AI Engineer - CTO Developer Engineering (AVP)

Citi; Belfast; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial institution in Belfast seeks an AI Engineer to enhance developer productivity using state-of-the-art Generative AI. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, foster innovation, and leverage modern tools. Ideal candidates have strong AI/ML skills, experience with Python, and a passion for building impactful solutions. Flexible hybrid work model and competitive benefits included.

Benefits

27 days annual leave

Discretionary annual performance bonus

Private Medical Care

Life Insurance

Employee Assistance Program

Pension Plan

Paid Parental Leave

Special employee discounts

Access to learning resources

Qualifications

• Proficiency in AI Evaluation, including regression and statistical testing.
• Strong understanding of AI/ML fundamentals and implications.
• Experience with message queuing systems and containerisation.

Responsibilities

• Ship AI software efficiently at Citi.
• Foster cross-team collaboration and overcome inefficiencies.
• Engage in AI experiments that deliver business features.

Skills

AI Evaluation

Deep Learning

Python

REST APIs

PostgreSQL

Apache Kafka

Docker

Kubernetes

Tools

FastAPI

Pydantic

Scikit-learn

NLTK

Helm

Tekton

Harness

Job description

Overview

We're looking for a talented AI Engineer with proven industry experience in building and shipping production-grade AI/ML at scale to help build our next-generation Developer Productivity platform at Citi using bleeding-edge Generative AI.

You'll be joining small, high-impact teams challenging, changing, modernising and enhancing the experience of our 50,000 engineers globally throughout Citi's SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle).

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.

Why you'll love working here

• You’ll work in a small, agile team, in an organisation led by technologists, building the best tools for fellow developers.
• You’ll impact the daily experience of tens of thousands of engineers at one of the largest engineering organisations in the world.
• You get to work in the fun part of the bank, the Chief Technology Office, building cool things.

By day 45 - learning how to ship AI software at Citi

Being one of the largest financial institutions in the world, the initial part of your journey will be about learning how to efficiently ship software at Citi and understand the web of stakeholders who will enable you to deliver at your best, including the ones involved in the approvals required to ship.

• Started a relationship with the engineering leads within Developer Enablement.
• Started learning our experiment-driven AI development workflow.
• Chosen and deployed an Experiment Tracking and a Data Labelling tool.
• Consolidated existing evaluation scripts into an existing Evaluation CLI and release it.
• Devised and executed on at least one Quantitative Test Plan for a GenAI solution.

By 3 months - become a citizen within CTO's AI and represent as an AI expert

You will be expected to foster cross-team collaboration and help overcome inefficiencies. Within three months, you will already have a consolidated understanding of the roles of engineering leads within Developer Experience, and you will have started working with engineering leads across CTO.

• Regular interactions with Engineering Leads across Developer Enablement.
• Started a relationship with engineering leads in the AI space across CTO.
• Mastered and applied routinely our experiment-driven AI development workflow.
• Completed a few AI experiments that delivered business features.

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 discretionary 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

Visit our Global Benefits page to learn more.

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.

#LI-RH

• Identified and disrupted at least one inefficiency in our AI Development Workflow.
• Expanded our suite of eval metrics and techniques to simplify agentic-AI development.

By 6 months - presence in CTO's AI and own experiment-driven AI development workflow

Continuing your journey as a senior engineer, you will have identified and started engaging on at least one opportunity of cross-team collaboration that addresses a developer productivity inefficiency inside CTO or another organisation that we advise. These relationships will have started providing you with enough resourcefulness to start designing AI solutions from scratch aligned with strategic tools.

• Regular interactions with Engineering Leads across CTO to unblock shipping to production.
• Started owning and evolving our experiment-driven AI development workflow.
• Started owning and evolving our AI evaluation Tooling.
• Routinely completed AI experiments that delivered business features.
• Routinely shipped software features to production, end-to-end.
• Contributed to designing new production-grade AI applications or modules.

By 12 months - own our team's AI experimentation machine

At this point, you will have an opinionated view on how to take our experiment-driven AI development workflow to the next level, training other younger colleagues to perform confidently different parts of this workflow.

• Regular interactions with Engineering Leads across CTO to unblock shipping to production.
• Advocacy and dissemination of our experiment-driven AI development workflow.
• Routinely completed critical path AI experiments that delivered business features.
• Designed and implemented production-grade features for AI solutions.
• Proven to mitigate AI production deployment risk for our AI Engineering Team.
• Helped scoping and planning future AI development work.
• Further expanded our suite of eval metrics and techniques to simplify agentic-AI development.

What you will bring

• Proficiency in AI Evaluation: regression, classification, information retrieval, power analysis and correlation and statistical testing, and others
• Strong understanding of AI/ML fundamentals: Deep Learning, LLMs and implications
• Strong server-side Engineering: Python, REST APIs, asynchronous and functional programming
• Proficiency with relational and/or NoSQL databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB
• Experience with message queuing systems: Apache Kafka
• Deep understanding of containerisation (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, Tekton, ArgoCD, Harness)

Tools and technologies you might use

• Python, FastAPI, Pydantic, Pandas, Scikit-learn, NLTK, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Apache Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Tekton, Harness
• Mac or PC – it's up to you
• Access to time-saving AI tools such as GitHub Copilot and Cognition.ai's Devin

By continuing to refine the description, the final output adheres to formatting standards and preserves the original job information and context. Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to 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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