Senior Low Latency Enterprise Solutions Architect

Overview of the Role:

Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments, and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.

As a bank with a brain and a soul, Citi creates economic value that is systemically responsible and in our clients’ best interests. As a financial institution that touches every region of the world and every sector that shapes your daily life, our Enterprise Operations & Technology teams are charged with a mission that rivals any large tech company. Our technology solutions are the foundations of everything we do from keeping the bank safe, managing global resources, and providing the technical tools our workers need to be successful to designing our digital architecture and ensuring our platforms provide a first-class customer experience. We reimagine client and partner experiences to deliver excellence through secure, reliable, and efficient services.

Our commitment to diversity includes a workforce that represents the clients we serve from all walks of life, backgrounds, and origins. We foster an environment where the best people want to work. We value and demand respect for others, promote individuals based on merit, and ensure opportunities for personal development are widely available to all. Ideal candidates are innovators with well-rounded backgrounds who bring their authentic selves to work and complement our culture of delivering results with pride. If you are a problem solver who seeks passion in your work, come join us. We’ll enable growth and progress together.

The Low Latency Network Solutions Architect is a seasoned professional role, who applies in-depth IT knowledge and experience towards gathering and analyzing business and application requirements in support of Citi's global financial services, Electronic Trading, Markets, and Quantitative Investment platforms.

With the primary goal to design strategic target state low-latency network architectures, using defined standards to maximize throughput, minimize deterministic packet latency and jitter, and ensure maximum capacity while driving IT operational efficiency and cost optimization. They will possess in-depth experience in high-performance networking, exchange colocation ecosystems, ultra-low latency switching, multicast market data distribution, and hardware acceleration platforms, providing robust network services across private cloud data centers, colocation facilities, and hybrid cloud environments, integrating orchestration and automation to rapidly deliver infrastructure solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Trusted Advisor: Supporting CTI businesses and Markets Technology as a trusted advisor for all low-latency network solution and engineering tasks.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Engage in routine discussions with key stakeholders (Network Engineering, Systems Administrators, Core Infrastructure Build, Application Owners, Business Sponsors) regarding application performance and connectivity requirements.
• Enterprise Architecture Alignment: Collaborate with Application Architects, Electronic Trading Developers, DevOps, Market Data, and Telecommunications teams to ensure alignment with enterprise architecture standards and low-latency best practices.
• Design Artifacts & Documentation: Ability to take all elements of a solution design and capture them in both narrative form and detailed architectural diagram form (Visio) in such a way that both technical and business stakeholders can understand.
• Resiliency & Performance Sizing: Must grasp the technical aspects of an application's RTO / RPO, failover mechanisms, and zero-packet-drop high availability when designing an infrastructure solution.
• Technology & Hardware Evaluation: Evaluate emerging low-latency networking technologies, Layer 1 switching fabrics, FPGA/SmartNIC acceleration, kernel bypass technologies, and optical transport services to continuously improve network architecture.
• Subject Matter Expert (SME): Serve as the subject matter expert (SME) for all low-latency network technologies, cut-through switching architectures, Multicast routing (PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, IGMP), Precision Time Protocol (PTP IEEE 1588v2), and Direct Market Access (DMA) integration patterns.
• Security & Governance: Define and enforce network security, micro-segmentation, low-latency encryption (MACsec), audit compliance, and disaster recovery strategies across trading and colocation fabrics.
• Mentorship: Mentor and guide junior architects and network engineers in best practices surrounding network automation, latency monitoring, and infrastructure governance.
• Cloud Transformation: Support the organization's cloud and hybrid connectivity initiatives with a strong understanding of low-latency cloud interconnection services (e.g., AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, GCP Dedicated Interconnect).
• Performance Optimization: Drive innovation, latency reduction, micro-burst mitigation, and telemetry optimization initiatives across all global trading network platforms.

Qualifications:

• Capacity & Infrastructure Sizing: Deep understanding of how electronic trading and financial application requirements determine infrastructure type, switch buffer architecture, link oversubscription ratios, and High Availability / Disaster Recovery capabilities.
• Engineering Background: Prior experience as a Senior Network Engineer, Network Architect, or Systems Infrastructure Engineer in a high-volume financial services, electronic trading, or Tier-1 service provider environment. Experience in root-cause analysis (RCA) techniques in complex data center and colocation environments.
• Communication Skills: Consistently demonstrates clear and concise written and verbal communication, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts across teams.
• Project Leadership: Ability to develop strong working relationships, manage multiple projects with competing priorities, and lead architectural initiatives.
• Continuous Learning: Team player with willingness to learn the latest technologies, while taking initiative to master new tasks and industry trends quickly.
• Hardware Expertise: Demonstrated expertise in low-latency switching and routing platforms (e.g., Arista 7130 / MetaWatch / 7050 / 7060, Cisco Nexus 3500 / 9000 series, ExaNIC, SmartNICs, and FPGA-accelerated network interface cards) with practical experience in high-volume, mission-critical environments.
• Protocol Mastery: Hands-on experience designing Layer 2/3 network fabrics, BGP, OSPF, Multicast routing (PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, IGMPv2/v3), cut-through switching, and VXLAN/EVPN.
• Time Synchronization & Telemetry: Strong knowledge of high-precision time synchronization (PTP IEEE 1588v2, SyncE, GPS grandmaster clocks) and network packet capture analytics platforms (e.g., Corvil, Endace, cPacket, Wireshark).
• Host & Kernel Optimization: Solid understanding of host-level networking optimizations, kernel bypass frameworks (e.g., Solarflare Onload / ef_vi, DPDK), socket buffer tuning, and CPU core pinning.
• DevOps & Automation: Familiarity with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and network automation frameworks (e.g., Python, Ansible, Terraform).

Critical Competencies & Preferred Certifications:

• Effective communication and presentation skills to guide architectural review boards, provide technical direction, and conduct executive presentations with business sponsors

Certification Domain

Preferred Industry Certification

Cisco Systems

Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) / CCDE (Data Center or Enterprise Infrastructure)

Arista Networks

Arista Certified Engineering Expert (ACE-A / ACE-P / ACE-L3)

Public Cloud Networking

AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty / Microsoft Certified: Azure Network Engineer

Enterprise Architecture

TOGAF or equivalent Enterprise Architecture framework certification

Education:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, Information Technology, or 6+ years of relevant experience working with enterprise mission-critical, low-latency trading infrastructure systems.

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Job Family Group:

Technology

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Job Family:

Architecture

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Time Type:

Full time

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Primary Location:

Irving Texas United States

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Primary Location Full Time Salary Range:

$125,760.00 - $188,640.00

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.