Head of Engineering / Tech Lead

Head of Engineering / Tech Lead

Remote (New Jersey / NYC metro preferred)

You won't be managing an engineering team here. You'll be building the platform yourself, then building the team around it.

Most "Head of Engineering" roles at this stage mean sitting between executives and a team of engineers, translating one for the other. This isn't that.

You're stepping into a platform that already processes millions of dollars in transaction volume, built on ambitious architecture that now needs someone to turn it into production-grade infrastructure.

You'll write code, review architecture, refactor legacy systems, and run standups, often in the same week.

You'll work directly with the CEO and Chief Product Officer, and side by side with the Lead Blockchain Engineer on protocol design, while owning the broader engineering platform yourself.

Why You'll Love It Here

• Direct line to the CEO and CPO, not layers of process between you and the decisions that matter
• Genuine ownership of architecture across backend, APIs, databases, and infrastructure, not just people management
• You're joining pre-scale, on a platform already handling real institutional money, with room to shape what it becomes
• Broad technical scope: distributed systems, event-driven architecture, blockchain integration, security, all under one remit
• A local office is coming, and early hires who can transition to hybrid will shape that too

Who This Isn't For

If you want a pure people-management role where you set direction and others execute, this will frustrate you.

This is for someone who looks at a complicated system and asks "why is this so complicated?", then goes and removes half the codebase themselves.

If you're not comfortable being hands-on in the code while also running the team, this isn't the fit.

About the Role

You'll own the application architecture end to end: backend services, APIs, authentication, database design, event-driven systems, and infrastructure, with the goal of evolving the platform into something that can support institutional financial infrastructure at scale.

Day to day, that means leading the engineering organisation (standups, sprint planning, prioritising technical debt, mentoring developers) while staying hands-on yourself: refactoring legacy code, simplifying architecture, improving test coverage, deployment pipelines, and observability.

You'll also own engineering security practices, from secure coding and authentication to dependency management and code review standards, because financial software doesn't get a pass on discipline.

You'll get deeply familiar with every part of the platform: the smart contract protocol, digital asset lifecycle, vault architecture, secondary marketplace, workflow engine, identity and compliance, and payment orchestration, so you understand how the whole system fits together and can keep improving it.

About the Business

This is a business building the infrastructure layer for programmable private credit, where contracts don't just record agreements, they execute them.

The platform authenticates commercial agreements, manages digital assets backed by real payment obligations, automates servicing, distributes yield, and connects institutional capital to real-world receivables.

It combines blockchain infrastructure, institutional finance, and modern software architecture into a single system built for enterprise adoption, and is now entering its next stage of scale.

What You'll Need

• 8+ years professional software engineering experience, including leading engineering teams, ideally in a startup environment
• Strong TypeScript and Node.js, with Express.js and Next.js
• PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, plus experience with modern API architecture and distributed systems
• Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS, Azure, or GCP), CI/CD pipelines, and solid Git workflows
• Blockchain application experience: EVM ecosystems, wallet integrations, smart contract interactions, RPC providers, indexers, and transaction lifecycle (Solidity expertise not required)

If you want to build production-grade financial infrastructure from the inside, work directly with the CEO and CPO, and stay hands-on in the code while leading the team, this is worth a conversation.

Apply now and reach out to Leigh at [email protected] for a confidential chat. CVs do not need to be up to date to start a conversation.

p.s. this role is officially going live towards the end of august.