Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Location: New York City (3 days in office)
Salary: $300,000 + equity
 
About the Company
I’ve just partnered with a fast-growing payments company that has recently closed a $6M Series A round. They automate the messy, high-volume, low-value payouts which includes ingesting payment data (via API, file upload, etc.), verifying recipient identity and letting recipients choose how to get paid. With an established offshore engineering team in Romania (13 engineers: 1 Engineering Manager and 12 ICs), they are now looking for a CTO to lead the next phase of growth—building a world-class engineering organization from the ground up while continuing to evolve our core product.
 
The Role
As CTO, you will define and execute the company’s technical vision. You’ll take ownership of the platform architecture, scale the engineering team, and establish best-in-class development practices. This is a hands-on leadership role requiring both strategic thinking and deep technical execution. You will work closely with the CEO and leadership team to align product and technology with business goals, while acting as the key driver of engineering culture, hiring, and delivery.
 
Key Responsibilities

• Define and lead the long-term technical strategy and architecture for a high-scale payments platform
• Build and scale the engineering organization in NYC, while managing and optimizing the offshore Romania team
• Establish engineering best practices across development, testing, deployment, and security
• Drive execution on the product roadmap, ensuring high-quality and timely delivery
• Lead hiring efforts across all engineering functions, growing the team from the ground up
• Ensure platform scalability, performance, and resilience in a high-throughput environment
• Partner with product and business teams to translate company objectives into technical solutions
• Implement strong data, security, and compliance standards relevant to payments infrastructure
• Mentor and develop engineering leaders and senior contributors

 
Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant leadership experience
• Prior experience in the payments industry or high-volume trading environments (low latency, high reliability systems)
• Proven track record of scaling engineering teams and building organizations from early stage
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, high-performance architectures, and cloud infrastructure
• Experience managing or working with offshore engineering teams
• Strong product mindset with the ability to balance speed and technical excellence
• Hands-on technical capability; comfortable diving into code and architecture when needed
• Excellent communication and leadership skills

 
Nice to Have

• Experience at a Series A/B startup or similar growth-stage company
• Familiarity with regulatory and compliance requirements in fintech (e.g., PCI-DSS)
• Background in building real-time data systems or financial infrastructure

 
What They Offer

• Competitive salary up to $300,000 + meaningful equity
• Opportunity to shape the technical foundation of a high-growth fintech company
• Direct impact on company strategy and product direction
• Hybrid work model (3 days per week in NYC office)
• Collaborative, ambitious, and fast-moving environment