Head of Engineering - Custody

Location: Remote, or Relocation to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Reports to: Co-founder / Chief Technology Officer
Type: Full-time

About the Role:
The Head of Engineering will be the operational leader within a pivotal engineering team focusing on scaling and delivering a regulated-grade digital-asset custody platform. You will collaborate closely with the CTO, who directs the technical strategy and architecture, while you manage the operations necessary to attract, develop, and retain top engineering talent. Your role is critical in ensuring the timely delivery of exceptional engineering work and fostering an effective engineering culture within a healthy and specialized team.

What You'll Own:

• Team Build and Hire: Develop and implement hiring strategies, manage compensation and levels frameworks, oversee performance cycles, and conduct headcount planning to support growth into and beyond Series A.
• Engineering Operations: Manage the on-call schedule, incident command protocols, post-mortem culture, code review standards, deployment processes, and ensure a consistent release cadence.
• Delivery: Translate the technical roadmap into actionable quarterly delivery objectives, identifying and mitigating execution risks proactively.
• Audit and Regulatory Engineering Posture: Oversee the successful completion of SOC 2 Type II audits, ensure compliance with SAMA-aligned controls, and prepare for future ISO 27001 and regulatory licensing requirements.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Collaborate with Product, Compliance, Security, and the CTO on roadmap priorities, sequencing, and trade-offs.
• Engineering Culture: Enhance the hiring bar, support internal mobility, foster professional growth, and improve retention to create an environment where senior engineers thrive and want to stay.

This is not a role that aims to fix a broken system; rather, it is about amplifying an already healthy organization.

Must-Haves:

• 7 to 12 years of total software engineering experience, with at least 4 years of specific experience on a custody platform or key management systems within a regulated entity (e.g., custody firm, regulated digital-asset bank, TradFi bank's digital-asset custody arm).
• Expertise in at least one of the following: HSM lifecycle management, MPC/TSS systems, or threshold signing protocols, with the ability to critically review incident reports and drive meaningful discussions.
• Proven experience managing a team of 15 or more engineers.
• Directly hired at least 10 engineers, including one Senior+ leader.
• Owned the engineering side of a SOC 2 Type II or equivalent regulated audit cycle.
• On-call experience in production custody or payments systems, with documented contributions to post-mortems that led to architectural changes.
• A clear leadership philosophy backed by experience; comfortable evaluating and adapting your approach.
• Ability to work closely with a technical CTO who will retain oversight of architecture and technical strategy for the initial period.
• Fluent in English, both written and verbal.

Nice-to-Haves:

• Experience interfacing with regulators as the engineering representative (e.g., SAMA, NYDFS, FCA, MAS, VARA, OCC, FINMA, BoE).
• Contributions to public technical standards, such as RFCs, IACR papers, or trust-center publications.
• Authored open-source projects relevant to custody, such as MPC libraries or key-management tools.
• Experience leading acquisition integrations with M&A engineering diligence and successfully merging teams.
• Competency in Go (primary backend language) and Rust (for custody-critical paths).
• Previous titles such as Head of Engineering or VP Engineering, or an experienced Director of Engineering, Senior Engineering Manager, Principal Engineer, or Staff IC looking to advance.

This Role Is Not Right For You If:

• Your experience is solely in consumer products, dApp UX, frontend, or trading-app engineering without a deep understanding of custody.
• You are seeking a CTO position; the role is directly filled and hands-on.
• Quarterly visits to Riyadh pose a discomfort.
• You need a non-compete waiver longer than six months from any current digital-asset custody role or are apprehensive about the scrutiny associated with running a custody business in the GCC.

Tech Stack:

• Backend: Go, with Rust used for custody-critical paths and some TypeScript.
• Data: Aurora Postgres, ClickHouse, with Temporal for orchestration.
• Cryptography: In-house MPC stack, HSM integrations, multi-chain signing service supporting Bitcoin, Ethereum and L2s, Solana.
• Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions CI, Terraform.
• Security Posture: SOC 2 Type II in progress, SAMA-aligned controls, dual-control workflows, readiness for future ISO 27001 certification.
• AI-Assisted Engineering: AI tooling is an integral part of the engineering process, enhancing coding, code reviews, documentation, and operations, with usage tracked.

Why Join Us:

• Be a foundational part of the GCC's emerging digital-asset infrastructure platform.
• Gain direct ownership of an engineering organization you help to build, with the opportunity for founder-level access.
• Work with a genuine custody platform handling institutional capital, rather than a theoretical project.
• Headquartered in Riyadh, positioned at the center of a significant regional financial expansion.