Head of Enterprise KYC Technology Risk Engine Development- Director

Citigroup; Jersey City (NJ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Citigroup in Jersey City seeks a senior engineering leader to drive the design, development, and operation of the Customer Risk Scoring and Decisioning Engines within its KYC Technology Risk team. You will guide engineering teams across real-time and batch processing, ensuring scalability and compliance.

The role requires building high-throughput systems, partnering with data science, and delivering explainable risk scores for onboarding and ongoing monitoring, while maintaining audit controls

Qualifications

• 10+ years leading distributed, high-throughput engineering in KYC/AML or risk-decisioning.
• Proven expertise in KYC technology management and partnerships with data science teams.
• Experience with stream processing, event-driven architectures and low-latency services.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end software lifecycle for KYC risk engines and decisioning services.
• Architect high-throughput, low-latency microservices for real-time and batch risk scoring.
• Design stream-processing to ingest real-time data, alerts, and signals for scoring.
• Partner with data science to productionize predictive risk models.
• Ensure algorithmic explainability, reproducibility, and audit-readiness of risk scoring outputs.
• Develop secure, scalable APIs with onboarding portals and RM tools.

Skills

Distributed systems engineering

KYC technology management

Stream processing

Event-driven architecture

Low-latency service design

Leadership & mentoring

Collaboration with data science teams

Tools

Finargo

Job description

Are you looking for a career move that will put you at the heart of a global financial institution? Then bring your skills in distributed systems engineering, risk technolo gy, and large-scale platform delivery to our Enterprise KYC team.

By joining Citi, you will become part of a global organization whose mission is to serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress.

Job Overview

This senior engineering leadership role is responsible for the design, development, delivery, and operational excellence of Citi's Customer Risk Scoring (CRS) and Decisioning Engines. You will lead the engineering teams that build and maintain the real-time and batch calculation engines evaluating customer risk across the KYC, Customer Due Diligence (CDD), Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) lifecycle.

The team's purpose is to ensure these risk engines are accurate, explainable, audit-compliant, and performant at scale, balancing advanced distributed systems engineering, complex rule execution, and graph-based analytics to deliver trustworthy risk scores across client onboarding and continuous customer monitoring. This is a highly visible, high-scrutiny team, central to Citi's ability to demonstrate robust, defensible risk decisioning to regulators, auditors, and internal control functions.

What you will do

As the Head of KYC Technology Risk Engine Development, you will be responsible for driving the team's strategic vision and ensuring flawless execution of its commitments.

• Lead end-to-end software development lifecycle for core KYC risk calculation engines, scoring platforms, and decisioning services.
• Architect and deliver high-throughput, low-latency, fault-tolerant microservices executing multi-factor customer risk algorithms in both real-time (API-driven) and batch modes.
• Design stream-processing architectures to ingest real-time customer data updates, sanctions/Politically Exposed Person (PEP) alerts, and transactional signals for continuous risk scoring.
• Partner with quantitative analysts and data science teams to productionize predictive models and machine learning algorithms (e.g., anomaly detection, behavioral scoring, automated risk tiering).
• Ensure all scoring engines provide full algorithmic explainability, factor-level breakdowns, and deterministic reproducibility to satisfy internal compliance audits and external regulatory inquiries.
• Develop resilient, standardized APIs integrating with Front-Office Onboarding Portals, Relationship Manager (RM) tools, and Case Management systems.
• Build secure, scalable connectors to internal reference databases and external RegTech data sources.
• Ensure a robust reconciliation process is built and maintained for validating the risk model.
• Ensure greater audit capabilities to support evidence on risk changes, meeting Regulatory, Internal Audit, and Operations reporting requirements.
• Manage, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team of software engineers, distributed systems developers, data engineers, and QA automation specialists.

What we will ask of you

We are looking for a senior leader with a proven track record of delivering risk-technology transformation within a complex, global financial services environment.

• Extensive experience architecting and delivering distributed, high-throughput systems, ideally within KYC, AML, CDD/EDD, or broader risk-decisioning domains.
• A proven track record of partnering with data science/quant teams to move models from research into production.
• Deep subject matter expertise in stream processing, event-driven architecture, and low-latency service design.
• Demonstrable experience ensuring algorithmic explainability, reconciliation, and audit-readiness to satisfy regulators, auditors, and internal control functions.
• Strong understanding of the KYC/CDD/EDD/AML lifecycle and how risk scoring integrates with onboarding and case mangement system.
• Exceptional leadership and collaboration skills, with the ability to inspire engineering talent and build consensus across engineering, data science, risk, and compliance stakeholders.
• A strategic mindset with the judgment to balance innovation against regulatory defensibility and audit rigor.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• You bring 10 or more years of experience leading distributed, high-throughput engineering within KYC, anti-money laundering, or broader risk-decisioning technology.
• You hold proven expertise in KYC technology management and hands‑proficiency with Finargo.
• You have delivered stream-processing and event-driven architectures that support low-latency, real-time service design.
• You have partnered with data science and quantitative teams to move risk and scoring models from research into live production systems.
• You understand the KYC, customer due diligence, enhanced due diligence, and anti-money laundering lifecycle and how risk scoring connects to onboarding and case mana