Chief Technology Officer

Location: New York/ USA

Type: Full-Time, Leadership

Industry: Crypto • AI/LLMs • FinTech/Trading

A fast-growing digital-asset and AI-driven technology company is hiring a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead its next phase of innovation, scale, and product expansion. This is a confidential executive mandate.

We are looking for a seasoned technical leader who sits at the intersection of crypto, AI/LLMs, and high-performance engineering — someone who can architect systems that are robust, compliant, AI-enhanced, and built for global scale.

Role Overview

The CTO will oversee the entire technology organisation: engineering, AI/ML, product architecture, security, and infrastructure. You’ll drive technical strategy, build high-performing teams, and translate a strong vision into world-class execution across crypto and AI-powered products.

This role suits someone who has built scalable systems in digital assets (CeFi/DeFi/exchanges/custody/infra) and has hands-on leadership experience with large language models (LLMs), applied AI, and modern ML engineering.

Key Responsibilities

Technology Leadership & Strategy

• Own the end-to-end technology roadmap — crypto, AI, backend, infrastructure, data, and security.
• Build and scale an engineering organisation capable of shipping secure, reliable, high-volume systems.
• Drive architectural decisions around AI model integration, blockchain systems, and cloud-native infrastructure.

Crypto Engineering & Architecture

• Lead the design and optimisation of crypto-native systems (trading, custody, settlement, wallets, infra, or DeFi modules).
• Ensure security, reliability, and regulatory alignment across all digital-asset products.

AI/LLM Product Integration

• Architect and implement LLM-powered features (search, automation, agent workflows, recommendation engines, analytics).
• Evaluate, fine-tune, and deploy open-source and proprietary AI models.
• Oversee MLOps best practices and scalable inference pipelines.

Team & Culture

• Hire, mentor, and lead high-performing engineering teams across multiple time zones.
• Instil a culture of ownership, speed, security, and exceptional execution.
• Partner closely with product, compliance, commercial, and executive teams.

Execution & Delivery

• Ensure flawless delivery of product milestones across crypto and AI product lines.
• Oversee incident response, SLAs, and engineering quality.
• Champion best practices in DevOps, cloud, testing, and CI/CD.

Requirements

Must-Haves

• 10 years in engineering leadership, with 3–5 years in a senior role (CTO, VP Eng, Head of Engineering).
• Proven experience building and scaling crypto or digital-asset technology (exchange, custody, wallet, trading systems, L1/L2, infra, DeFi, or similar).
• Strong hands-on background (current or historic) across:
• AI / ML systems
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• MLOps or applied AI product development
• Deep understanding of blockchain infrastructure, security, architecture, and distributed systems.
• Experience leading 20–100 engineer teams.
• Strong execution mindset with experience delivering complex, regulated, or mission-critical systems.

Personal Attributes

• High integrity and low ego leadership style.
• Strong communicator who can operate at board level.
• Deeply technical yet commercially aware.
• Comfortable in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
• Bias for action — can move from idea → architecture → shipped product quickly.

Compensation

Competitive package including base salary, bonus, and equity. Adjusted based on geography and experience.

WorkInAI.Global is a specialist executive search firm focused exclusively on senior and leadership talent across AI, LLMs, deep learning, agentic systems, and frontier tech. We work closely with a select group of high-growth companies — from early-stage innovators to established global platforms — on an exclusive, partnership-first basis.

Our mandate is simple: deliver top 1% technical and commercial leaders who can drive breakthroughs in AI. With deep market intelligence, a rigorous search process, and a global network of world-class engineers, researchers, and product leaders, we help companies build the teams that define the future of AI.