Founding Head of Engineering
Lead the development of a regulated digital-finance platform spanning mobile wallets, cloud infrastructure, payments, and next-generation financial products.
Location: Remote (U.S.-based)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Reports To: CTO/CISO
Compensation: $160,000–$220,000 (DOE)
Hours: 40 hours per week
Start Date: ASAP
About the Company
Our client is a newly established U.S.-regulated financial institution building next-generation digital finance infrastructure, including digital asset, payments, wallet, treasury, compliance, and transaction-processing capabilities.
Backed by a well-established international financial services organization, the company offers a rare opportunity to join at the ground-floor stage while benefiting from the resources and long-term commitment of an established parent organization.
Operating with startup agility and entrepreneurial energy, the organization is focused on creating secure, scalable, and highly regulated financial technology platforms designed to meet stringent regulatory, operational, and security standards.
Position Overview
We are conducting a confidential search for a Founding Head of Engineering to lead the architecture, engineering governance, platform operations, and technology execution of a regulated digital finance platform.
This individual will serve as the company's senior internal engineering leader, overseeing the full technology stack, including mobile applications, backend services, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, vendor-delivered solutions, production operations, and engineering standards.
The ideal candidate combines strategic technical leadership with hands-on engineering expertise and thrives in startup environments where processes, standards, and infrastructure are being built from the ground up.
Key Responsibilities
Engineering Leadership & Architecture
Own the end-to-end engineering architecture across:
Mobile applications
Backend services and APIs
Cloud infrastructure
Internal operational platforms
Third-party and partner-delivered solutions
Establish engineering best practices, development standards, and governance frameworks.
Partner closely with executive leadership to translate business objectives and regulatory requirements into actionable engineering roadmaps.
Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Engineering
Lead the design and governance of cloud environments, including:
Identity and access management (IAM)
Secrets management
Monitoring and logging
Networking
Data protection and backup strategies
Disaster recovery capabilities
Define and enforce Infrastructure-as-Code standards, preferably utilizing Terraform.
Ensure highly available, scalable, and secure cloud architecture.
DevOps, CI/CD & Release Management
Build and oversee secure software delivery pipelines.
Define release controls, deployment standards, rollback procedures, and change-management processes.
Establish production-readiness criteria and deployment governance frameworks.
Reliability, Security & Operational Excellence
Implement observability practices across logs, metrics, alerts, traces, and dashboards.
Establish incident response processes, escalation procedures, runbooks, and post-incident review practices.
Partner with compliance and security stakeholders to ensure engineering controls align with regulatory requirements.
Develop audit-ready operational documentation and evidence collection processes.
Vendor Governance
Provide technical leadership and oversight for external engineering and infrastructure partners.
Review architecture designs, technical deliverables, and production readiness.
Monitor delivery quality, identify risks, and drive remediation efforts where necessary.
Organizational Growth
Serve as a founding member of the leadership team.
Help establish future engineering hiring plans, organizational structure, and technical culture.
Communicate engineering progress, risks, and strategic recommendations to executive stakeholders.
Required Qualifications
10+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, cloud engineering, DevOps, SRE, or related technical disciplines.
5+ years of experience leading architecture, engineering standards, technical delivery, or production operations.
Deep expertise with AWS cloud services and cloud-native architectures.
Strong background in:
Backend systems and APIs
Distributed systems
Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform preferred)
CI/CD pipelines
Observability and monitoring
Production support and incident management
Experience operating within regulated, security-sensitive, or audit-focused environments.
Demonstrated success managing engineering delivery through internal teams and external technology partners.
Strong communication skills with both technical and executive audiences.
Ability to review and evaluate architecture, infrastructure, deployment pipelines, cloud security controls, and production readiness.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience within fintech, banking, payments, financial infrastructure, digital assets, trust services, or regulated SaaS environments.
Familiarity with:
Stablecoins
Digital wallets
Blockchain infrastructure
Custody platforms
Real-time transaction processing
Experience supporting React Native and TypeScript-based mobile applications.
Knowledge of regulatory and control frameworks such as:
OCC
FFIEC
NIST
SOC 2
GLBA
Experience with AWS services such as:
ECS/Fargate
Lambda
Aurora PostgreSQL
API Gateway
EventBridge
SQS/SNS
CloudWatch
OpenTelemetry
AWS certifications are a plus.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $160,000–$220,000
Fully remote within the United States
Opportunity to join a founding leadership team
Direct interaction with executive leadership and key stakeholders
Significant career growth potential as the organization scales
Employee benefits package currently being finalized
No current bonus or commission structure
Ideal Candidate
Entrepreneurial and comfortable in a startup environment
Flexible and adaptable to changing priorities
Highly accountable and hands-on
Capable of balancing strategic leadership with technical depth
Experienced in building processes, controls, and infrastructure from the ground up
Motivated by the opportunity to help create a regulated financial platform at an early stage
Confidential Search Notice
Due to the strategic nature of this opportunity, company details will be shared with qualified candidates during the interview process. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States and able to maintain meaningful overlap with U.S. business hours. Occasional travel may be required.
To apply, please email your resume to [email protected]
