Tech Lead / CTO

We are supporting an emerging fintech business as they appoint a Technical Lead / CTO to take ownership of a specialist digital asset platform focused on lending, staking, and institutional-grade financial infrastructure.
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This is a rare opportunity to join at an early stage, with meaningful influence over both the technical architecture and the build-out of the internal engineering function. The business has already established key foundations across protocol infrastructure, validator operations, and initial product development, and is now looking for a senior technical leader to help scale the platform and shape the next phase of growth.
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The Opportunity

This is a highly hands-on leadership role suited to someone who enjoys operating close to the technology while also setting direction. The successful individual will take responsibility for the end-to-end technology estate, spanning protocol design, backend services, data and settlement infrastructure, and user-facing applications.
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You will be expected to assess and evolve an existing platform, make decisions around architecture and delivery, and gradually build a high-performing engineering team around the core product.
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What they are looking for

Our client is keen to speak with engineers who combine strong system design capability with a pragmatic, startup-oriented mindset. This role would suit someone comfortable working in ambiguity, taking ownership of complex technical problems, and building with long-term robustness in mind.
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Key requirements

• Around 8+ years of experience in backend or full-stack software engineering
• Prior experience in a technical leadership, staff engineer, or architect-level role
• Background within fintech, financial platforms, trading environments, or other highly reliable / correctness-focused systems
• Commercial exposure to functional programming, for example with languages such as Scala, Haskell, OCaml, or related technologies
• Strong hands-on development capability using TypeScript and/or Rust
• Experience leading or helping build small, high-performing engineering teams
• Exposure to smart contracts, digital assets, or distributed systems would be beneficial, though not essential
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment with high levels of ownership and autonomy
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Key responsibilities

Financial platform architecture

The platform is closer in nature to a transaction-heavy financial system than a conventional SaaS product, so strong modelling and architectural thinking are essential.

Responsibilities are likely to include:

• Designing core lifecycle workflows across areas such as trade or position creation, funding, accruals, repayments, adjustments, and closure
• Building a shared accounting and reconciliation framework to support multiple product components
• Modelling settlement processes, returns attribution, and counterparty-level reconciliations
• Ensuring robustness through strong auditability, idempotent processing, and reliable state management
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Full-stack platform engineering

The current stack includes modern backend services, an event-driven indexing component, and a web-based interface used for sophisticated customer and operational workflows.

You will be responsible for:

• Reviewing the existing codebase and determining where to optimise, refactor, or redesign
• Owning backend architecture across APIs, processing services, settlement logic, accounting flows, and event pipelines
• Enhancing the indexing / data layer to support additional protocol and transaction activity
• Overseeing frontend engineering for data-rich interfaces, including monitoring, reporting, and live operational views
• Establishing engineering standards across testing, delivery pipelines, deployment, and development practices
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Protocol and smart contract design

The underlying product includes a smart contract layer within a permissioned ledger environment. Direct experience with the exact stack is not expected, but strong fundamentals in functional design and deterministic systems will be valuable.

Areas of focus include:

• Designing contract logic to support lending, staking, and related protocol workflows
• Defining clear separation between on-chain logic and off-chain processing services
• Working with ecosystem or infrastructure partners on technical integrations
• Applying sound principles around type safety, deterministic behaviour, and secure state transitions
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Team leadership

This is a genuine player-coach role. The appointed individual will stay close to the code while helping to build the engineering organisation over time.

This is expected to include:

• Hiring early engineers across backend and frontend disciplines
• Supporting knowledge transfer from external contributors into a permanent internal team
• Driving sprint planning and translating commercial or product goals into technical execution
• Working closely with senior leadership on roadmap definition, prioritisation, and delivery planning
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Why this role may appeal

This opportunity offers the chance to join a business at a formative point and play a central role in shaping both the product and the engineering culture. It would suit someone excited by technically complex financial systems, early-stage build environments, and the opportunity to create structure and momentum in a growing company.

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