Working at Citi is far more than just a job. A career with us means joining a team of approximately 219,000 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.
We are seeking an experienced and highly skilled Java/J2EE Technical Lead at the C13 (Vice President) level to join our Technology organization. The ideal candidate will lead the design, development, and delivery of complex enterprise-grade applications using Java, Spring, Angular, React, Oracle, Kafka, IBM MQ, WebSphere Application Server (WAS), ECS/OpenShift, and Microservices architectures. This role requires a strong engineering mindset, leadership capability, and a passion for building resilient, high-performance financial systems.
- Lead end-to-end design, development, and delivery of enterprise Java/J2EE applications.
- Provide technical direction, mentorship, and guidance to a team of 5–10 software engineers.
- Conduct code reviews, enforce coding standards, and champion engineering best practices including TDD and BDD.
- Drive architectural decisions across microservices, API design, and UI layers.
- Design and develop scalable Java (11/17) and Spring Boot / Spring Framework microservices.
- Build RESTful APIs and integrate with enterprise messaging platforms — Apache Kafka and IBM MQ.
- Deploy and manage applications on WebSphere Application Server (WAS) and container platforms (ECS / OpenShift / Kubernetes).
- Develop and optimize complex queries, stored procedures, and schema designs using Oracle Database.
- Collaborate with UI teams on Angular and React based Single Page Applications (SPAs).
- Ensure seamless API integration between backend microservices and frontend layers.
- Enforce UI coding standards, component reusability, and accessibility compliance.
- Architect and deliver cloud-native microservices following domain-driven design (DDD) and event-driven architecture patterns.
- Design inter-service communication using synchronous REST and asynchronous messaging (Kafka, IBM MQ).
- Ensure services meet enterprise standards for scalability, resilience, and fault tolerance.
- Lead migration of monolithic applications to microservices architecture where applicable.
- Design and implement Kafka-based event streaming pipelines for real-time data processing.
- Configure and manage IBM MQ queues, topics, channels, and listeners for enterprise messaging.
- Ensure message reliability, ordering, idempotency, and dead-letter handling.
- Champion a test-first culture across the engineering team.
- Lead development of unit, integration, and end-to-end test suites using JUnit 5, Mockito, Selenium, and Cucumber.
- Implement and maintain test automation frameworks integrated into CI/CD pipelines.
- Drive code coverage targets (>80%) and quality gate compliance via SonarQube.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, Maven/Gradle, and container orchestration tools.
- Deploy microservices on ECS (Elastic Container Service) and/or OpenShift clusters.
- Ensure deployment health through monitoring, alerting, and observability tooling.
- Partner with Product Owners, Business Analysts, QA leads, and infrastructure teams.
- Participate in architecture review boards and contribute to technology standards.
- Ensure solutions comply with security, risk, and audit requirements.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (required).
- Master's degree preferred.
- 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
- 5+ years in a technical lead or senior engineering capacity.
- Proven experience in financial services / banking technology environments preferred.
Category
Technologies / Skills
Core Languages
Java (11/17), J2EE, SQL, TypeScript, JavaScript
Backend Frameworks
Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Security, Spring Batch, Hibernate, JPA
Frontend Frameworks
Angular (12+), React (17/18), HTML5, CSS3, RxJS, Redux
Messaging & Streaming
Apache Kafka, IBM MQ (MQ Series)
Application Servers
WebSphere Application Server (WAS), Tomcat, JBoss
Databases
Oracle (PL/SQL, RAC), PostgreSQL, Redis
Container & Cloud
ECS (AWS Elastic Container Service), OpenShift, Kubernetes, Docker
Testing & QA
JUnit 5, Mockito, Selenium, Cucumber, REST Assured, SonarQube
Test Automation
CI-integrated test pipelines, BDD frameworks, Performance Testing (JMeter)
CI/CD & DevOps
Jenkins, Maven, Gradle, Git, Nexus/Artifactory
Security
OAuth 2.0, JWT, SSL/TLS, Vault, LDAP
Architecture Patterns
Microservices, Event-Driven, CQRS, API Gateway, Circuit Breaker
Methodologies
Agile/Scrum, SAFe, TDD, BDD, DevSecOps
- Hands-on experience deploying on AWS ECS with Fargate or EC2-backed clusters.
- Experience with IBM MQ administration and advanced configuration (clustering, SSL, HA).
- Familiarity with Kafka Streams, Schema Registry, and Confluent Platform.
- Exposure to Oracle RAC, GoldenGate, or Data Guard for high availability.
- Knowledge of API Gateway patterns (Apigee, AWS API Gateway).
- Experience with Citi internal platforms such as Helix, Lightspeed Enterprise (LSE), or COIN.
- Certifications: Oracle Certified Professional (Java SE), AWS Certified Developer/Solutions Architect, Kafka Certified Developer.
- Strong technical judgment with the ability to make sound architectural decisions under ambiguity.
- Proven ability to lead, coach, and grow engineering talent.
- Excellent verbal and written communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Collaborative and inclusive team leader with a continuous improvement mindset.
- High accountability and ownership for engineering delivery and quality.
- Passion for emerging technologies and innovation in financial services.
-
Technology
-
Applications Development
-
Full time
-
Please see the requirements listed above.
-
For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.
-
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.
