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
- Solid 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

📌 Engineering Head (Mumbai)
🏢 Intellectual Capital HR Consulting
📍 Mumbai