Chief Technology Officer

Company: ZERO13

Location: India

Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

Employment type: Permanent

Package: Competitive base salary, performance-related bonus and equity/options

Applicants must have the right to work in India. International travel may be required.

Role Overview

ZERO13 is seeking an experienced and commercially-minded Chief Technology Officer to lead its technology strategy, engineering organisation, platform development and operational resilience. This is a company-wide appointment, not a regional technology lead: the role is based in India because that is where ZERO13 is building its engineering organisation.

The CTO will take ownership of an existing technology estate and lead its development into a secure, resilient and scalable institutional fintech platform-as-a-service.

A key part of the role will be managing the technology aspects of ZERO13s separation from GMEX, including establishing clear ownership of systems, services, intellectual property, environments, documentation and operational responsibilities.

The CTO will also act as ZERO13s senior technology authority in the market, supporting the product and commercial functions in shaping technically credible solutions and advising the Executive Team on the practical application of blockchain, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, including within ZERO13’s own engineering practice.

This is an executive leadership role requiring strong technical credibility. The CTO must be able to challenge architecture and engineering decisions without becoming the principal developer or a bottleneck for the team.

Within an agreed plan and budget, architecture, technology and vendor selection, hiring and the structure of the technology organisation are the CTO’s decisions. The product roadmap and its priorities sit with the product function; commercial strategy and the overall budget envelope sit with the CEO.

The role is expected to lead and build a multidisciplinary technology function, growing to approximately 20 people, covering:

- Solution architecture.
- System security.
- Java engineering.
- Blockchain and emerging technologies (including AI).
- React and Node.js GUI development.
- DevOps and cloud infrastructure.
- Quality engineering and test automation.
- Data engineering and data modelling.

Objectives The CTO will be responsible for:

- Successfully delivering, operating and enhancing ZERO13’s technology as an institutional fintech platform-as-a-service.
- Defining and executing the technology roadmap required to support ZERO13’s product and commercial strategy.
- Building and leading an effective technology organisation in India.
- Establishing ZERO13’s technology independence from GMEX while preserving valuable integrations and commercial relationships.
- Maintaining a practical understanding of developments in blockchain, artificial intelligence and related technologies, advising the Executive Team on where they can create genuine business value, and applying them within ZERO13’s own engineering practice.
- Supporting the development of ZERO13’s commercial pipeline by shaping credible technical solutions for prospective customers and partners.
- Supporting customer, investor, regulator and partner engagements with technical authority, including technical due diligence, architecture and security assurance, and the technical content of demonstrations and workshops.

Key Responsibilities

Technology Strategy and Architecture

- Define ZERO13’s technology strategy and translate the agreed product and business roadmap into a realistic, sequenced technology roadmap.
- Own the architecture and the platform data model across trading, clearing, settlement, custody, registry, blockchain, portals, data and external integrations, so that the platform presents a single consolidated source of truth.
- Ensure platforms are secure, scalable, resilient, interoperable and maintainable, and set the non-functional standards for performance, availability and recovery that the platform is built to and measured against.
- Establish clear architecture governance, engineering standards and system ownership.
- Identify and manage technical debt, operational risks and critical technology dependencies.
- Evaluate new technologies objectively and recommend their use where they provide a clear commercial or operational benefit.

Engineering and Delivery

- Take executive responsibility for the delivery, enhancement and technical operation of ZERO13’s platforms, including availability, release management, monitoring,



production support and incident management.
- Work as a peer to the Product, Commercial, Operations and Compliance functions, converting agreed business and product requirements into technical designs, estimates and deliverables, and returning a clear view on feasibility, options and risk.
- Establish effective processes covering technical analysis, architecture , development, testing, release and production support.
- Ensure delivery plans are realistic, transparent and aligned with available resources.
- Allocate engineering capacity across platform development, customer commitments, regulatory requirements, production support and technical-debt reduction, and make the trade-offs visible rather than absorbing them.
- Improve delivery predictability, software quality, release discipline and operational ownership.
- Ensure defects and incidents are investigated, addressed and reviewed with full documentation throughout.
- Set and lead ZERO13’s approach to applying AI within the engineering process: an explicit position on approved tools and data, practical adoption across analysis, prototyping, development, testing and documentation, and the controls that go with it, including human review and automated security scanning of generated code.
- Measure the adoption, delivery impact and cost of AI-assisted development, and turn what works into shared engineering practice rather than leaving it to individual habit.
- Define and stand behind the service levels ZERO13 commits to customers, and ensure the platform is instrumented to evidence them.

Team Leadership

- Build, lead and develop ZERO13’s technology organisation in India.
- Assess the existing team structure, skills and capacity and define the organisation required to support the business roadmap.
- Recruit and develop strong leaders across architecture, engineering, data, DevOps, cybersecurity and quality engineering.
- Establish clear roles, responsibilities and accountability across the technology function.
- Create a culture of technical excellence, constructive challenge, customer focus, documentation and knowledge sharing.
- Reduce dependency on individual employees, contractors or suppliers.
- Manage technology headcount, budgets, suppliers and external development partners.
- Develop a leadership bench with real depth, including succession for the key roles in the technology function.

Security and Operational Resilience

- Ensure ZERO13’s platforms meet institutional standards for security, availability, performance and resilience.
- Establish effective controls covering secure software development, including AI-assisted development, access management , vulnerability management, data protection and third-party risk.
- Implement appropriate DevSecOps, automated testing, deployment, monitoring and observability practices.
- Define production-support, incident-management and escalation arrangements covering relevant market and customer operating hours.
- Establish and regularly test business-continuity and disaster-recovery capabilities.
- Ensure material technology risks and incidents are reported clearly to the CEO and Board.
- Own the technology elements of ZERO13’s separation and exit arrangements from the shared group provider, and prove them by test.

Customer, Regulator and Partner Engagement

- Work with the Commercial and Product functions to shape technically credible and commercially viable customer solutions.
- Contribute the technical content to proposals, solution designs and customer workshops led by the Commercial and Product functions, and lead technical due diligence on prospective commitments, within an agreed capacity, escalating where pipeline demand threatens delivery commitments.
- Provide the technical depth in platform demonstrations where the audience requires it, covering architecture, security, integration and performance.
- Explain the platform’s architecture, security, resilience and capabilities clearly to customers, partners, investors and regulators.
- Assess the cost, complexity, dependencies and risks of prospective commitments before they are agreed, and state plainly what can and cannot be committed to.




- Flag where a customer-specific commitment would create one-off development, unsupportable variants or technical debt, so that the product function can decide whether to build a reusable capability instead.
- Act as ZERO13’s senior technology authority with customers, regulators, investors, strategic partners and suppliers, including technical vendor selection and contract negotiation.
- Lead ZERO13’s response to institutional customers’ and regulators’ technology due diligence, security questionnaires and audits.

Essential Experience

Candidates should demonstrate

- Significant experience as a CTO, Technology Director, Head of Engineering or senior technology leader.
- Experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams of comparable scale.
- A track record of hiring senior engineers and leaders, including in competitive markets for senior engineering talent.
- Solid experience in financial-market infrastructure and/or B2B fintech, including areas such as exchanges, clearing, settlement, custody, depositories, payments, capital markets and digital assets.
- A strong software-engineering background in high-integrity transaction systems, preferably including Java-based distributed systems, with the breadth to lead beyond a single language or stack.
- Direct experience with distributed-ledger or tokenisation technology, sufficient to own that side of the architecture rather than delegate it.
- Practical, hands-on experience applying artificial intelligence, both within an engineering organisation and in the product itself.
- Experience delivering and operating secure, highly available production platforms.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure, DevOps, cybersecurity and operational resilience.
- Experience integrating complex internal and external systems using APIs, messaging or event-driven architectures.
- Experience managing technology roadmaps, budgets, suppliers and competing business priorities.
- Experience supporting customer proposals, technical demonstrations and solution design.
- The ability to communicate effectively with engineers, executives, customers, regulators and Boards.
- Excellent written and spoken English.

Desirable Experience The following would be advantageous:

- Experience supporting both traditional and digital financial instruments.
- Experience with exchange, clearing, settlement, registry or custody technology.
- Experience leading a technology separation, carve-out or transition from a group technology provider.
- Experience building or scaling engineering teams in India.
- Experience with React, Node.js and customer-facing fintech platforms.
- Knowledge of sustainable finance, carbon markets or real-world-asset tokenisation.
- Experience applying artificial intelligence to reconciliation, anomaly detection, document processing or data quality.
- Experience engaging with financial regulators or supporting formal technology due diligence.

Education A degree in computer science, software engineering or a related discipline is desirable. Candidates with equivalent skilled experience and a strong record of technology leadership will also be considered. The quality and relevance of the candidate’s experience are more important than attendance at a particular university.

Leadership Profile The successful candidate will be:

- Strategic but pragmatic.
- Technically credible without being overly hands-on.
- Commercially aware and delivery focused.
- Comfortable taking ownership of an established but evolving platform.
- Able to explain complex technology clearly to non-technical audiences.
- Disciplined about security, resilience and operational accountability.
- Willing to challenge unrealistic assumptions and commitments.
- Able to build strong teams and delegate effectively.
- Transparent with the CEO and Board about progress, costs and risks.
- Motivated by building a durable technology organisation and commercially successful platform.
- Able to solve problems for the company rather than defend the technology function.
- Focused on leverage rather than headcount, building the smallest capable team rather than the largest.
- Willing to understand the existing platform and team before changing them, and to make durable changes rather than fast ones.
- Able to work constructively with the current group technology organisation while ending ZERO13’s dependency on it.
- Calm and decisive in a live production incident that has customer and regulatory consequences.
- Personally fluent with modern engineering tooling, including AI, rather than delegating it.

📌 Chief Technology Officer (Navi Mumbai)
🏢 ZERO13
📍 Navi Mumbai