Junior Software Engineer - Generative AI Platforms - Citi - #2164148

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
Role
Join Citi's Application, Platform and Engineering group and start your engineering career at the forefront of Generative AI. This is an exciting opportunity for an early-career Software Engineer to work alongside experienced engineers, product managers and AI specialists to build and support modern GenAI platforms and products used across the bank.
Working with close guidance and mentorship from senior engineers, you'll contribute to real-world engineering challenges while developing your skills across backend development, distributed systems, cloud-native technologies and LLM-based applications. You'll have the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology, learn quickly and build experience that can shape a long-term career in AI and software engineering.

We're looking for candidates with around 1-2 years of software engineering experience, but we're equally interested in strong graduates and early-career engineers who can demonstrate their ability through internships, academic projects, personal projects or other hands-on experience.

Team
You'll join a growing technology team with a start-up mentality inside a global organisation. The team is focused on shaping the future of AI and engineering across Citi, bringing together talented engineers, product managers and subject-matter experts to turn ambitious ideas into real products.

The team works across Generative AI, cloud-native architectures, modern application stacks, security, open source and the Kubernetes ecosystem. We're highly collaborative, encourage engineers at every level to contribute ideas, and believe in learning through hands-on development, pair programming, experimentation and continuous iteration.

As an early-career engineer, you'll have access to experienced mentors and the opportunity to learn from engineers working on complex AI and distributed systems at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and support of Generative AI platforms, services and applications.
• Build well-defined components of products and platforms, including CLIs, SDKs and supporting tooling.
• Write clean, tested, maintainable and well-documented code.
• Work primarily with modern backend technologies, including Golang or comparable languages.
• Collaborate with senior engineers, product managers and SMEs to understand requirements and deliver solutions.
• Participate in pair programming, code reviews and collaborative development practices.
• Contribute to design discussions and develop an understanding of distributed and scalable system design.
• Support the development and integration of LLM-based applications and GenAI capabilities.
• Investigate bugs, respond to feedback and help improve the reliability and performance of existing products.
• Develop an understanding of cloud-native technologies, containers and Kubernetes/OpenShift.
• Contribute to testing and validating changes as platforms and applications scale.
• Build your knowledge of GenAI through hands-on engineering, structured learning and mentorship.
• Work collaboratively with adjacent teams and communicate clearly on technical challenges and progress.
• Stay curious about emerging technologies and actively identify opportunities to improve how the team builds and delivers software.

Skills & Experience

• Around 1-2 years of hands-on software engineering experience; internships, substantial academic projects and personal projects will also be considered.
• Strong foundation in software engineering fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms and coding practices.
• Exposure to Golang (Go) or another backend programming language, with enthusiasm to develop deeper Go expertise. Python is a plus.
• Basic understanding of React and TypeScript fundamentals.
• Understanding of REST APIs and how modern applications communicate.
• Basic exposure to Kubernetes, OpenShift or containerised applications.
• Familiarity with databases or data technologies such as MongoDB and Redis.
• Basic understanding of authentication concepts such as OAuth and JWT.
• Awareness of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI, with genuine enthusiasm to learn more.
• An interest in areas such as RAG, context retrieval, fine-tuning and LLM-based application development.
• Basic awareness of secure coding practices and modern application security.
• Exposure to CI/CD, monitoring or observability tools such as Grafana or ELK is advantageous but not essential.
• Exposure to ETL concepts, data pipelines, vector stores or AI infrastructure is advantageous but not expected.
• Strong problem-solving skills, curiosity and a proactive approach to learning.
• Comfortable working collaboratively, receiving feedback and learning through pair programming and code reviews.

What We Believe In
We believe great engineers can come from different backgrounds. You don't need to have every technology listed above - what matters is a strong engineering foundation, curiosity, a willingness to learn and a genuine interest in Generative AI.
There are no rigid boundaries between engineering and research. Engineers at every level are encouraged to explore new ideas, experiment with emerging technologies and contribute to solving challenging problems.

We work in a fast-moving environment where we build, test, learn and iterate. We value practical solutions over unnecessary bureaucracy and invest in helping early-career engineers develop the technical skills, confidence and experience to grow their careers.
If you're at the beginning of your software engineering career and excited by the opportunity to work with Generative AI, modern software engineering and experienced technical mentors, we'd love to hear from you.

By joining Citi London, you will not only be part of a business casual workplace with a hybrid working model (up to 2 days working at home per week), but also receive a competitive base salary (which is annually reviewed), and enjoy a whole host of additional benefits such as:

27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)

A discretional annual performance related bonus

Private Medical Care & Life Insurance

Employee Assistance Program

Pension Plan

Paid Parental LeaveSpecial discounts for employees, fam