Vice President of Engineering

District Partners is partnering with a highly stable, operationally mature financial services firm operating at the intersection of broker-dealer infrastructure, buy-side investment management, and fixed income markets. The platform is built, the systems are performing, and the team is experienced. This is a key leadership hire with full ownership of engineering, responsible for driving structure, consistency in execution, and the next phase of platform growth within a regulated financial environment.

This role is best suited for a leader stepping into a VP-level position with meaningful ownership in a lean environment, where scope is broad and impact is immediate.

This role requires experience within a mid-market or platform-oriented financial services environment where engineering teams operate with end-to-end ownership. Candidates coming from highly siloed large-bank structures will not be a fit.

What You'll Do

• Own engineering, architecture, and system evolution across trading, clearing, settlement, and accounting platforms
• Serve as the primary technical counterpart to executive leadership, ensuring alignment between business priorities and system design
• Lead, develop, and scale a lean engineering team while maintaining a high bar for performance and accountability
• Establish and enforce engineering standards, delivery frameworks, and prioritization discipline
• Drive system reliability, scalability, and performance across a regulated financial environment
• Ensure alignment with SEC, FINRA, and SOX requirements across systems and processes
• Introduce structure where needed without disrupting an already effective operating model
• Oversee the integration and practical use of AI tooling to improve engineering output and efficiency

Operating Model

• Operate as a hands-on leader with retained technical credibility
• Balance architecture ownership with team leadership and delivery accountability
• Make decisions with incomplete information in a low-bureaucracy environment
• Partner closely with business stakeholders to align technical direction with operational needs
• Maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio in how priorities are set and executed

Technology Environment

• Backend: Java, Groovy, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, distributed microservices architecture
• Data: MongoDB, object-driven modeling, event-driven data flows
• Cloud: AWS (EC2, ECS, SQS, SNS, S3, CloudWatch)
• DevOps: Jenkins CI/CD, infrastructure as code (Terraform or AWS CDK), containerization
• Systems: Trading, clearing and settlement, and accounting platforms supporting fixed income products in a regulated environment

What You'll Have

• Direct experience within fixed income financial services environments is required, including trading, clearing, and post-trade systems
• Background aligned to organizations supporting mortgage-backed securities (MBS), repo financing, or similar structured products is strongly preferred
• Experience within broker-dealer, buy-side, hedge fund, or regulated fintech platforms with comparable system complexity
• Demonstrated ability to lead engineering teams while remaining credible in system design and architecture
• Strong working knowledge of regulated financial systems and associated compliance requirements
• Experience operating in lean organizations with broad ownership across systems
• Ability to introduce structure, prioritization, and accountability without over-engineering
• Executive presence with the ability to engage effectively across technical and business leadership

Location

Tri-State (NY/CT/NJ) or Washington, DC metro area with periodic presence in office

Compensation

Total compensation in the $300,000–$400,000 range (base bonus), aligned to scope and impact