Description :

Role : 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 :

1. Highly available

2. Low latency and real-time capable

3. 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 :

1. Authentication & authorization frameworks

2. Data protection & encryption strategies

3. Ensure compliance with :

4. OWASP standards

5 API security best practices

4. Crisis Management & RCA :

- Take ownership during production outages and incidents

- Perform fast and accurate Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

- Drive :

1. Immediate resolution

2. 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