Chief Technology Officer

Location

:

Remote, the candidate can be based anywhere in the United States

Employment Type:

Full-time

Who we are

Finternet Labs is building the next generation of financial infrastructure.

If you look at global finance today, it resembles the internet before TCP/IP: fragmented systems, expensive integrations, slow settlement, and limited interoperability. Every institution operates in its own silo, which makes innovation hard and access uneven.

We’re here to change that.

Just as the internet transformed how information moves, Finternet is about

enabling true interoperability across financial systems

, at global scale, while respecting regulation, national sovereignty and compliance requirements.

The vision is bold, but clear:

• No single entity controls the infrastructure
• Every financial institution operates on shared, interoperable rails
• End users access financial services through namespaces, much like web pages
• The experience feels consistent, no matter where you are in the world

At Finternet, we are reimagining how digital systems interoperate, bridging the reliability of Web2 scale with the trust guarantees of Web3\.

Our leadership (including Dr. Pramod Varma and Mr. Nandan Nilekani)

has built UPI, Aadhaar, and other population-scale financial systems - digital public infrastructure serving over 1\.4 billion people

• and is now creating the next generation of open protocols that can operate across banks, blockchains, and sovereign networks.

The Opportunity

Finternet is building the

foundational infrastructure layer for programmable value

.

We are seeking a

Chief Technology Officer

to architect and lead the development of the platform powering this ecosystem.

This role sits at the intersection of

distributed systems engineering, financial infrastructure, and open digital public infrastructure

. The CTO will design and scale systems capable of supporting

programmable money, tokenized assets, AI-enabled financial agents, and cross-border financial interoperability.

You will lead the architecture of infrastructure designed to be trusted by:

• Governments

• Banks and financial institutions

• Corporates building financial services

• Regulators overseeing financial networks

• Developers building on open financial rails

This is not a traditional product CTO role.

It is an opportunity to design

national- and global-scale financial infrastructure.

What You’ll Do

Financial Infrastructure Architecture

• Design and implement the core programmable value network supporting fiat currencies, stablecoins, CBDCs, and tokenized assets.

• Architect distributed ledger systems capable of high-throughput, low-latency settlement with deterministic finality.

• Define canonical asset models enabling programmable money, tokenized instruments, and conditional disbursement frameworks.

Cross-Border Financial Systems

• Build infrastructure enabling cross-border settlement corridors and real-time financial coordination.

• Architect liquidity-aware routing systems and reconciliation frameworks supporting institutional-grade financial operations.

• Enable interoperability across banks, payment networks, digital asset systems, and national financial infrastructures.

AI-Native Financial Infrastructure

• Design secure execution environments for AI-powered financial agents operating within policy-bound frameworks.

• Build systems that allow automated transaction orchestration while maintaining auditability and regulatory compliance.

• Implement safeguards to prevent systemic risk and ensure deterministic oversight of AI-driven financial activity.

Platform Engineering \& Reliability

• Establish infrastructure standards for security, observability, resilience, and fault tolerance.

• Architect systems designed for high reliability (≥ 99\.99% uptime) and national-scale transaction volumes.

• Implement strong cryptographic key management, zero-trust architecture, and institutional-grade audit systems.

Engineering Leadership

• Build and lead a world-class team of distributed systems engineers and financial infrastructure specialists.

• Foster a culture of precision, reliability, and security-first engineering practices.

• Bridge expertise across Web2-scale infrastructure, financial systems, and digital asset technologies.

Who You Are

• 12–20\+ years of experience in distributed systems engineering or infrastructure architecture.

• Proven track record designing high-throughput, mission-critical infrastructure systems.

• Experience building or scaling platforms used by millions of users or institutional-scale financial systems.

• Strong understanding of financial infrastructure concepts, including clearing, settlement, liquidity flows, and counterparty risk.

• Experience with regulated financial systems, payment infrastructure, or large-scale financial platforms.

• Hands-on expertise with modern infrastructure stacks such as Go, Rust, or Java, event-driven architectures, distributed consensus systems, and cloud-native infrastructure.

• Experience integrating with financial systems such as banking APIs, payment networks, or digital asset platforms.

• Strong architectural judgment with the ability to balance scalability, security, and regulatory compliance.

• Exceptional leadership and communication skills, able to align engineers, regulators, and financial institutions around complex infrastructure systems.

• Bonus: experience with tokenized assets, CBDCs, stablecoin infrastructure, national payment systems, or open financial protocols.

Compensation \& Benefits

Market-aligned compensation package (base salary plus performance-based incentives) or a pro-rated retainer for engagement, complemented by mission-linked OSS upside, health benefits, and business-class travel.

Why Join Finternet

• Work with the creators of India’s most trusted digital infrastructure, the people behind

UPI and Aadhaar

.

• Help build

global public financial infrastructure

capable of serving billions of people.

• Collaborate with leading engineers, researchers, and policymakers across fintech, cryptography, and distributed systems.

• Contribute to

open-source infrastructure with real-world national-scale impact

.

• Join a mission-driven organization building the financial rails of the future.