
Lead Software Engineer
- 🇮🇳 India
- Hybrid
- Staff / Principal
- 1 day ago
- Java
- Agile
- Microservices
- System Design
- WebSphere
- TDD
- BDD
- CI/CD
- Devops
- Disaster Recovery
- JVM
- Spring Framework
- Spring Boot
- Domain-Driven Design
- Event-Driven Architecture
- Apache Kafka
- Kafka Streams
- JMS
- REST API
- OpenAPI
- gRPC
- OAuth2
- OIDC
- mTLS
- Oracle
- PL/SQL
- NoSQL
- MongoDB
- OpenTelemetry
- Jaeger
- Red Hat OpenShift
- Kubernetes
- AWS
- ECS
- Helm
- Angular
- TypeScript
- Jenkins
- IaC
- SonarQube
- Snyk
- Prisma
Business / Organization Overview
We are looking for a high-caliberSenior Java Technical Lead / Architect (C13) to spearhead the architecture, engineering strategy, and technical delivery of enterprise-scale distributed platforms. In this strategic technical leadership position, you will govern large-scale engineering initiatives, drive cloud-native modernization, set foundational architecture patterns, and mentor multiple agile engineering squads across globally distributed teams.
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Role Summary
At theC13 grade, you will operate as a subject matter expert and technical authority combining deep architectural mastery with strategic delivery oversight. You will lead end-to-end design, technology evaluation, security governance, and multi-system integration across distributed microservices, high-throughput event streaming, enterprise databases, and container platforms. You will partner with Directors, Enterprise Architects, Product Managers, and Business Leaders to ensure technology roadmaps align with business transformation objectives.
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Key Responsibilities
Strategic Architecture & System Design
- Own end-to-end technical architecture, system decomposition, and integration strategy for complex, multi-tiered enterprise systems.
- Define architectural blueprints, domain models, and technical design standards for high-throughput, low-latency, and highly available microservices.
- Lead technology evaluation, Proof of Concepts (PoCs), and modernization roadmaps (e.g., legacy monolith/WebSphere decomposition to cloud-native microservices and event-driven architectures).
- Formally represent the application in Enterprise Architecture Governance, Security Reviews, and Technology Risk committees.
Technical Governance & Engineering Leadership
- Provide technical leadership and architectural oversight across multiple development teams and technical leads (C11/C12).
- Enforce rigorous engineering standards, Clean Code practices, comprehensive automated testing (TDD/BDD), and robust CI/CD DevOps pipelines.
- Establish standards for non-functional requirements (NFRs) including system resilience, fault tolerance, high availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR), low latency, and horizontal scalability.
- Drive modernization of messaging pipelines, event stream topologies, and polyglot persistence layers.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Management
- Partner closely with Product Owners, Program Managers, and Executive Stakeholders to translate multi-year business strategies into actionable, phased technical roadmaps.
- Manage architectural risks, technical debt remediation, and capacity planning.
- Act as the senior escalation authority for critical production incidents, driving root cause analysis (RCA) and long-term architectural stability solutions.
Mentorship & Talent Development
- Foster an inclusive, high-performance engineering culture emphasizing continuous learning, innovation, and technical rigor.
- Mentor and develop senior engineers and technical leads, building leadership pipelines and engineering talent across the organization.
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Required Qualifications & Technical Competencies
Education & Experience
- Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or related discipline.
- 15+ years of overall software engineering experience in enterprise-grade applications, with at least5+ years in a senior technical lead, software architect or engineering leadership capacity.
- Proven track record of architecting, delivering, and supporting high-throughput, mission-critical systems in financial services, banking, or large enterprise domains.
Primary Skills & Technical Mastery
- Core Java & Advanced JVM Engineering: Deep mastery of Java (Java 11 / 17 / 21), high-concurrency programming, multithreading, memory management, garbage collection tuning (ZGC/G1), and low-latency optimization.
- Spring Ecosystem & Microservices Architecture: Extensive experience with Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Data, Spring Security, Spring Batch) and Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
- Event-Driven Architecture & Distributed Messaging:
- Expert-level design and production operations withApache Kafka (cluster architecture, partitions, consumer groups, Kafka Streams/Connect, schema registry, idempotent producers).
- Enterprise messaging and integration viaIBM MQ / JMS and transaction management across distributed systems (Saga pattern, two-phase commit alternatives).
- API Strategy & Integration Patterns: Advanced RESTful API design, OpenAPI standards, API Gateways, gRPC, OAuth2/OIDC, and mutual TLS (mTLS).
- Polyglot Database Architecture:
- Relational:Oracle (advanced PL/SQL, partitioning, index optimization, query execution plan analysis, Active Data Guard).
- NoSQL / Document:MongoDB (sharding, replica sets, aggregation pipelines, performance tuning at scale).
- Resilience & Fault Tolerance Patterns: Proven experience implementing Circuit Breaker (Resilience4j), Rate Limiting, Bulkheads, and Distributed Tracing (OpenTelemetry/Jaeger).
Secondary Skills & Modernization Competencies
- Containerization & Cloud Native Platforms: Architectural expertise in container platforms, specificallyRed Hat OpenShift / Kubernetes and AWS ECS, including Pod autoscaling, ingress controllers, and Helm chart lifecycle management.
- Legacy Modernization & Middleware: Experience migrating workloads from legacy application servers (IBM WebSphere WAS/ND) and workflow orchestrators (IBM BAW / BPM) to modern microservices and cloud runtimes.
- Frontend Architecture Exposure: Solid understanding of modern SPA architecture, frontend integration, and frameworks likeAngular (TypeScript, state management).
- DevOps & Automation: In-depth knowledge of modern CI/CD automation (Harness, Tekton, Jenkins), infrastructure-as-code, and automated security scanning tools (SonarQube, Checkmarx, Snyk, Prisma).
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Leadership & Executive Competencies
- Strategic Vision: Ability to conceptualize multi-year technical strategies and execute them incrementally within agile frameworks.
- Executive Communication: Exceptional communication and presentation skills, capable of influencing both technical teams and senior executive leadership.
- Problem Solving & Decision Making: Strong analytical acumen with proven ability to make pragmatic architectural trade-offs under constraints.
- Delivery Ownership: High accountability for end-to-end software delivery, operational excellence, and production resilience.
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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.------------------------------------------------------
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.
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Lead Software Engineer · Citibank, N.A. United Kingdom