Principal AI Architect - Director

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 Principal AI Architect is a senior executive technical authority position responsible for defining, establishing, and governing the enterprise architectural vision for autonomous agentic systems and multi-agent frameworks across Citigroup. The overall objective of this role is to serve as Citi's chief technical authority for autonomous systems and multi-agent frameworks, co-owning enterprise blueprints, review gates, playbooks, and the Product/Platform Loop bridging field implementations with core internal platforms (Arc Platform, R2D2 Gateway, Agentflow, and Helix).

Responsibilities:

• Serves as the chief technical authority for autonomous systems, multi-agent frameworks, and hierarchical sub-agent architectures across Citi's global technology footprint.

• Authors and maintains enterprise reference architectures and blueprints for single-agent, hierarchical sub-agent, and Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) workflows, ensuring strict adherence across all delivery pods.

• Acts as the primary technical bridge in the Product/Platform Feedback Loop with the Arc Core, R2D2 Gateway, and Agentflow platform teams—translating field friction from LOB deployments into core platform features.

• Chairs the Agent Architecture Review Board (AARB) to conduct mandatory technical, architectural, and security reviews for all high-risk AI agents prior to UAT and Production promotion.

• Defines enterprise standards for Model Context Protocol (MCP) server integration, zero-trust boundary enforcement via Tiramisu proxies, and COIN M2M identity token delegation.

• Establishes horizontal governance, code quality, testability, and automated evaluation standards across all Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) pods.

• Advises senior business and technology leadership on emerging AI paradigms, non-deterministic system validation, and foundation model capabilities.

• 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, as well as effectively supervise the activity of others and create accountability with those who fail to maintain these standards.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of progressive software architecture and engineering experience in enterprise, distributed systems, or financial technology environments.

• 3+ years of hands-on experience architecting and deploying production LLM-powered applications, multi-agent systems, and autonomous agentic workflows (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, Semantic Kernel, Agent Development Kit / ADK).

• Mastery of Python and/or Golang, OpenShift/Kubernetes, distributed microservices, OAuth2/JWT token delegation, API gateway management, and enterprise telemetry (OpenTelemetry, Splunk).

• Deep understanding of financial services compliance, Model Risk Management (MRM) standards, and deterministic validation methodologies for non-deterministic AI outputs.

• Demonstrated leadership and track record of chairing technical governance bodies and influencing enterprise-level architectural direction.

• Consistently demonstrates clear, concise, and persuasive executive-level written and verbal communication.

Education:

• Bachelor’s/University degree or equivalent experience
• Master’s degree in Computer Science, AI/ML, or related technical field strongly preferred.

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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:

New York New York United States

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Primary Location Full Time Salary Range:

$170,000.00 - $300,000.00

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.