Blockchain Architect

We're looking for a hands-on Blockchain Architect to design and lead the build-out of our Stablecoin and Tokenisation platform and crypto trading capabilities (CEX/DEX connectivity, liquidity, and settlement). You'll drive protocol selection, smart contract architecture, wallet/custody strategy, interoperability, and integration with risk/compliance, treasury, and market infrastructure, delivering high security, regulatory alignment, and scale.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Platform and Protocol Architecture:

• Own end-to-end architecture for stablecoin issuance, treasury, and lifecycle (mint/burn, reserves, redemptions, fee mechanics).
• Select and justify chains/L2s (EVM, Cosmos SDK/IBC, Solana, enterprise/permissioned) and interoperability approaches (native deployment, IBC, cross-chain messaging/bridges).
• Define smart contract patterns (upgradeability, access control, pausability, circuit breakers), token standards (ERC20/677/777/4626), and event schemas.

Stablecoin/Tokenization Design and Treasury:

• Design reserve backing model (fiat-backed with custodial attestation, crypto- collateralized, or hybrid) and proof-of-reserves/attestation workflows.
• Integrate oracles (price, FX, interest rates) with anti-manipulation controls (deviation thresholds, TWAPs, circuit breakers).
• Build treasury operations: issuance/redemption flows, fees, rebalancing, settlement windows, liquidity waterfalls, reconciliation.

Trading, Liquidity and Market Connectivity:

• Architect connectivity to exchanges (CEX REST/WebSocket/FIX), DEXs(AMM/RFQ), and liquidity providers.
• Design/guide Smart Order Routing (SOR), execution policies (VWAP/TWAP/IOC), slippage/latency thresholds, fee optimisation, and gas-aware routing.
• Define data pipelines for ticks, order books, and trades; ensure market data integrity and replay/simulation environments.

Security, Custody and Key Management:

• Lead wallet architecture (hot/warm/cold segregation), MPC/HSM strategy, and key ceremonies with dual control and audit trails.
• Mandate secure SDLC: threat modelling, formal verification targets, static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing, dependency provenance.
• Own incident response plans: killswitches, circuit breakers, pause and recovery, and postmortem processes.

Compliance, Risk and Controls:

• Embed KYC/AML, sanctions screening (OFAC), Travel Rule flows, and transaction risk scoring (on-chain analytics).
• Align with applicable frameworks (e. g., MiCA, FATF recommendations, local VASP regimes).
• Coordinate with Legal/Compliance on policy-as-code controls.
• Design auditability (immutable logs, merkleized state proofs, attestations) and data retention.

Interoperability and Bridges:

• Evaluate IBC, generalised messaging (e. g., LayerZero), and bridge options (trust assumptions, validator sets, light client models).
• Define patterns for cross-chain mints/burns, canonical token mapping, replay protection, and exit/rollback strategies.

Reliability, Observability and DevOps:

• Establish SLOs/SLIs (issuance latency, confirmation finality, reconciliation accuracy).
• Set up observability (metrics, logs, traces, on-chain event monitors, MEV/sandwich detection).
• CI/CD for contracts and infra, env promotion (dev/test/stage/mainnet), canary releases, infra as code (Terraform).

Leadership and Collaboration:

• Partner with Product, Treasury, Compliance, Security, and Trading to roadmap delivery.
• Mentor engineers on smart contracts, cryptography basics, and blockchain performance trade-offs.
• Vendor/platform evaluation and build-vs-buy decisions.

Requirements:

• 12-15+ years in software engineering with 4-6+ years building blockchain systems at scale.
• Hands-on smart contracts in Solidity (EVM) and/or Rust (Cosmos SDK/Solana); deep knowledge of token standards, proxies, and upgrade patterns.
• Proven architecture of stablecoin/tokenization components (issuance, reserves, oracles, attestation) or trading systems (exchange connectivity, SOR, market data).
• Strong grasp of custody/MPC/HSM, wallet segregation, and key lifecycle management.
• Security-first mindset: threat modelling, audits, formal methods/fuzzing exposure.
• Experience with cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP), containerization, infra as code, and event/data pipelines (Kafka/PubSub).
• Practical knowledge of KYC/AML/Travel Rule, sanctions screening, and blockchain analytics tooling.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with interoperability (IBC, Axelar, Wormhole, LayerZero) and rollups (OP Stack, Arbitrum, zk).
• Knowledge of market microstructure, MEV dynamics, gas strategies, simulation/backtesting.
• Payment rails, on/off-ramps, fiat treasury ops, reconciliation with ledgers/ERP.
• Certifications: CFA/FMI (for treasury), CAMS, CISM/CISSP, CKA, or Ethereum Developer credentials.
• Prior work in highly regulated fintech/FSI environments.
• Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.