Full Stack Lead Java Architect – Senior Vice President

Senior Vice President, Full Stack Lead Java Architect – C14

Project Description

Citi is spearheading a critical multi-year technology initiative within the Wholesale Lending Credit Risk (WLCR) Technology Space, a domain pivotal to the firm's lending operations. This strategic journey requires a highly motivated and accomplished Senior Vice President, Full Stack Lead Java Architect to drive the design, development, and delivery of a next-generation platform. This platform will encompass robust Messaging, API, and Workflow Components vital for Loans Services across the bank. The solution is being built from the ground up, leveraging cutting-edge technologies including Java, Spring Boot, and Kafka.

This role offers a unique opportunity to immerse oneself in and contribute significantly to the Wholesale Lending Division, gaining extensive exposure to business and technology initiatives aimed at maintaining Citi's leadership position. The environment fosters innovation and operates within a Hybrid-Agile framework.

The Applications Development Senior Vice President is a leadership position responsible for the strategic direction, establishment, and implementation of new or significantly revised application systems and programs. This role involves leading high-performance engineering teams, driving architectural decisions, managing key stakeholder expectations, and providing hands-on technical guidance to ensure the successful delivery of complex solutions. The overarching objective is to provide expert contributions to application systems analysis, architecture, and programming activities.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Technical Leadership: Provide vision and strategic direction for the full stack development across Angular/React, Java, and Spring Boot ecosystems, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture standards and business objectives.
• Architectural Design & Solutioning: Lead the detailed design and architectural blueprinting of scalable, resilient, and performant solutions, leveraging deep expertise in Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, and microservices architectures.
• Team Leadership & Management: Recruit, mentor, and manage high-performance engineering teams, fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Conduct regular performance reviews, identify development opportunities, and ensure career growth for team members.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Management: Proactively engage with senior business stakeholders, product owners, and other technology groups to understand requirements, manage expectations, communicate progress, and influence strategic decisions.
• Hands-on Technical Guidance: Provide hands-on expertise in complex coding challenges, code reviews, and technical problem-solving. Guide teams in implementing best practices for UI/UX (Figma, Jest), unit testing, integration testing, and performance testing using tools like JUnit and Mockito.
• Quality Assurance & Standards: Champion and enforce high standards for code quality, security, and maintainability. Drive the adoption of industry best practices, design patterns, coding standards, and modularity across all development efforts.
• Innovation & Adoption: Continuously evaluate and advocate for the adoption of new development tools, libraries, and approaches to enhance delivery quality, efficiency, and system resilience.
• Vulnerability & Security Management: Implement stringent security practices, analyze applications for vulnerabilities, and lead efforts in ensuring compliance with Citi's security policies and standards.
• Documentation & Knowledge Transfer: Oversee the creation and maintenance of comprehensive user and system documentation, architectural diagrams, and knowledge transfer processes to ensure clarity and continuity.
• Problem Resolution & Escalation: Act as a primary escalation point for complex technical issues, exercising expert judgment to identify root causes, analyze information, and implement effective, sustainable solutions.
• Compliance & Risk Management: Appropriately assess risk when making business decisions, demonstrating particular consideration for the firm's reputation and safeguarding Citigroup, its clients, and assets. Drive compliance with applicable laws, rules, and regulations, adhere to Policy, apply sound ethical judgment regarding personal behavior, conduct, and business practices, and escalate, manage, and report control issues with transparency.

Skills Required

• Expert-level Full Stack Development: Demonstrated mastery in UI/UX design principles and tools (e.g., Figma), with extensive experience in Angular, React, and associated testing frameworks (Jest).
• Advanced Java Ecosystem Proficiency: Deep expertise in Java, Spring Framework, Spring Boot, Spring Security, Spring Web, Spring Data, coupled with hands-on experience in Threading, Collections, Exception Handling, JDBC, OOD/OOP Concepts, and GoF Design Patterns.
• Messaging & Integration Architectures: Extensive experience with Messaging-Oriented Middleware (MoM), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Micro-services utilizing REST, with a strong understanding of Kafka and other enterprise messaging systems (e.g., RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, IBM MQ).
• Cloud-Native & DevOps Expertise: Proven experience in designing and implementing cloud-ready applications and deployment pipelines on large-scale container platforms (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker). Strong understanding of CI/CD environments and tools (Tekton, Harness, Jenkins, Code Quality).
• Database Expertise: Proficient in SQL, particularly Oracle dialect, with comprehensive knowledge of database design, optimization, and integration patterns.
• Architectural & Design Principles: In-depth knowledge of industry-standard best practices, design patterns, coding standards, modularity, and prototyping.
• System Optimization & Troubleshooting: Advanced skills in debugging, performance tuning, and optimizing complex enterprise applications.
• Agile & SDLC Leadership: Thorough understanding and practical experience leading teams within the Agile SDLC framework.
• Leadership & Communication: Exceptional written and oral communication skills, with a proven ability to lead, influence, and articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical senior stakeholders.
• Financial Services Industry Experience: Extensive experience (12+ years) developing applications within the Financial Services industry is essential.

Nice to Have Experience

• Application Servers: Experience with application servers like Tomcat, Jetty, Apache HTTPD.
• Automation & Scripting: Ability to work with and develop build/configure/deploy automation tools, and familiarity with Linux ecosystems.
• APM & Monitoring Tools: Experience with Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools such as Dynatrace, AppDynamics.
• Caching Technologies: Experience with distributed caching solutions like Hazelcast, MemCached, Redis.

Qualifications

• Experience: 12+ years of relevant experience in the Financial Service industry, with a significant portion in a leadership, architect, or principal engineer role.
• Leadership: Proven track record of leading and managing high-performance technical teams, driving complex projects to successful completion.
• Communication: Consistently demonstrates superior clear and concise written and verbal communication, capable of engaging and influencing senior-level stakeholders.
• Problem-Solving: Expert-level problem-solving and decision-making skills, with the ability to navigate ambiguous and complex technical challenges.
• Resilience: Demonstrated ability to work under immense pressure, manage multiple critical deadlines, and adapt quickly to unexpected changes in expectations or requirements.

Education

• Bachelor's degree/University degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Master's degree preferred.