Principal Software Engineer

Discover your future at Citi

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

We are seeking a visionary and hands-on Principal Software Engineer to join Citi’s Global Technology organization in Warsaw, Poland. In this pivotal role, you will lead the technical design, architectural vision, and engineering delivery of Citi's next-generation Risk Management Platform.

As part of a globally distributed, high-performing engineering organization, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams, architects, product managers, and quantitative analysts across the globe. You will be instrumental in defining technical standards, leading high-impact architectural initiatives, and mentoring engineering talent across our diverse global teams.

Key Responsibilities:

Architectural Leadership & System Design

• Strategic System Architecture: Analyze complex business workflows, enterprise systems, and industry standards to architect scalable, resilient, and high-throughput solutions for next-generation risk systems.
• Standards & Best Practices: Define, evolve, and implement engineering methodologies, coding standards, testing automation, and CI/CD best practices across the full software development lifecycle.
• Deep Technical Integration: Lead the technical integration of complex enterprise functions and platforms to accelerate product deployments and enhance operational capabilities.
• Domain Flow Mastery: Leverage deep technical expertise across end-to-end data pipelines, microservices, and system flows to drive technological transformation.

Technical Delivery & Execution

• High-Impact Project Planning: Direct and execute technical milestones for multi-million-dollar, cross-functional programs and multi-stream initiatives.
• End-to-End Collaboration: Consult closely with business stakeholders, quantitative risk managers, and operations users to translate functional specifications into robust technical architectures.
• Code Excellence: Maintain high standards of code quality, performance profiling, fault tolerance, and security across distributed application services.

Leadership, Mentorship & Collaboration

• Team Leadership & Coaching: Allocate engineering workloads, establish delivery milestones, and actively coach senior developers, engineers, and analysts.
• Stakeholder Management: Influence and align architectural roadmaps with senior technology and business leadership, as well as external technology partners.
• Global Synergy: Foster a collaborative, inclusive engineering culture across globally dispersed teams in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

Governance, Risk & Controls

• Sound Risk Management: Proactively assess and mitigate technical, operational, and regulatory risks in engineering decisions.
• Compliance & Transparency: Ensure all platforms strictly adhere to enterprise governance, data privacy policies, regulatory requirements, and security controls, escalating and resolving control issues promptly.

Qualifications & Competencies:

Experience & Technical Mastery

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent practical experience).
• Industry Experience: Extensive experience in software engineering and system architecture, with a demonstrated history of delivering mission-critical enterprise systems (Financial Services / Risk Technology experience is strongly preferred).
• Core Engineering: Advanced expertise in modern backend languages and frameworks (e.g., Java, Python, Go, or C++), distributed computing, concurrent systems, and event-driven architectures (e.g., Apache Kafka).
• Cloud & Modern Infrastructure: Proven experience with cloud platforms, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes/OpenShift), API gateways, and distributed caching technologies.
• Data Architecture: Strong proficiency with relational and distributed database technologies, high-volume data processing pipelines, and analytical engines.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Influential Communication: Exceptional communication, stakeholder management, and negotiation skills with both technical teams and senior business leaders.
• Mentorship: Proven track record of developing engineering talent and leading cross-functional delivery streams.
• Analytical Problem Solving: Superior capability to deconstruct ambiguous, complex business challenges into structured, elegant technical designs.

What we can offer you:

By joining Citi Solutions Center Poland, you will not only be part of a business casual workplace with a hybrid working model (currently up to 2 days working at home per week), but also (potentially, subject to final offer) receive a competitive base salary and enjoy a whole host of additional benefits which can include:

• Employer paid Defined Contribution Pension Plan contribution of 6% of employee’s pensionable earnings (PPE Program)
• Employer paid Private Medical Care Package for employees and Private Medical Care Packages for certain family members available at preferential rates
• Employer paid Life Insurance Program for employees and Life Insurance for certain family members available at preferential rates
• Employee Assistance Program financed by Employer
• Paid Parental Leave Program (maternity and paternity leave; statutory and 2 weeks additional paid paternity leave)
• Sport Card for employees subsidized via Social Benefits Fund and Sport Cards for certain family members available at preferential rates
• Additional benefits from Company’s Social Benefit Fund, in particular: Holidays Allowance, support for sport and cultural activities, team building events.
• Additional day off for volunteering
• Cafeteria/ flex benefit – a company benefits system which enables employees to select and purchase benefits offered by a provider and available for employees on the platform.
• Opportunity to receive an annual discretionary incentive award
• Special offers and discounts for employees
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