Staff Software Engineer/Tech Lead (Distributed systems) - SVP

citi.com; Belfast; On-site; GBP 85,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

A global financial services firm is seeking an exceptional Staff Software Engineer to lead the development of a next-generation Developer Experience platform. The ideal candidate will have substantial expertise in Kotlin, RESTful APIs, and event-driven architectures, with a passion for solving complex engineering challenges. This position offers the opportunity to directly impact thousands of engineers globally by defining the future of developer experience. Collaboration with various stakeholders is essential for delivering robust backend solutions.

Qualifications

• 10-15+ years of experience in server-side engineering, preferably with Kotlin.
• Strong background in building and consuming RESTful APIs.
• Familiar with asynchronous programming and event-driven architectures.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architectural design considering near real-time requirements.
• Solve large-scale engineering challenges as a technical authority.
• Collaborate with product, design, and UI engineers to deliver robust solutions.

Skills

Kotlin

RESTful APIs

Event-Driven architectures

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD tools

Tools

Kafka

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Job description

## For additional information, please review .We’re looking for exceptional Staff Software Engineer to help build and tech lead our next-generation Developer Experience (DevEx) platform at Citi using Kotlin. You’ll be joining a small, high-impact team, shaping the daily lives of our 50,000 engineers globally by building the cockpit where engineers can see all parts of the software development life cycle tied together into a workflow in near real-time, being able to action and monitor agentic AI flows from the cockpit. This is an exciting technical challenge for an ambitious candidate. - Lead the architectural design of the system that takes into consideration our future near real-time requirements, complex data integration, and scalability. You will have **created architectural diagram**s that stakeholders can understand.* **Be the technical authority** in solving ambiguous, large-scale engineering challenges,* **Onboarded required technologies** (e.g., Kafka, PostgreSQL, advanced observability tools) as needed, ensuring they align with the architectural vision and meet evolving strategic requirements.* Deep expertise (10-15+ years) in server-side engineering: Kotlin (or Java with a strong desire to learn Kotlin), building and consuming RESTful APIs, asynchronous programming.* Proficiency in Event-Driven architectures, and related principles.* Expertise with relational and/or NoSQL databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB.* Experience with Design patterns for high-throughput, low-latency data streams.* Deep understanding of containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes).* Familiarity with CI/CD tools like Tekton and deployment automation platforms like Harness.* Comfortable collaborating with product, design, and UI engineers, and other stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver robust backend solutions.- **Be a key architect and driver in defining the future of developer experience** for one of the world's largest engineering organizations, directly impacting tens of thousands of engineers.