Java Development Lead

About FX Technology

Citi FX has a physical presence in 83 countries with 1,400 dedicated staff, giving us the largest FX presence of any bank globally. Foreign Exchange has been one of the defining businesses of Citi for much of its 200-year existence.

Citi has the largest FX presence of any bank globally, and we proudly put this down to delivering unrivalled service and insight to our clients. Increasing investment in technology has seen us roll out award-winning applications. Technology is a central pillar for our plans to sustain and grow our FX business.

Above all, we seek individuals who demonstrate exceptional attitude and aptitude, and have a demonstrated passion for delivering FX technology in support of our #1 FX business.

Job Background / Context

The FX Technology group is responsible for building and maintaining the technology platforms that power Citi's global Foreign Exchange business — one of the most complex, high-volume, and latency-sensitive trading environments in the financial industry. The group supports a broad spectrum of capabilities including pricing engines, trade processing, risk management, post-trade processing, and client connectivity.

As part of our continued investment in engineering excellence, we are seeking a Java Development Lead at the C13 (Vice President). This is a dual-mandate role that combines hands-on technical leadership with a broader responsibility for shaping and elevating Java engineering practices across FX Technology.

The successful candidate will lead a team of senior engineers delivering mission-critical FX systems.

This role sits at the intersection of delivery leadership and technical governance, making it ideal for a seasoned Java engineer who is passionate about both building great software and growing great engineers.

Key Responsibilities

Development & Delivery Leadership

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of high-performance, scalable Java-based systems supporting FX trading, sales, risk, and post-trade workflows.

• Own end-to-end technical guidance for one or more feature teams, ensuring alignment with business priorities, architectural standards, and regulatory requirements.

• Drive agile delivery practices including sprint planning, backlog refinement, code reviews, and retrospectives.

• Collaborate closely with Product Owners, Business Analysts, Architects, and Business to translate complex FX business requirements into robust technical solutions.

• Ensure production stability, performance, and resilience of FX systems through proactive engineering practices including observability, alerting, and capacity planning.

• Manage technical risk, dependencies, and delivery timelines, escalating blockers appropriately.

• Contribute to and review system design documents and technical roadmaps.

• Champion code quality, test-driven development (TDD), and clean architecture principles across all Java delivery teams.

• Evaluate and recommend new tools, libraries, and frameworks; lead proof-of-concept (PoC) initiatives where appropriate.

• Act as a technical escalation point for complex Java engineering challenges across teams.

People & Stakeholder Management

• Mentor and coach senior and mid-level Java engineers, supporting their technical growth and career progression.

• Conduct technical interviews and contribute to hiring decisions for Java engineering roles.

• Build strong relationships with technology leads, architects, and business stakeholders across FX Technology.

• Represent the Java engineering community in cross-functional forums, architecture reviews, and technology governance bodies.

Development Value

This role offers a unique opportunity to operate at the forefront of financial technology in one of the world's most dynamic trading environments. The successful candidate will:

• Gain deep domain expertise in FX markets, trading systems, and financial technology at a global scale.

• Shape engineering culture across a large, distributed Java engineering community, leaving a lasting impact on how software is built within FX Technology.

• Work with cutting-edge technology — from ultra-low latency systems and real-time data pipelines to cloud-native microservices and event-driven architectures.

• Accelerate career growth through exposure to senior leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and strategic technology decisions.

• Be part of a #1 ranked FX franchise, contributing to technology that directly enables Citi's market-leading position in global FX.

Knowledge / Experience

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on Java development in complex, enterprise-scale environments.

• 3+ years in a technical lead or senior engineering lead capacity, with demonstrated experience owning delivery outcomes.

• Proven experience working in financial services technology, ideally within capital markets, FX, rates, or fixed income domains.

• Strong understanding of FX products (Spot, Forwards, Swaps, Options) and the associated trade lifecycle (pre-trade, execution, post-trade) is highly desirable.

• Familiarity with regulatory and compliance considerations relevant to financial technology (e.g., MiFID II, Dodd-Frank, FRTB).

• Experience working in agile/scrum delivery environments with cross-functional squads.

• Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and cloud-native development patterns.

Essential Skills / Competencies

Technical Skills

• Expert-level Java proficiency — deep knowledge of core Java (Java 11/17/21+), JVM internals, memory management, concurrency, and performance tuning.

• Strong experience with Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Reactor / WebFlux).

• Proficiency in microservices architecture, RESTful API design, and event-driven systems.

• Hands-on experience with messaging platforms such as Apache Kafka, Solace, or similar.

• Solid understanding of relational and NoSQL databases (e.g., Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB).

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI, ArgoCD), and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).

• Strong grasp of software design patterns, SOLID principles, and clean code practices.

• Proficiency in unit, integration, and performance testing frameworks (JUnit, Mockito, Gatling, etc.).

• Familiarity with low-latency / high-throughput system design is a strong advantage.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Exceptional communication skills — able to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Strong influencing skills — able to drive adoption of standards and practices without direct authority across squads.

• Strategic thinking — ability to balance short-term delivery pressures with long-term engineering quality and sustainability.

• Collaborative mindset — thrives in a cross-functional, globally distributed team environment.

• Mentorship and coaching — genuine passion for developing engineers and building high-performing teams.

• Problem-solving orientation — approaches challenges with curiosity, rigour, and a bias for action.

• Resilience and adaptability — comfortable operating in a fast-paced, high-stakes trading technology environment.
  Education:

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

This job description provides a high-level review of the types of work performed. Other job-related duties may be assigned as required.

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Job Family Group:

Technology

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Job Family:

Applications Development

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Time Type:

Full time

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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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