Principal Engineer – Vice President

Citi; Irving (TX); Hybrid; USD 139,000 - 208,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model (3 days in office)

Global engineering community access

Learning & development opportunities

Competitive salary & benefits package

Wellbeing & family support programs

Job summary

Citi is seeking a hands-on Principal Engineer to design, build, and evolve high-quality software products at global scale. The role emphasizes full-stack Java delivery, microservices, and cloud-native architectures while mentoring engineers and promoting engineering excellence across teams.

Hybrid work and ongoing learning opportunities are offered. The position reports to an Engineering Manager and involves contributing to codebases, influencing architecture, and delivering on sprint

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering experience with Java in production
• Cloud-native development and container orchestration experience
• Microservices, RESTful APIs, and GraphQL design experience
• Strong knowledge of Spring Boot, Quarkus, Micronaut, or Vert.x
• Experience with unit testing, automation, design patterns, and peer reviews
• Familiarity with CI/CD tooling (Tekton, Harness, CircleCI, Jenkins)
• Active participation in agile/scrum delivery processes

Responsibilities

• Design and build full-stack features using Java across multiple agile teams
• Influence system architecture for scalability and resilience
• Contribute to sprint planning, code reviews, and ceremonies
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineers
• Evaluate new technologies and promote adoption to improve outcomes
• Collaborate with stakeholders to align technical solutions with business goals
• Promote technical excellence and knowledge sharing across teams

Skills

Java

Cloud-native

Microservices

RESTful APIs

GraphQL

Spring Boot

CI/CD

Agile/Scrum

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree preferred

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenShift

Terraform

CloudFormation

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

Citi is looking for a hands on Principal Engineer to design, build, and evolve high-quality software products that solve real business challenges at global scale.

Principal Java Engineer you will leverage your deep technical knowledge to drive the creation of high-quality software products.

You will also be expected to mentor other engineers,

share your technical expertise, and promote a culture of technical excellence within the team.

The Principal Engineer will report to an Engineering Manager and will be a

floating member of multiple engineering teams.

There is an expectation to contribute to the codebase and deliver solutions against the sprint-level commitments.

From a technical standpoint, the Principal Engineer has full-stack coding and implementation responsibilities and adheres to best practice principles including modern cloud-based software development, agile and scrum, code quality, and tool usage.

The Principal Engineer works to understand and influence software architecture, while contributing to Citi’s and GFT’s technical user base.

Responsibilities

• Design and build critical features and complex full-stack solutions using Java, delivering clean, efficient, and maintainable code that meets the highest quality standards across multiple agile teams.
• Collaborate with fellow Principal Engineers to define, evolve, and influence overall system architecture, ensuring solutions are scalable, resilient, and aligned to business requirements.
• Deliver against sprint-level commitments as an active contributor to agile delivery cycles, participating in planning, code reviews, and Scrum ceremonies across teams.
• Provide expert technical guidance to engineering teams, helping them navigate complex challenges, make sound design decisions, and consistently ship high-quality software.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, and industry trends, providing actionable recommendations for adoption that improve engineering capability and product outcomes.
• Partner continuously with stakeholders across the software development lifecycle to ensure technical solutions are aligned to business goals and delivered with measurable impact.
• Promote a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement across teams, fostering knowledge sharing, engineering best practices, and a high standard of craft.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• 6 or more years of software engineering experience building and delivering production-grade applications using Java, with a clear command of data structures and object-oriented design principles.
• Proven depth in cloud-native development and container orchestration, with hands-on use of tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, or OpenShift across multiple years of delivery.
• Extensive experience designing and building microservices and service-oriented architectures, including RESTful APIs and GraphQL implementations.
• Strong working knowledge of Java frameworks including Spring Boot, Quarkus, Micronaut, or Vert.x, applied across real-world software delivery.
• Practical experience with software engineering best practices including unit testing, automation, design patterns, and peer code review as core parts of the development workflow.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipeline tooling such as Tekton, Harness, CircleCI, or Jenkins, in either on-premise or public cloud environments.
• Multiple years of working within agile and iterative delivery frameworks, contributing actively to sprint execution and team-level Scrum practices.

Beneficial Skills & Qualifications

• Architecture experience designing horizontally scalable, highly available, and low-latency distributed systems in cloud environments such as AWS or OpenShift.
• Exposure to event-driven architecture patterns and streaming technologies, including Kafka, Spark, or Flink.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code tooling such as Terraform or CloudFormation, and API management platforms.
• Experience with observability, security, and monitoring tooling including Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk, ELK, or CloudWatch.
• Experience mentoring and providing technical leadership to teams of five or more engineers, with exposure to front-end technologies such as React or Angular and database concepts across RDBMS and NoSQL.

Education

• Bachelor’s/University degree, Master’s degree preferred

What We Offer

• Hybrid working model with 3 days in the office and 2 days working remotely, giving you structure and flexibility in equal measure.
• Access to Citi's global engineering community, where you can contribute to technical forums, share expertise, and shape engineering standards beyond your immediate team.
• Meaningful technical challenges at scale, with the opportunity to influence architecture and engineering direction across a portfolio of products used worldwide.
• Ongoing learning and development opportunities, including access to emerging technologies such as AI, to keep your skills at the leading edge of the industry.
• Competitive financial wellbeing package, including salary, bonus, and a comprehensive suite of benefits tailored to your location.
• Wellbeing and family support programmes designed to help you maintain a sustainable and rewarding work-life balance.

Job Family Group

Technology

Job Family

Digital Software Engineering

Time Type

Full time

Primary Location

Irving Texas United States

Primary Location Full Time Salary Range

$138,720.00 - $208,080.00

In addition to salary, Citi’s offerings may also include, for eligible employees, discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards. Citi offers competitive employee benefits, including: medical, dental & vision coverage; 401(k); life, accident, and disability insurance; and wellness programs. Citi also offers paid time off packages, including planned time off (vacation), unplanned time off (sick leave), and paid holidays. For additional information regarding Citi employee benefits, please visit citibenefits.com. Available offerings may vary by jurisdiction, job level, and date of hire.

Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

Other Relevant Skills

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

Anticipated Posting Close Date

Nov 02, 2026

Automated Processing and AI

We use automated processing, including artificial intelligence, for our legitimate business interests (or our reasonable and appropriate business purposes) to identify and align the candidate's skills and abilities with a specific job opening. Additionally, if you so choose, or consent, we can match your skills and abilities to other suitable roles at Citi.

Importantly, all our hiring processes and decisions, including determining your suitability for a role, are conducted, checked, and decided by individuals. Our automated processing and AI do not involve relying on automatic or autonomous decision-making. Please refer to any Jurisdictional Considerations, with specific provisions for your country (where relevant) for further details.

Illinois residents - AI Notice and Right

Equal Opportunity

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.