Java Technical Lead

## Role Summary

The Applications Development Technical Lead (C13 / VP) is a senior technical leadership position responsible for directing the architectural design, engineering roadmap, and technical execution of mission-critical, enterprise-scale software platforms. This role serves as the principal technical authority for backend systems powered by Java, Spring Boot / Spring Cloud, distributed microservices, and event-driven architectures.

The individual will lead technical teams, define architectural standards, drive modernization initiatives (cloud migration, containerization, performance engineering), and act as the primary liaison between engineering teams, enterprise architects, and senior business stakeholders. The role demands deep technical mastery, strategic vision, high autonomy, and a strong track record of delivering resilient, low-latency, and highly available financial systems.

## Key Responsibilities

## 1\. Technical Leadership & System Architecture

• Serve as the Lead Architect / Technical Authority across core banking platforms, defining high-level system designs, domain models, and technical blueprints aligned with enterprise architecture guidelines.
• Direct the design and implementation of highly scalable, distributed, and resilient Java/Spring Boot microservices capable of processing high-volume, low-latency transactions.
• Champion modern engineering paradigms including Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) using Apache Kafka, asynchronous messaging, and distributed caching strategies.
• Drive technical debt reduction, legacy modernization, and application refactoring initiatives to enhance maintainability, scalability, and performance.

## 2\. Engineering Governance, DevOps & Operational Resilience

• Establish and enforce software engineering standards, coding guidelines, API governance, and automated code quality gates across multi-disciplinary squads.
• Drive the adoption of cloud-native deployment patterns and container orchestration across OpenShift, Kubernetes
• Define end-to-end CI/CD delivery strategies, infrastructure-as-code practices, automated deployment pipelines, and zero-downtime release workflows (Blue/Green, Canary).
• Architect for high availability (HA), fault tolerance, disaster recovery (DR/COB), and resilience patterns (circuit breaking, bulkhead isolation, rate limiting).
• Lead performance tuning, heap/thread dump analysis, distributed tracing, and capacity planning for mission-critical production systems.

## 3\. Security, Risk & Compliance Architecture

• Embed "Secure-by-Design" principles across all software layers, ensuring strict adherence to enterprise security standards, OWASP top 10 guidelines, and regulatory requirements.
• Architect robust identity and access management (IAM), OAuth2/OIDC implementations, mTLS communication, and data-at-rest/in-transit encryption.
• Oversee vulnerability management, threat modeling, and remediation of findings identified by static/dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST) tools.
• Appropriately assess risk when technical and architectural decisions are made, safeguarding the firm's reputation and ensuring compliance with banking regulations, auditing standards, and operational risk policies.

## 4\. Stakeholder Management & Talent Mentorship

• Partner closely with Product Owners, Program Managers, and Business Executives to translate complex business strategies into executable technical roadmaps and milestone plans.
• Provide technical guidance, code governance, and mentorship to Junior developers raising the technical bar of the organisation.
• Lead Technical Design Reviews (TDRs), Architecture Review Boards (ARBs), and post-incident reviews (Root Cause Analysis - RCA).

## Required Qualifications & Competencies

## Experience & Education

• Experience: Minimum 12+ years of progressive hands-on software engineering, distributed systems architecture, and technical leadership experience, with at least 4–6 years in a Technical Lead / Systems Architect capacity.

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or related quantitative field / equivalent work experience.

##

Core Technical Competencies

DomainCore Requirements & ProficienciesJava & Core Technologies• Master-level proficiency in Java (11, 17, 21+), JVM internals, memory management, garbage collection tuning, and multi-threaded/concurrent programming.

• Strong foundations in Object-Oriented Design, Functional Programming, Design Patterns, and Domain-Driven Design (DDD).

Spring Framework• Deep architectural and development expertise with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Security, Spring Data, Spring Batch, and Spring Integration.

• Proven experience designing microservice communication patterns (REST, gRPC, GraphQL, WebSocket) and service mesh implementations.

Distributed Systems & Messaging• Extensive experience with Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) and message streaming platforms (Apache Kafka).

• Expert knowledge in event sourcing, CQRS patterns, distributed transaction management (Saga pattern), idempotency, and partition strategies.

Data Architecture & Caching• Advanced data modeling and query optimization experience with enterprise relational databases (Oracle, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL solutions (MongoDB).Expertise in distributed caching and in-memory data grids (Redis).

Cloud-Native & Containerization• Hands-on experience designing and operating containerized microservices on Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift

• Proficiency with Docker container lifecycle and Linux/Unix operating environments.

DevOps, Observability & Tooling• Deep knowledge of CI/CD orchestration (Jenkins, Harness, Tekton) and build automation (Maven, Gradle).

• Proven experience implementing full-stack observability with Grafana, Splunk, or ELK stack.

Security & Quality Engineering• Comprehensive understanding of OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, JWT, API Gateways, and secrets management (HashiCorp Vault).

• Strong oversight of automated testing (JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers, Pact contract testing) and security scanning (SonarQube, Snyk, Checkmarx).

## Leadership & Professional Attributes

• Proven ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and gain buy-in from senior technology leaders.
• Strong strategic thinking with the capability to balance immediate tactical business needs against long-term architectural integrity.
• Exceptional verbal, written, and architectural diagramming communication skills (UML, C4 model).
• Extensive experience working in scaled Agile frameworks (Scrum / Kanban / SAFe) in a global matrix environment.

\------------------------------------------------------

## Job Family Group:

Technology

\------------------------------------------------------

## Job Family:

Applications Development

\------------------------------------------------------

## Time Type:

Full time

\------------------------------------------------------

## Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

\------------------------------------------------------

## Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

\------------------------------------------------------

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.