Principal Engineer - Senior Vice President

Citi; Pune District; Hybrid; INR 6,000,000 - 9,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Citi in Pune is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead architecture and hands-on development for our compliance technology platform. You will drive AI-native, scalable, distributed systems, and modern full-stack integration across big data pipelines.

You will mentor senior engineers, shape platform engineering culture, and influence enterprise-wide architecture. The role demands deep technical leadership, system thinking, and a passion for simplifying complex challenges at scale.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience at Principal/Sr. Staff level.
• Deep expertise designing and operating large-scale distributed systems in hybrid or cloud.
• Strong backend (Go, Java, Python) and frontend (React/Angular) experience.
• Experience building high-throughput data pipelines with Kafka, Spark, or Flink.
• Experience integrating GenAI/LLMs into production apps (RAG, prompts).

Responsibilities

• Lead technically and contribute 60–70% code, review, and reusable components.
• Architect AI-native workflows and RAG systems at scale.
• Design resilient, low-latency distributed architectures and microservices.
• Bridge backend and frontend, enable real-time and batch data pipelines.
• Promote DevEx, inner-sourcing, testing, observability, and CI/CD adoption.
• Mentor senior engineers and foster engineering excellence.

Skills

Technical Leadership

System Design

Go/Java/Python

Big Data

AI/GenAI

Hybrid Cloud

Microservices

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

OpenShift

LangChain

Vector Databases

Job description

SVP (C14) - Principal Engineer

Location: Pune(Hybrid)

Line of Business: Compliance Technology / Enterprise Technology

About the Role

Are you a Principal Engineer who thrives on solving complex, high-scale engineering challenges? Do you want to build the future of global compliance using AI-native technologies, modern full-stack architectures, and massive-scale big data systems?

At Citi, we are undergoing a massive technology transformation and simplification. We are moving away from legacy paradigms to build a modern, developer-first, and AI-native engineering ecosystem. We are establishing platform engineering culture. As a Principal Engineer, you will be a hands-on technical leader driving the architecture and implementation of our next-generation enterprise platforms, simplification and optimisation initiatives across compliance technology.

You will have the opportunity to leverage and contribute to Citi’s cutting-edge ai-native internal platforms(secure, multi-LLM GenAI gateway ,modern application platform utilizing Knative serverless functions and blueprint-driven architectures and our next-generation, high-velocity CI/CD developer platform).

If you are passionate about writing clean code, designing resilient, highly available distributed systems, and embraces AI and system thinking to bring simplification & transformation, we want to talk to you.

What You’ll Do (Key Responsibilities)

• Technical Leadership & Hands-on Coding: Act as the primary technical authority for your domain. You will spend ~60-70% of your time writing high-quality, production-ready code, conducting deep code reviews, and building reusable components/blueprints, redesigning existing application with system thinking and simplification as first principal
• AI-Native Engineering: Architect and build intelligent, agentic workflows and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems. Integrate LLMs securely at scale using our internal R2D2 GenAI gateway to automate complex financial operations and enhance developer productivity.
• Enterprise Architecture & Scalability: Design and implement highly resilient, low-latency, and fault-tolerant distributed systems. Define microservices boundaries, event-driven architectures, and API standards that scale to handle screening of billions of transactions daily.
• Full-Stack & Big Data Integration: Bridge the gap between high-performance backends and modern, intuitive frontends. Bring in data density to the organization by unifying data collection, processing and reporting. Architect/redesign real-time and batch data pipelines
• Developer Experience (DevEx) Advocacy: Champion modern engineering practices. Drive the adoption of inner-sourcing, automated testing, robust observability, and continuous delivery via our CI/CD platform. Inculcate AI-native culture in the team.
• Mentorship & Culture: Foster a culture of engineering excellence, psychological safety, and continuous learning. Mentor senior and staff engineers, helping them grow their technical careers.

Our Tech Stack & Ecosystem

We believe in using the right tool for the job. Our modern ecosystem includes:

• Languages: Go, Java (Spring Boot), Python, TypeScript/JavaScript
• Frontend: React, Angular, Micro-frontends
• AI & GenAI: Multi-LLM Gateway, Understanding and knowledge of LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vector Databases, Vertex AI,
• Big Data & Analytics: Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, Apache Flink, Hadoop, Snowflake, Databricks
• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes, HashiCorp Vault
• CI/CD & DevEx:

What We’re Looking For (Qualifications)

Basic Qualifications:

• Experience: 12+ years of professional software engineering experience as Principal/Sr. Staff/Staff engineer, with a proven track record of technical leadership in a product-engineering led setup
• System Design: Deep expertise in designing, building, and operating large-scale, distributed, enterprise-grade systems in hybrid or public cloud environments (AWS/GCP/openshift).
• Full-Stack Proficiency: Strong hands-on experience in both backend (Go, Java, or Python) and modern frontend frameworks (React/Angular).
• Big Data Expertise: Proven experience building high-throughput data pipelines using Kafka, Spark, or Flink, and managing large-scale data storage/retrieval.
• AI/ML Integration: Practical experience integrating GenAI/LLMs into production applications, including prompt engineering, RAG, and vector search.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Product Engineering Mindset: Experience working in a highly collaborative, product- engineering led environment where you focus on user outcomes, not just technical specifications.
• Security & Compliance: Understanding of enterprise security patterns, zero-trust architecture, data privacy, and secure credential management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault).
• Open Source & Inner-Source: Active contributor to open-source projects or a strong track record of driving inner-source initiatives within a large enterprise.
• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

Why Join Citi?

• Scale That Matters: We operate in over 160 countries and jurisdictions, processing trillions of dollars daily. The systems you design will have a direct, tangible impact on the global economy. We secure and facilitate the global financial system. The platforms you unify will protect trillions of dollars in daily transactions from financial crime and regulatory risk.
• Tech-First Culture: We are actively dismantling legacy silos. You will work in an environment that values automation over bureaucracy, code over slide decks, and continuous improvement. We are moving with speed to bring in transformation and simplification at scale
• Continuous Growth: Access to unlimited learning resources, technical certifications, and opportunities to speak at industry conferences and internal tech summits.

And many more reasons.

Job Family Group:

Technology

Job Family:

Applications Development

Time Type:

Full time

Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

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