Blockchain Engineer/Architect - Digital Asset Platform - Vice President

Job description

## Discover your future at Citi Working at Citi is far more than just a job. A career with us means joining a team of more than 230,000 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 Citi is seeking a highly experienced and visionary **Blockchain Engineer/Architect – Digital Asset Platform** to join the Citi Integrated Digital Assets Platform (CIDAP) engineering team. This is a senior individual contributor and technical leadership role for a hands-on architect who thrives at the intersection of enterprise software engineering and cutting-edge blockchain technology. The successful candidate will be responsible for defining and driving the technical architecture of our digital assets platform, leading engineering decisions, and mentoring a team of talented engineers. You will work closely with product, business, and technology stakeholders across Citi to shape the strategic direction of our blockchain infrastructure and digital asset capabilities. We are looking for a candidate who combines deep enterprise software engineering expertise with a strong command of web3 and blockchain technologies. You must be equally comfortable whiteboarding distributed system architectures and writing production-grade code. ## Key Responsibilities - **Architect and design** scalable, resilient, and secure blockchain-based solutions for Citi's Digital Asset Platform, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture standards and regulatory requirements - **Lead end-to-end technical delivery** of complex blockchain and digital asset features, owning architecture decisions from inception through production deployment - **Define and enforce** engineering best practices, coding standards, and design patterns across the team for both enterprise and web3 application development - **Drive technical strategy** for the platform, evaluating and recommending emerging blockchain protocols, frameworks, and tooling relevant to Citi's digital asset roadmap - **Collaborate with senior stakeholders** — including product owners, business leads, risk, compliance, and infrastructure teams — to translate business requirements into robust technical solutions - **Mentor and guide** junior and mid-level engineers, conducting code reviews, providing technical direction, and fostering a culture of engineering excellence - **Lead the evaluation and integration** of third-party blockchain networks, smart contract platforms, tokenization frameworks, and digital asset custody solutions - **Ensure platform reliability, scalability, and performance** through proactive design, observability, and operational best practices - **Contribute to and own** technical documentation, architecture decision records (ADRs), and platform runbooks - **Represent the engineering team** in cross-functional forums, architecture review boards, and senior leadership discussions - **Identify, manage, and escalate** technical risks and blockers to ensure on-time, on-budget, and high-quality delivery ## Qualifications / Experience - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline; **MS or PhD is strongly preferred** - **10+ years** of progressive experience in software engineering, with a strong focus on backend and distributed systems development - **7+ years** of hands-on experience with **Java/Spring** backend development in enterprise-grade production environments - **3+ years** of experience in **blockchain and web3 application development**, including smart contract integration, tokenization, or digital asset infrastructure - Demonstrated experience **architecting large-scale, high-availability distributed systems** in a financial services or similarly regulated environment - Deep expertise in **microservices architecture**, API design, event-driven systems, and asynchronous programming patterns - Proven experience with **smart contract platforms** (e.g., Ethereum, Hyperledger, Corda, or equivalent) and associated tooling - Strong familiarity with **web3 libraries** (Web3J, Web3JS, Ethers.js) and blockchain SDKs - Experience with **Solidity** or other smart contract languages; ability to review and audit smart contract code - Solid understanding of **cryptographic primitives**, digital signatures, key management, and wallet infrastructure - Experience with **DevOps practices**, CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes/Helm), and cloud-native deployments - Familiarity with **financial industry regulations** and compliance considerations relevant to digital assets (e.g., tokenized securities, CBDCs, stablecoins) is a strong plus - Experience working in **Agile/Scrum** environments with distributed global teams ## Competencies / Skills - **Technical Leadership:** Proven ability to lead architectural decisions and drive engineering strategy in a senior individual contributor or lead capacity - **Deep Engineering Expertise:** Mastery of software engineering fundamentals — data structures, algorithms, design patterns, system design — with the ability to translate them into elegant, production-ready solutions - **Blockchain Fluency:** Comprehensive understanding of blockchain protocols, consensus mechanisms, tokenization standards (ERC-20, ERC-721, etc.), and DeFi/TradFi integration patterns - **Communication & Influence:** Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including executive stakeholders - **Problem Solving:** Strong analytical mindset with a track record of solving ambiguous, high-complexity engineering challenges in regulated environments - **Mentorship:** Demonstrated ability to coach, mentor, and elevate the capabilities of engineering teams - **Delivery Focus:** Proven track record of delivering high-quality, mission-critical software on time and at scale - **Tooling Proficiency:** Expert-level command of eng