine! Use it to explain why you're excited about the role and how your background aligns with our needs. Don’t forget to mention your passion for optimising large-scale systems – it’s what we’re all about at StudySmarter!
Showcase Your Projects: If you've worked on any relevant projects, make sure to include them in your application. Whether it's a personal project or something from your previous job, we love seeing practical examples of your skills in action, especially if they relate to risk calculations or distributed systems.
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way to ensure your application gets into the right hands. Plus, it shows us you’re serious about joining the StudySmarter family!
How to prepare for a job interview at Citi
✨Know Your Tech Stack
Make sure you’re well-versed in Java and its frameworks, especially Spring and Spring Boot. Brush up on your knowledge of distributed systems and RESTful API design, as these will be crucial topics during the interview.
✨Showcase Problem-Solving Skills
Be prepared to discuss complex problems you've solved in previous roles, particularly those related to performance optimisation and scaling. Use specific examples that highlight your analytical thinking and technical expertise.
✨Understand the Business Context
Familiarise yourself with Citi's operations and the financial markets they serve. Understanding how your role as a Senior Software Engineer fits into the bigger picture will impress the interviewers and show your commitment to the company’s goals.
✨Ask Insightful Questions
Prepare thoughtful questions about the team dynamics, ongoing projects, and future challenges the XiP platform might face. This not only shows your interest but also helps you gauge if the company culture aligns with your values.