Fractional Head of Engineering

About us We are an early-stage fintech building institutional-grade infrastructure for short-duration business credit: an AI-assisted underwriting and risk engine, plus the rails to package that credit and distribute it to institutional investors. We are pre-pilot and moving toward our first live transaction. Small senior team, direct access to the CEO, and real scope to set technical direction. The role We are looking for a hands-on fractional CTO to own technical strategy and architecture as we stand up the pilot. You will: - Own the end-to-end architecture: data ingestion, ML/scoring, APIs, and the issuance and servicing layer. - Make build-vs-buy calls on core infrastructure (custody, compliance and screening, tokenization rails, data vendors). - Set the security, auditability, and compliance posture needed to pass institutional and regulatory diligence. - Guide and review the work of a small technical team (contractors today). - Turn product and regulatory requirements into a pragmatic, shippable plan. Required - 8+ years in engineering, including senior leadership (CTO, VP Eng, or a staff/principal who has owned architecture end to end). - Shipped production systems in fintech or financial services: payments, lending, credit, capital markets, or banking infrastructure. - Strong system design across data pipelines, backend services, and APIs. - Track record in regulated, high-trust environments (security, audit, SOC 2 or equivalent). - Comfortable being hands-on and setting direction in an early team with limited resources. Nice to have - Tokenization or DeFi experience: smart contracts (Solidity), ERC-4626 or similar vault standards, stablecoin settlement, permissioned/compliant token transfers, account abstraction. - Real-world asset (RWA) or tokenized private credit exposure. - ML applied to credit or risk (scoring, fraud detection, document extraction). - Standing up SOC 2 or regulatory readiness from scratch. Engagement - Fractional, roughly [10 to 20] hours per week to start, fully remote. - Initial [3 to 6] month engagement with strong potential to extend or expand. - Reports directly to the CEO. - Rate: [your range], depending on experience. To apply, please include - A short note on a financial or regulated system you architected end to end, and your specific role in it. - One build-vs-buy decision you made on core infrastructure and how you reasoned about it. - Any relevant tokenization or DeFi work (links or repos welcome). - Your availability and typical weekly hours.