Senior Java Software Engineer – FX Options Risk (VP)

Citi; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid Parental Leave

27 days annual leave

Private Medical Care

Life Insurance

Employee Assistance Program

Job summary

Citi is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, develop, and optimize FX real-time risk systems. You will work on high-throughput, low-latency processing and provide technical guidance to the engineering team in a front-office facing role with the FX Options Trading desk.

You will use Core Java, Kafka, Storm, and Couchbase in a hybrid environment, mentoring peers and shaping architectural strategy across the risk platform.

Qualifications

• Extensive development experience in enterprise Java within highly parallel, low-latency environments.
• Strong knowledge of FX trading, options pricing, or real-time risk systems is highly preferred.
• Proven IC delivering complex, high-throughput distributed systems in production.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and optimize FX real-time risk infrastructure for low latency, high availability.
• Provide architecture and code reviews, mentor mid-level and junior engineers.
• Collaborate with FX trading desk to translate requirements into robust software designs.

Skills

Core Java

Multithreading

Concurrency

Memory Mgmt

Kafka

Storm

CouchbaseDB

Spring

OpenShift

Kubernetes

GCP/AWS

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

CouchbaseDB

Kafka

Apache Storm

Spring

Job description

• Paid Parental Leave

This position is responsible for designing, developing, and optimizing our mission-critical, high-throughput FX real-time risk system. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will leverage your deep technical expertise to drive the architectural evolution of low-latency processing systems, solve complex engineering challenges, and provide technical guidance to the engineering team. In this front-office facing role, you will collaborate closely with the FX Options Trading desk, translating business needs into robust, scalable, real-time software solutions.

Technical Execution & Architecture

• Design, implement, and optimize critical FX real-time risk infrastructure, ensuring high performance, minimal latency, and high availability.
• Drive key technical deliverables and champion code quality, modern development practices, and robust system design patterns within the team.
• Provide expert architectural input and contribute to the technical strategy as we modernize and onboard to the bank's strategic risk platform.
• Collaborate with engineering partners to establish design standards, conduct deep code reviews, and provide technical mentorship to mid-level and junior engineers.

Stakeholder Collaboration & Domain Expertise

• Serve as a key technical Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the FX Options Trading desk, trading leadership, and risk managers, translating quantitative and trading requirements into concrete software designs.
• Act as a dependable technical partner to front-office stakeholders, offering advanced analysis and fast, decisive troubleshooting for complex real-time system behaviors or critical production incidents.
• Appropriately assess risk when technical and architectural decisions are made, ensuring all solutions adhere to corporate security, scalability, and stability standards to safeguard Citigroup, its clients, and assets.

Hands-on Development

• Contribute hands-on as a primary engineer utilizing our modern tech stack: Core Java (multi-threading, concurrency, memory optimization), CouchbaseDB, Kafka, and Apache Storm.
• Solve complex real-time risk calculation requirements, handling heavy stream processing and highly concurrent data flows.

Required Experience

• extensive development experience, with a strong focus on enterprise Java within highly parallel, low-latency, or distributed environments.
• Strong financial knowledge of FX trading, options pricing, or real-time risk systems is highly preferred / obligatory.
• Proven track record as a high-performing Individual Contributor (IC) delivering complex, high-throughput distributed systems in production environments.
• Deep hands-on expertise in Core Java, including multi-threading, memory management, garbage collection tuning, and concurrency utilities.
• Solid experience with real-time stream processing and distributed data architectures (e.g., Kafka, Apache Storm, CouchbaseDB/NoSQL, Spring).
• Familiarity with modern infrastructure paradigms, such as containerization (OpenShift/Kubernetes) and cloud platforms (GCP/AWS) is highly advantageous.
• Understanding of AI, machine learning, or advanced quantitative analytics applications in financial systems is a strong plus.
• Outstanding communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to interact confidently and explain complex technical concepts to non-technical business partners, including trading desk heads.

Education

• Bachelor's degree/University degree or equivalent experience

What We’ll Provide You

By joining Citi, 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.

Time Type: Full time

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.

If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review Accessibility at Citi.

View Citi’s EEO Policy Statement and the Know Your Rights poster.