Job Description: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Location: US (Remote)
Type: Full-time (Executive)
Reports to: CEO (and works closely with CISO/Compliance)
Role Summary
We are seeking a hands-on CTO to lead technology strategy and execution for a production-grade Liquidity Trading ATS platform with crypto trading capabilities. The CTO will own platform architecture, engineering execution, reliability, and scaling the organization to deliver in a regulated environment. This role requires deep experience building and operating real-money trading systems and leading teams through rapid growth while maintaining rigorous controls and uptime.
Key Responsibilities
Technology & Architecture
- Define and own the end-to-end technology strategy and target architecture for an ATS + crypto trading platform.
- Drive an event-driven microservices architecture (Node.js primary; selective Python/Go services) with clear service boundaries, reliability, and observability.
- Establish standards for low-latency real-time systems: market data ingestion, order lifecycle, risk checks, trade reporting, and post-trade workflows.
Engineering Leadership
- Build and lead high-performing engineering teams (frontend, backend, platform/SRE, QA).
- Set delivery discipline: roadmap execution, design reviews, coding standards, release governance, incident management.
- Implement a strong vendor strategy (if applicable): staff augmentation vs outsourcing, clear RACI, performance metrics, and accountability.
Security, Compliance & Risk
- Collaborate with Security/Compliance to embed secure SDLC, auditability, and control evidence into engineering workflows.
- Ensure strong identity/access controls, secrets management, encryption, logging, data retention, and incident response readiness.
- Ensure the platform supports regulatory and operational requirements (Broker-dealer/TA/ATS expectations, surveillance hooks, audit trails).
Operational Excellence
- Own production health: SLIs/SLOs, performance/throughput targets, capacity planning, DR/BCP readiness, on-call and postmortems.
- Drive scalability, cost control, and technical debt reduction without slowing delivery.
Product Partnership
- Collaborate with Product to shape platform capabilities, UX expectations for trading workflows, and roadmap prioritization.
- Translate business needs into measurable engineering outcomes.
Required Qualifications
- 12+ years engineering experience with 5+ years leading engineering organizations (VP Eng / CTO / Head of Engineering).
- Direct experience building and operating trading platforms (brokerage, exchange, ATS, market making, or crypto trading venues) in production.
- Strong understanding of trading concepts: order types, routing/matching/integration, fills/cancels, positions, risk controls, fees, settlement/post-trade.
- Experience with microservices, event-driven systems, and real-time streaming (WebSockets, Kafka/NATS/etc.).
- Strong understanding of cloud-native architecture, observability, and reliability engineering.
- Proven ability to lead in regulated environments and build audit-ready systems (FINRA/SEC/CFTC-aligned controls, SOC2/ISO processes).
Strongly Preferred
- Experience at/with firms like TD Ameritrade, Robinhood, Coinbase, or comparable broker-dealers/exchanges/ATS providers.
- Knowledge of broker-dealer (BD) and transfer agent (TA) functions and how these intersect with trading, corporate actions, and customer servicing.
- Experience integrating custody/wallet providers, KYC/KYB, payment rails, and compliance surveillance tooling.
Leadership Profile
- Hands-on, decisive, and accountable; can go deep technically and also scale teams and process.
- Sets a high bar for quality, security, and reliability while moving fast.
- Communicates clearly with executives, engineers, auditors, and external partners.
