Description:

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