Lead/Staff Forward Deployed AI Engineer - Senior Vice President

About the role

The Applied AI and Agents Factory brings together ambitious engineers to turn advanced AI capabilities into production-ready solutions. Working directly with business and technology teams, you’ll tackle complex engineering challenges, build intelligent agents and take ideas from initial concept through to live deployment.

This is an opportunity to work at the cutting edge of AI engineering, developing systems that go beyond conversational tools to reason, plan and execute multi-step workflows. You’ll take ownership of the full engineering lifecycle, from agent architecture and orchestration to enterprise integration, security and observability.

With a strong focus on hands-on engineering, collaboration and rapid delivery, the Factory gives you the opportunity to solve challenging technical problems, influence architectural decisions and help shape reusable tools and engineering standards adopted across Citi.

The Lead / Staff Forward Deployed Engineer is a senior technical leadership position responsible for serving as the technical anchor within an embedded LOB delivery pod. The overall objective of this role is to architect, develop, and deploy end-to-end agentic workflows for flagship LOB use cases, leading complex technical integrations with core banking backends, and setting technical standards for the squad.

Responsibilities

• Serves as the senior technical anchor collocated with LOB engineering squads, leading technical problem-solving and architecture on the front lines of agent deployments.

• Architects and builds end-to-end agentic workflows using Python, ADK, LangGraph, and the Arc platform for high-impact business use cases.

• Leads deep technical integrations with sensitive core banking systems, databases, and microservices via custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.

• Implements robust enterprise security controls for agentic executions, including mTLS, OAuth2 token delegation, HashiCorp Vault, and OpenShift container security.

• Mentors C12 and C13 engineers within the pod, conducting rigorous code reviews, architecture critiques, and security assessments.

• Partners closely with the C15 Principal AI Architect to evaluate field design patterns and contribute to enterprise agent blueprints and reusable components.

• Appropriately assess risk when business decisions are made, demonstrating particular consideration for the firm's reputation and safeguarding Citigroup, its clients and assets, by driving compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations, adhering to Policy, applying sound ethical judgment regarding personal behavior, conduct and business practices, and escalating, managing and reporting control issues with transparency.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant software engineering experience, with 7+ years in backend/distributed systems and 2+ years building and deploying production LLM/agentic applications.

• Mastery of Python, asynchronous programming (asyncio), state machines, Docker/OpenShift, and distributed microservices architectures.

• Demonstrated expertise in integrating enterprise APIs, relational/NoSQL databases, and event streams (Kafka) into agent reasoning loops.

• Deep knowledge of application security, zero-trust patterns, and safe tool execution environments.

• Strong leadership and mentoring capabilities, with excellent communication and stakeholder collaboration skills.

Education

• Bachelor’s/University degree or equivalent experience; Master’s degree preferred.

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Job Family Group

Technology

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Job Family

Applications Development

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Time Type

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Primary Location

New York New York United States

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Primary Location Full Time Salary Range

$176,720.00 - $265,080.00

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.

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Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

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Other Relevant Skills

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

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Anticipated Posting Close Date

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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

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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.