Citi is the latest Wall Street giant looking to hoover up programming talent, embarking on a recruitment drive that will see it hire 2500 coders and data scientists for its investment bank this year.
With technology upending how trading is done, firms are competing with each other, as well as Silicon Valley, for coders.
Goldman Sachs has also been stocking up on programmers to help automate swathes of its trading business, while JPMorgan has started getting trading licenses for some of its coders.
Now, Citi's Institutional Clients Group (ICG), which is home to the firm's traders and investment bankers, is looking to grow its tech talent pool with hires in London, New York, Shanghai, Toronto, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Pune, Chennai, and Tampa.
Stuart Riley, global head, operations and technology, for ICG, tells Bloomberg: "The delineation between traders and technologists in markets is disappearing."
For instance, the bank is using AI to examine messages between its sales team and clients to automatically provide tailored news, prices and trade ideas.
The hires reflect "what we are building in technology and why we are focused on making salespeople and traders more effective at servicing our clients," Riley tells Bloomberg.