Founding Head of Engineering

 Founding Head of Engineering

Lead the development of a regulated digital-finance platform spanning mobile wallets, cloud infrastructure, payments, and next-generation financial products.

Location: Remote (U.S.-based)

 Employment Type: Full-Time

 Reports To: CTO/CISO

 Compensation: $160,000–$220,000 (DOE)

 Hours: 40 hours per week

 Start Date: ASAP

About the Company

Our client is a newly established U.S.-regulated financial institution building next-generation digital finance infrastructure, including digital asset, payments, wallet, treasury, compliance, and transaction-processing capabilities.

Backed by a well-established international financial services organization, the company offers a rare opportunity to join at the ground-floor stage while benefiting from the resources and long-term commitment of an established parent organization.

Operating with startup agility and entrepreneurial energy, the organization is focused on creating secure, scalable, and highly regulated financial technology platforms designed to meet stringent regulatory, operational, and security standards.

Position Overview

We are conducting a confidential search for a Founding Head of Engineering to lead the architecture, engineering governance, platform operations, and technology execution of a regulated digital finance platform.

This individual will serve as the company's senior internal engineering leader, overseeing the full technology stack, including mobile applications, backend services, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, vendor-delivered solutions, production operations, and engineering standards.

The ideal candidate combines strategic technical leadership with hands-on engineering expertise and thrives in startup environments where processes, standards, and infrastructure are being built from the ground up.

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Leadership & Architecture

Own the end-to-end engineering architecture across:

Mobile applications

Backend services and APIs

Cloud infrastructure

Internal operational platforms

Third-party and partner-delivered solutions

Establish engineering best practices, development standards, and governance frameworks.

Partner closely with executive leadership to translate business objectives and regulatory requirements into actionable engineering roadmaps.

Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

Lead the design and governance of cloud environments, including:

Identity and access management (IAM)

Secrets management

Monitoring and logging

Networking

Data protection and backup strategies

Disaster recovery capabilities

Define and enforce Infrastructure-as-Code standards, preferably utilizing Terraform.

Ensure highly available, scalable, and secure cloud architecture.

DevOps, CI/CD & Release Management

Build and oversee secure software delivery pipelines.

Define release controls, deployment standards, rollback procedures, and change-management processes.

Establish production-readiness criteria and deployment governance frameworks.

Reliability, Security & Operational Excellence

Implement observability practices across logs, metrics, alerts, traces, and dashboards.

Establish incident response processes, escalation procedures, runbooks, and post-incident review practices.

Partner with compliance and security stakeholders to ensure engineering controls align with regulatory requirements.

Develop audit-ready operational documentation and evidence collection processes.

Vendor Governance

Provide technical leadership and oversight for external engineering and infrastructure partners.

Review architecture designs, technical deliverables, and production readiness.

Monitor delivery quality, identify risks, and drive remediation efforts where necessary.

Organizational Growth

Serve as a founding member of the leadership team.

Help establish future engineering hiring plans, organizational structure, and technical culture.

Communicate engineering progress, risks, and strategic recommendations to executive stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

10+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, cloud engineering, DevOps, SRE, or related technical disciplines.

5+ years of experience leading architecture, engineering standards, technical delivery, or production operations.

Deep expertise with AWS cloud services and cloud-native architectures.

Strong background in:

Backend systems and APIs

Distributed systems

Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform preferred)

CI/CD pipelines

Observability and monitoring

Production support and incident management

Experience operating within regulated, security-sensitive, or audit-focused environments.

Demonstrated success managing engineering delivery through internal teams and external technology partners.

Strong communication skills with both technical and executive audiences.

Ability to review and evaluate architecture, infrastructure, deployment pipelines, cloud security controls, and production readiness.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience within fintech, banking, payments, financial infrastructure, digital assets, trust services, or regulated SaaS environments.

Familiarity with:

Stablecoins

Digital wallets

Blockchain infrastructure

Custody platforms

Real-time transaction processing

Experience supporting React Native and TypeScript-based mobile applications.

Knowledge of regulatory and control frameworks such as:

OCC

FFIEC

NIST

SOC 2

GLBA

Experience with AWS services such as:

ECS/Fargate

Lambda

Aurora PostgreSQL

API Gateway

EventBridge

SQS/SNS

CloudWatch

OpenTelemetry

AWS certifications are a plus.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $160,000–$220,000

Fully remote within the United States

Opportunity to join a founding leadership team

Direct interaction with executive leadership and key stakeholders

Significant career growth potential as the organization scales

Employee benefits package currently being finalized

No current bonus or commission structure

Ideal Candidate

Entrepreneurial and comfortable in a startup environment

Flexible and adaptable to changing priorities

Highly accountable and hands-on

Capable of balancing strategic leadership with technical depth

Experienced in building processes, controls, and infrastructure from the ground up

Motivated by the opportunity to help create a regulated financial platform at an early stage

Confidential Search Notice

Due to the strategic nature of this opportunity, company details will be shared with qualified candidates during the interview process. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States and able to maintain meaningful overlap with U.S. business hours. Occasional travel may be required.

To apply, please email your resume to xjiang@pasona.com