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About This Role
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
Applied AI Engineering Director for Banking Technology (Hybrid)
Role Summary
We are looking for a highly motivated, hands\-on Applied AI Engineering Senior Lead for Banking Technology to lead the design, development, and deployment of cutting\-edge, AI\-first solutions for our Banking division, covering Investment, Corporate, and Commercial Banking. This pivotal role will bridge the front office with advanced technology, championing an AI\-first mindset to drive intelligent automation and data\-driven decision\-making directly into the heart of dealmaking processes. The ideal candidate will combine deep, hands\-on AI engineering expertise with a strong understanding of the investment banking ecosystem, business workflows, and the secure, enterprise\-scale deployment of Agentic AI solutions.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic AI Leadership: Partner with senior bankers and business leads to identify high\-impact AI opportunities across deal origination, client intelligence, market analysis, and pitch automation. Develop and execute a comprehensive AI engineering roadmap aligned with Banking tech strategy and enterprise architecture.
AI Engineering \& Architecture: Lead the design and development of scalable, robust AI systems, including advanced Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), knowledge graphs, and machine learning pipelines. Architect and implement secure, compliant Agentic AI solutions that seamlessly integrate with market data, CRM, internal knowledge bases, and document repositories.
Data Strategy: Drive the strategic integration of both structured (e.g., financial data, CRM) and unstructured (e.g., filings, call transcripts, news) data, enabling advanced insights and sophisticated AI model training. Oversee data engineering and ML feature pipelines in close collaboration with data teams.
Productization \& Delivery: Convert innovative proofs\-of\-concept into scalable, enterprise\-grade tools and Agentic AI solutions. Embed AI capabilities directly into banker workflows via intuitive agents, dynamic dashboards, and smart document assistants, ensuring real\-world impact.
Governance \& Compliance: Establish and enforce rigorous standards to ensure all AI systems meet internal requirements for explainability, fairness, and compliance with regulatory obligations. Collaborate proactively with risk, legal, and compliance teams on AI model governance.
Team Building \& Leadership: Recruit, mentor, and lead a high\-performing team of AI engineers, ML specialists, and applied data scientists. Foster a culture of continuous innovation, delivery excellence, and strong business alignment.
Qualifications
Must\-Have Skills \& Experience
15\+ years of industry experience, primarily in data science and AI engineering, with a minimum of 4 years in a leadership role, preferably within financial services or other highly regulated enterprise environments.
Demonstrated success in building and deploying impactful AI applications, particularly in investment banking, asset management, or capital markets domains.
Deep, hands\-on technical expertise in machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), retrieval\-augmented generation (RAG), and modern MLOps practices.
Proven experience in building and deploying Agentic AI solutions using frameworks like Google ADK, Langraph, etc, showcasing a strong AI\-first approach to problem\-solving.
Strong experience working with both structured financial datasets and diverse unstructured data sources (e.g., regulatory filings, call transcripts, market research).
Familiarity with front\-office workflows across ECM, DCM, M\&A, and investment research.
Extensive experience deploying AI solutions in secure, high\-compliance environments (on\-premise, hybrid cloud, or private cloud).
Exceptional communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills, with a track record of influencing senior bankers and C\-level executives.
Preferred
Experience with knowledge graphs and graph\-based search technologies.
Familiarity with industry\-standard financial data tools such as Bloomberg, Refinitiv, Capital IQ, FactSet, or PitchBook.
Prior hands\-on work in developing AI agents, document summarization tools, or automated pitch generation systems.
Exposure to enterprise Relationship and Deal management systems and client intelligence platforms.
Advanced degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
Education
Bachelor’s degree/University degree or equivalent experience is required.
Master’s degree is preferred.
What Success Looks Like
AI tools are deeply embedded into the daily workflows of bankers and analysts, becoming indispensable.
Significant reduction in manual effort across critical functions like client targeting, pitch preparation, and market monitoring.
All data assets and ML models are fully aligned with enterprise governance frameworks and architectural standards.
A scalable and adaptable AI platform that continuously evolves with the pace of business demands and technological innovation.
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Job Family Group:
Technology
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Job Family:
Applications Development
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Time Type:
Full time
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Primary Location:
Jersey City New Jersey United States
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Primary Location Full Time Salary Range:
$170,000\.00 \- $300,000\.00
In addition to salary, Citi’s offerings may also include, for eligible employees, discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards. Citi offers competitive employee benefits, including: medical, dental \& vision coverage; 401(k); life, accident, and disability insurance; and wellness programs. Citi also offers paid time off packages, including planned time off (vacation), unplanned time off (sick leave), and paid holidays. For additional information regarding Citi employee benefits, please visit citibenefits.com. Available offerings may vary by jurisdiction, job level, and date of hire.
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Most Relevant Skills
Please see the requirements listed above.
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Other Relevant Skills
For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.
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Anticipated Posting Close Date:
Aug 10, 2026
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Automated Processing and AI
We use automated processing, including artificial intelligence, for our legitimate business interests (or our reasonable and appropriate business purposes) to identify and align the candidate's skills and abilities with a specific job opening. Additionally, if you so choose, or consent, we can match your skills and abilities to other suitable roles at Citi.
Importantly, all our hiring processes and decisions, including determining your suitability for a role, are conducted, checked, and decided by individuals. Our automated processing and AI do not involve relying on automatic or autonomous decision\-making. Please refer to any Jurisdictional Considerations, with specific provisions for your country (where relevant) for further details.
Illinois residents – AI Notice and Right
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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.
Salary Context
This $170K-$300K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 2162 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At Citi, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $214,900 based on 6,420 positions with disclosed compensation. Director-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $274,554. This role's midpoint ($235K) sits 9% above the category median. Disclosed range: $170K to $300K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($287,500) and Research Engineer ($272,100). By seniority level: Entry: $110,000; Mid: $194,400; Senior: $227,400; Director: $274,554; VP: $241,000.
Citi AI Hiring
Citi has 32 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Product Manager, AI/ML Engineer, AI Agent Developer, AI Software Engineer. Positions span New York, NY, US, Tampa, FL, US, Jacksonville, FL, US. Compensation range: $170K - $300K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 15% (635 positions) offer remote work, while 3,657 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,650 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (1,335 roles, $265,000 median); Los Angeles (708 roles, $214,112 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 4,317 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 138 entry-level, 2,071 mid-level, 1,655 senior, and 453 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (635 positions). The remaining 3,657 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($287,500 median, 34 roles); Research Engineer ($272,100 median, 227 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($244,000 median, 23 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 4,317 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (3,004), Data Scientist (345), AI Software Engineer (309). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (138) are outnumbered by mid-level (2,071) and senior (1,655) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 453 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (635 positions), with 3,657 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $215,000. Top-quartile roles start at $266,300, and the 90th percentile reaches $320,790. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $287,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (2,249 postings), Aws (1,224 postings), Azure (938 postings), Rag (915 postings), Gcp (660 postings), Pytorch (640 postings), Prompt Engineering (624 postings), Kubernetes (559 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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