Low Latency Infrastructure Engineering, Equities Trading, Director

Role Overview

Citi Equities Technology is seeking a senior leader for its low‑latency infrastructure engineering group. The person in this role will be responsible for design, architecture and delivery of Citi’s trading infrastructure across colocation sites and strategic data‑center assets. This role requires a combination of deep technical expertise in low‑latency infrastructure and networking systems, trading microstructure knowledge, and strong leadership and execution capabilities.

The successful candidate will lead a global engineering team to deliver platform infrastructure in close partnership with the software delivery teams, Citi’s enterprise technology group and trading functions.

• Define and execute the strategic roadmap for low‑latency trading infrastructure across Global Equity Markets.
• Architect and deliver high‑performance colocation environments, connecting exchange venues, market‑data providers, and internal trading systems.
• Lead design and implementation of ultra‑low latency Layer 1/Layer 2 network infrastructure between exchange colocation facilities and Citi data centers.
• Drive selection, evaluation and deployment of cutting‑edge low‑latency switching, routing, timing and telemetry technologies.
• Work with vendors, partners, exchange providers, telecom carriers and hardware manufacturers to optimise connectivity, resiliency and performance.
• Design resilient cross‑connect and market‑access strategies across global exchanges and liquidity venues.
• Establish standards for low‑latency Linux infrastructure, including OS optimisation, kernel bypass technologies, CPU isolation, NUMA optimisation, interrupt tuning and deterministic performance engineering.
• Lead engineering teams responsible for infrastructure provisioning, bare‑metal automation, deployment pipelines, hardware lifecycle management and production engineering.
• Develop scalable operational models enabling rapid deployment of trading infrastructure, including procurement workflows, capacity management, rack design and colocation expansion.
• Build highly secure and compliant environments aligned with Citi operational, cyber and regulatory requirements.
• Collaborate with application engineering teams to optimise end‑to‑end trading latency and infrastructure determinism.
• Drive observability, performance benchmarking, packet‑capture analysis and latency telemetry across the trading stack.
• Manage relationships with exchanges, telcos, connectivity providers and colocation operators globally.
• Lead incident management and infrastructure resiliency programmes for mission‑critical trading environments.
• Mentor and develop senior engineers and technical leads across infrastructure and platform engineering disciplines.

• 15+ years of experience in low‑latency infrastructure engineering within electronic trading, capital markets, hedge funds, trading venues or equivalent financial institutions.
• Proven experience building and operating exchange colocation environments for equities or multi‑asset electronic trading platforms.
• Deep expertise in low‑latency network design, including Arista, Cisco, Juniper or equivalent ultra‑low‑latency switching platforms;
  Layer 1 optimisation; multicast market‑data distribution; precision timing/PTP; optical transport and cross‑connect architecture; exchange connectivity design; and modern low‑latency hardware platforms, NICs, FPGA‑enabled environments and packet‑processing optimisation.
• Advanced Linux systems engineering expertise, particularly RHEL, kernel tuning; CPU pinning and isolation; IRQ balancing; NUMA optimisation; DPDK/XDP/kernel bypass technologies; deterministic systems performance tuning.
• Experience designing resilient infrastructure across colocation facilities and large‑scale enterprise data centres.
• Strong knowledge of automation and infrastructure engineering practices using Python, Ansible, CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure‑as‑code methodologies.
• Experience managing hardware procurement, vendor negotiations, colocation build‑outs and telecom contracts.
• Demonstrated ability to lead globally distributed engineering teams in high‑pressure, mission‑critical environments.
• Strong understanding of operational risk, resiliency, cybersecurity and regulatory requirements within financial services.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills with ability to interact effectively with senior technology leadership, trading desks and external partners.

Citi is an equal‑opportunity employer; qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other protected characteristic.