Tech Lead / CTO

Our client is an early-stage financial technology company developing a permissioned digital asset lending and staking protocol built on a distributed ledger platform. The platform is designed to support institutional participants and integrates smart contract infrastructure with traditional financial system principles.

The product already has core infrastructure in place, including validator operations, an initial smart contract framework, and early institutional counterparties. The company is now seeking a Technical Lead / CTO to take full ownership of the technology platform, evolve the existing architecture, and build the internal engineering function.

This is a hands-on leadership role at the earliest stage of the company’s growth, offering the opportunity to shape both the protocol architecture and the engineering organization.

The Role

This position combines deep technical ownership with team leadership. You will oversee the entire technical stack of a financial protocol—from distributed ledger smart contracts through backend settlement infrastructure to institutional-facing applications.

The successful candidate will be comfortable reviewing inherited systems, designing new components, and recruiting and mentoring engineers while remaining actively involved in development.
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Candidate Profile

We are looking for engineers who combine strong system design experience with early-stage startup mindset.
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Key requirements

• Approximately 8+ years of backend or full-stack engineering experience
• 2–4 years in a technical leadership, architect, or staff engineer capacity
• Experience working in financial services, fintech, trading systems, or other correctness-critical environments
• Professional experience with functional programming languages such as Haskell, Scala, OCaml, or similar
• Hands-on development using TypeScript-based backend frameworks or Rust
• Experience leading or building small, high-impact engineering teams
• Exposure to smart contracts, distributed ledgers, or blockchain systems is advantageous but not essential
• Comfortable operating in fast-moving, early-stage environments with high ownership
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Key Responsibilities

1. Financial System Architecture

The platform operates as a financial protocol rather than a typical SaaS application, requiring rigorous system design and data modeling.

Responsibilities include:

• Designing the position lifecycle system including origination, funding, interest accrual, partial repayment, recall, and closure
• Architecting a shared accounting and reconciliation layer supporting multiple protocol modules
• Modeling settlement workflows, yield attribution, and counterparty reconciliation
• Ensuring system correctness through auditability, idempotency, and immutable state tracking

2. Full-Stack Platform Engineering

The existing technology stack includes a TypeScript backend framework, a Rust-based event indexer, and a React/Next.js frontend used to power institutional dashboards.

You will:

• Review and assess the current codebase developed by external engineers and determine refactor vs rebuild strategy
• Own the backend services architecture, including APIs, settlement engines, accounting services, and event streams
• Extend and optimize the Rust indexing layer to support additional protocol activity
• Guide frontend development for data-heavy dashboards, including portfolio monitoring, real-time position updates, and yield analytics
• Establish CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, and engineering best practices

3. Smart Contract & Protocol Design

The protocol layer utilizes a functional smart contract framework on a permissioned distributed ledger. Direct experience with this specific stack is uncommon; however, strong functional programming fundamentals are highly relevant.

Key responsibilities:

• Designing smart contract logic supporting lending and staking mechanisms
• Defining the boundaries between on-chain enforcement and off-chain services
• Collaborating with ecosystem partners to support network-level integrations
• Applying strong functional programming principles to contract modeling, type safety, and deterministic state transitions

4. Engineering Team Leadership

This is a player–coach leadership role. You will remain deeply involved in development while building the team.

Responsibilities include:

• Hiring key early engineers across backend and frontend disciplines
• Managing knowledge transfer from external developers to an internal team
• Leading sprint planning and translating product requirements into engineering execution
• Partnering closely with the founder to guide technical roadmap and product prioritization

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