Chief Technology Officer

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) / Head of Engineering – Trading & Real-Time Systems

Role Overview

We are looking for a hands-on, high-impact Engineering Leader to own and drive the entire engineering function. This role demands a rare combination of deep technical expertise, architectural vision, and execution excellence.

The candidate will be responsible for building secure, scalable, low-latency, real-time systems in a stock broking / trading environment, while leading teams and solving mission-critical production challenges.

This is not a purely managerial role — the ideal candidate should be a builder, debugger, and decision-maker.

Key Responsibilities

1. Engineering Leadership & Ownership

• Own end-to-end engineering delivery across backend and frontend systems
• Lead, mentor, and scale multiple engineering teams
• Establish strong engineering culture, processes, and accountability
• Drive high standards in:
• Code quality
• System design
• Architecture governance

2. Architecture & System Design

• Design highly scalable, fault-tolerant microservices architectures
• Ensure systems are:
• Highly available
• Low latency and real-time capable
• Extensible and future-ready
• Standardize architecture across legacy and modern systems
• Drive organization-wide architectural decisions

3. Security-First Engineering

• Enforce secure-by-design principles
• Implement:
• Authentication & authorization frameworks
• Data protection & encryption strategies
• Ensure compliance with:
• OWASP standards
• API security best practices

4. Crisis Management & RCA

• Take ownership during production outages and incidents
• Perform fast and accurate Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
• Drive:
• Immediate resolution
• Long-term architectural fixes
• Build resilient systems to minimize downtime impact

5. AI-First Engineering Culture

• Drive adoption of AI across engineering workflows:
• Faster development
• Intelligent debugging
• Automation
• Enable teams to leverage:
• AI copilots
• Code assistants
• Improve productivity and engineering velocity

6. Distributed & Event-Driven Systems

• Architect systems using:
• Kafka / event streaming
• Asynchronous communication patterns
• Ensure:
• Data consistency
• Fault tolerance
• Real-time processing reliability

7. DevOps & Reliability

• Oversee:
• CI/CD pipelines
• Containerization (Docker)
• Observability (logs, metrics, tracing)
• Ensure:
• High uptime
• System resilience
• Performance optimization

Core Technical Expertise

Backend & Architecture

• Strong hands-on expertise in:
• Core Java + Spring Boot (preferred) or equivalent
• Deep expertise in:
• Microservices architecture
• Distributed systems design
• Performance optimization

Databases

• Strong experience with:
• PostgreSQL / MySQL
• MongoDB / NoSQL
• Expertise in:
• Data modeling
• Query optimization
• High-volume data handling

Messaging & Streaming

• Must-have:
• Kafka
• Strong understanding of:
• Event-driven architecture
• Real-time data pipelines

Security

• Strong knowledge of:
• JWT
• OAuth2
• API security
• Encryption practices
• Experience building secure systems at scale

DevOps

• Hands-on experience with:
• Docker
• CI/CD pipelines
• Monitoring tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK

AI Enablement

• Practical experience with:
• AI coding tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot)
• Proven ability to drive AI adoption within engineering teams

Leadership Expectations

• Extreme ownership mindset
• Security-first thinking in every decision
• AI-first approach to productivity
• Strong decision-making under pressure
• Hands-on leadership style with deep code reviews and technical involvement
• Fast problem solver and crisis handler
• High discipline, punctuality, and accountability
• Strong product and business understanding
• Proven ability to mentor and grow engineering teams

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Experience leading backend and frontend teams for:
• High-scale systems
• Real-time / low-latency platforms
• Background in:
• Trading / fintech / brokerage systems preferred
• Proven track record of:
• Managing production-critical environments
• Handling outages and system failures effectively
• Ability to balance:
• Speed
• Stability
• Security
• Strong cross-functional leadership across diverse tech stacks

Success Metrics

• System uptime & reliability
• Incident response & RCA efficiency
• Scalability and architecture quality
• Engineering productivity & code quality
• AI adoption across teams
• Reduction in production issues

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications

• Experience with Kubernetes
• Exposure to distributed tracing systems
• Background in low-latency trading platforms
• Knowledge of High-Frequency Trading (HFT) systems