Senior Java Lead Engineer

• *Discover your future at Citi**
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Working at Citi is far more than just a job. A career with us means joining a team of approximately 219,000 dedicated people from around the globe. At Citi, you’ll have the opportunity to grow your career, give back to your community and make a real impact.

• *Job Overview**
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• *Business / Organization Overview**
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We are seeking an experienced and visionary **Java Technical Lead (C12\)** to join our Enterprise Engineering team. In this role, you will be responsible for leading the design, implementation, and architectural evolution of high\-throughput, mission\-critical enterprise systems. You will collaborate closely with cross\-functional architecture, product, and infrastructure teams to build scalable, resilient, and secure microservices and distributed event\-driven platforms.

• *Role Summary**
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As a C12 Technical Lead, you will combine hands\-on technical execution with engineering leadership. You will drive architectural decisions, govern development standards, mentor engineering talent, and deliver end\-to\-end resilient back\-end and distributed messaging solutions. You will champion engineering excellence, modern DevOps practices, and cloud\-native containerized delivery.

• *Key Responsibilities**
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• *Technical Leadership \& Architecture**
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• Lead the technical design, system decomposition, and development of mission\-critical microservices and event\-driven architectures.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Security, and Infrastructure teams to ensure alignment with organizational blueprints, compliance benchmarks, and engineering standards.
• Own technical governance, including architectural reviews, coding standards, automated testing frameworks, and non\-functional requirements (resilience, scalability, low latency, fault tolerance).

• *Hands\-on Engineering \& Delivery**
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• Design and implement robust, high\-performance back\-end services using **Core Java, Spring Boot, and RESTful APIs**.
• Build and optimize event streaming and message\-oriented middleware patterns using **Apache Kafka** and **IBM MQ / JMS**.
• Architect and tune high\-volume data persistence layers across relational databases (**Oracle**) and NoSQL document stores (**MongoDB**).
• Drive containerization and deployment strategies targeting modern enterprise cloud platforms (**ECS / Red Hat OpenShift**).

• *Engineering Excellence \& Mentorship**
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• Conduct rigorous code reviews, enforce unit/integration test coverage standards, and eliminate technical debt.
• Mentor and coach junior and mid\-level developers, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Lead root\-cause analysis (RCA) and performance troubleshooting for complex production incidents and distributed system bottlenecks.

• *Agile \& DevOps Collaboration**
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• Drive end\-to\-end CI/CD automation, shift\-left security (SAST/DAST, dependency scanning), and containerized deployments.
• Work closely with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Business Stakeholders in an Agile/Scrum delivery model to translate complex business requirements into clear technical roadmaps and epics.

• *Required Qualifications \& Technical Skills**
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• *Education \& Experience**
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• **Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree** in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or related discipline.
• **10\+ years** of total software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a technical leadership or module lead capacity.

• *Primary (Core) Skills \& Competencies**
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• **Core Java \& Frameworks:** Deep expertise in Java (Java 11 / 17 / 21\), Concurrency, Multithreading, JVM internals, Memory Management, and Garbage Collection tuning.
• **Spring Ecosystem:** Comprehensive experience with Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security, Spring Cloud).
• **API \& Integration:** Extensive experience designing and developing RESTful Web Services, OpenAPI/Swagger specifications, and contract\-driven API patterns.
• **Messaging \& Event Streaming:** Strong hands\-on implementation experience with **Apache Kafka** (producers, consumers, partitions, fault handling) and enterprise message queues (**IBM MQ / JMS**).
• **Database Engineering:** Relational: **Oracle DB** (complex SQL, PL/SQL, schema design, index tuning, transaction isolation). NoSQL: **MongoDB** (data modeling, indexing strategies, aggregation pipelines, performance tuning).
• **Design Patterns \& Clean Code:** Strong grounding in SOLID principles, Domain\-Driven Design (DDD), Distributed Transactions, Sagas, and Microservices design patterns.

• *Secondary Skills \& Familiarity (Highly Desirable)**
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• **Containerization \& Platforms:** Hands\-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and enterprise container platforms such as **ECS / Red Hat OpenShift**.
• **Frontend / Full\-Stack Exposure:** Familiarity with modern frontend development using **Angular**, React JS.
• **Business Process Management:** Exposure to enterprise workflow engines such as **IBM Business Automation Workflow (BAW) / BPM**.
• **Application Servers \& Middleware:** Understanding of legacy or hybrid runtime environments including **IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS / Liberty)**.
• **CI/CD \& DevOps:** Working knowledge of modern deployment pipelines, Jenkins/Tekton/Harness, Git, Maven/Gradle, and code quality tools (SonarQube, Snyk).

• *Leadership \& Behavioral Competencies**
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• **Problem Solving:** Exceptional analytical and debugging skills with a proven track record of resolving complex distributed systems challenges.
• **Communication:** Strong verbal and written communication skills with the ability to articulate technical tradeoffs to non\-technical business partners.
• **Ownership \& Drive:** Demonstrated ability to independently lead engineering initiatives from ideation to production rollout.
• **Collaboration:** High team spirit and emotional intelligence to work across globally distributed engineering teams.

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• *Job Family Group:**
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Technology

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• *Job Family:**
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Applications Development

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• *Time Type:**
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Full time

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• *Most Relevant Skills**
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Please see the requirements listed above.

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• *Other Relevant Skills**
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For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

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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.*