Founding Technical Lead – Crypto Wallet & Card pay

About the Role: We are looking for a hands-on technical leader to build our internal engineering team and lead the development of our proprietary crypto wallet and card payment platform. This person will own the technical roadmap, architecture, team hiring, vendor transition, and delivery of our in-house platform. Responsibilities: Build and lead the internal engineering team. Design the technical architecture for a crypto wallet and payment platform. Lead backend, wallet, blockchain, and card payment integrations. Create a roadmap to reduce dependency on external development vendors. Oversee integrations with card issuers, payment processors, exchanges, liquidity providers, and KYC/AML vendors. Establish engineering standards, code review processes, security practices, documentation, and deployment workflows. Work closely with founders, product, compliance, and operations teams. Ensure the platform is scalable, secure, auditable, and ready for financial operations. Requirements: 6+ years of software engineering experience. 2+ years in a technical leadership role. Strong backend engineering background. Experience with fintech, wallets, payments, crypto, or digital assets. Practical knowledge of blockchain integrations and wallet infrastructure. Experience with cloud infrastructure, APIs, databases, security, and system design. Ability to hire, mentor, and manage engineers. Strong understanding of KYC/AML, transaction monitoring, and secure financial systems. Experience working with third-party vendors and gradually replacing outsourced systems with internal capabilities. Nice to Have: Experience with card issuing platforms or Visa/Mastercard processors. Experience with MPC/HSM/key management. Experience building custodial or hybrid crypto wallets. Previous startup or founding engineer experience. Experience in regulated fintech environments.