Director of Technology (CTO)

About Kafaa Capital:

Kafaa Capital is a CMA-licensed investment platform in Saudi Arabia, specializing in Shariah-compliant sukuk-based investment and financing solutions. Headquartered in Riyadh, we are developing next-generation digital investment infrastructure with a strong focus on transparency, compliance, and innovation. We are looking for a Director of Technology (CTO-equivalent) to own our technology strategy, architecture, and engineering execution, ensuring our platform remains scalable, secure, and reliable.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and execute the technology strategy, system architecture, and engineering standards across backend, web, mobile, and data integrations.

• Lead system modernization, refactoring, performance optimization, and establish robust software engineering practices.

• Translate business goals into actionable technical roadmaps, balancing new feature delivery, technical debt, and security priorities.

• Lead end-to-end technical delivery of core platform initiatives, including onboarding, KYC, payment flows, open banking, and investment lifecycles.

• Own cloud infrastructure, environments, CI/CD pipelines, disaster recovery, and operational performance across development and production.

• Establish observability, logging, and incident response standards to ensure high platform availability and reliability.

• Own technical readiness and compliance for CMA cybersecurity guidelines, NCA Essential Cybersecurity Controls, PDPL, and AML/KYC operational controls.

• Manage annual external penetration testing, vulnerability remediation, third-party vendor risks, and audit evidence packs.

• Lead technical integrations with banks, payment gateways, identity verification providers, and financial market infrastructure.

• Build, mentor, and lead the internal engineering team, while managing external contract delivery partners to maintain high performance standards.

Qualifications & Requirements:

• Saudi national (Mandatory).

• CMA 1 Certification (General Securities Qualification Certificate from CMA) - Mandatory.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.

• Minimum 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including hands-on production work.

• Minimum 3+ years in an engineering leadership role with direct responsibility for hiring, team management, and delivery.

• Proven track record of owning complex systems end-to-end (architecture, delivery, and operations) in fast-paced environments.

• Strong command of system design, scalability, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and production monitoring.

• Professional working proficiency in both Arabic and English.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Previous fintech experience, particularly with regulated financial platforms, onboarding/KYC, payment flows, or investment products.

• Hands-on experience integrating with banking networks, payment systems, and third-party financial data providers.

• Proven experience guiding security and compliance programs through external audits or regulatory inspections.

• Experience modernizing legacy codebases and leading architecture, data, or operational migrations.

• Strong familiarity with Agile methodologies tailored for fast-moving engineering teams.

Key Competencies:

• Ownership mindset and high accountability with the ability to execute under ambiguity.

• Exceptional communication skills, capable of bridging technical details for non-technical executive stakeholders.

• Systems thinking, pragmatic decision-making, and risk-based prioritization.