AI Engineer – Startups & Partnerships
Likely
Sponsorship likelihood
This employer has issued visas recently
Not disclosed
Salary
Not disclosed by employer
£54,700
Going rate
Skilled Worker going rate
This role likely qualifies for a Skilled Worker visa
SOC 2134 (99% match) is an eligible occupation, with a going rate of £54,700, and CITIGROUP LIMITED is a licensed sponsor. That is our reading of the rules. Whether they issue a Certificate of Sponsorship is still their call.
In 2025, CITIGROUP LIMITED assigned 57 or more Certificates of Sponsorship for SOC 2134 jobs, according to the Home Office.
New graduate or PhD holder? Pick one of the lower rates.
What each route needs for this job
| Occupation code | New entrant 70% of going rate | STEM PhD 80% of going rate | Relevant PhD 90% of going rate | Standard rate 100% of going rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2134 Programmers and software development professionals Most likely code | £38,300 | £43,700 | £49,200 | £54,700 |
We use the lowest threshold across the plausible codes. Likelihood is Possible at most when the pay clears only a lower rate, or only under a less likely code. How the Home Office picks the code
About the role
About the Team
The Startups & Partnerships team is the forward scout of the Citi's Head of AI Organization. Our mandate: identify, evaluate, and rapidly onboard the emerging technologies that will define Citi's next chapter with Artificial Intelligence as our number one strategic priority right now. We don't sit in a lab waiting for ideas to trickle in. We move across every line of business at Citi, sit down directly with business stakeholders and clients, and go toe-to-toe with the sharpest startups and frontier AI labs in the market. We run fast, we run lean, and we run with the full weight of a global institution behind us.
Role:
As an AI Engineer on the Startups & Partnerships team, you will be at the tip of the spear for Citi's AI strategy - building, testing, and shipping real applications that touch real business problems across the bank, not writing whitepapers about them from the sidelines.
You'll get a level of exposure that's rare in a Tier-1 global bank: direct access to business requirements, hands-on evaluation of the newest models and platforms from the industry's leading AI labs, and the mandate to move at startup speed inside an institution operating at global scale. If you want to build things that matter, get them in front of real users fast, and shape how one of the world's largest financial institutions adopts AI - this is the seat.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build and ship AI applications - architect, develop, and deploy production-grade AI-powered tools, pipelines, and workflows that solve real business problems across Citi's lines of business.
- Evaluate emerging AI technology - run structured proof-of-concepts and sandbox "bake-offs" to rapidly assess new models, platforms, and startup tools (LLMs, agentic frameworks, orchestration layers) for real-world fit.
- Prototype at speed
Skills & Experience
- A full-stack engineer with applied AI/LLM experience - this is explicitly not a data science or ML research role. We need builders, not modelers.
- Proven experience building and shipping AI applications, pipelines, and workflows in live, production environments - not just notebooks and academic experiments.
- Hands-on proficiency with Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, and agentic frameworks and orchestration tools (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, or similar).
- Strong software engineering fundamentals - comfortable working across the stack, from backend services and API integrations to lightweight front-end or internal tooling layers.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills - you can work directly with business leaders and clients, not just other engineers.
- A track record of learning and adopting new tools and platforms quickly as the AI landscape evolves.
- Comfort operating in a large, regulated, global institution while bringing a startup-speed mentality to your work.
- Experience working directly with startups, venture teams, or technology scouting functions. (Desirable)
- Familiarity with vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or knowledge graph-based retrieval. (Desirable)
What we’ll provide you
By joining Citi Belfast, 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 Leave
- Special discounts for employees, family, and friends
- Access to an array of learning and development resources
Visit our Global Benefits page to learn more.
Alongside these benefits Citi is committed to ensuring our workplace is where everyone feels comfortable coming to work as their whole self, every day. We want the best talent around the world to be energized to join us, motivated to stay and empowered to thrive.
#LI-AH4
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Job Family Group:
Technology------------------------------------------------------
Job Family:
Applications Development------------------------------------------------------
Time Type:
Full time------------------------------------------------------
Most Relevant Skills
Please see the requirements listed above.------------------------------------------------------
Other Relevant Skills
For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.------------------------------------------------------
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.
If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review Accessibility at Citi.
View Citi’s EEO Policy Statement and the Know Your Rights poster.
This description is the source posting as it read when we added it. We are not affiliated with CITIGROUP LIMITED, so check their own site for the current details.
Where this offer sits in the market
Programmers and software development professionals (SOC 2134) · UK · ONS ASHE 2025 · basic pay · ~399k in sample- Middle half £42,536–76,752
- Median £56,784
- Going rate £54,700
- Threshold £41,700
- New entrant £38,300–49,200
Similar sponsored roles
See all UK visa jobsNo close matches live right now.
Browse more sponsored jobs at CITIGROUP LIMITEDAbout sponsorship for this role
Does this job guarantee visa sponsorship?
Not necessarily. CITIGROUP LIMITED holds a sponsor licence, but sponsorship for a specific hire is always the employer's decision. In 2025, CITIGROUP LIMITED assigned 57 or more Certificates of Sponsorship for SOC 2134 jobs, according to the Home Office. Be upfront in your application that you'll require it.
What salary is needed for this role to be eligible?
The offer must clear both the general threshold and the SOC 2134 going rate of £54,700. New-entrant and shortage discounts can lower it.