Head of Engineering

Fintonia Group; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 420,000 - 660,000; Full time

Job summary

Fintonia Group in Kuala Lumpur is building a tech-enabled digital assets platform. The Head of Engineering will own the design, build, and operation of the platform, leading the team to extend LMS and PMS from ground up to real-time trading and asset management.

You will lead architecture, security controls, deployment, and platform delivery while collaborating with Lending, Legal, and Compliance to meet regulatory obligations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent.
• 10+ years building production systems with leadership experience.
• Proven track record in real-time trading infrastructure.
• Security architecture for money/assets, incl. key management.
• Experience with AI coding tools and appropriate review standards.
• Deep Python backend, with deployment, CI/CD, and cloud infra ownership.
• Production PostgreSQL expertise and numerical precision discipline.
• Experience in regulated financial services; MAS familiarity preferred.
• Exposure to event-driven or event-sourced architectures.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of LMS and PMS and drive delivery.
• Define the technical roadmap across lending, risk, and trading systems.
• Translate product specs into scoped, sequenced deliverables with dates.
• Set engineering standards for code review, testing, and releases.
• Own deployment & operations: CI/CD, IaC, uptime & DR.
• Lead build-out of real-time trading infra: venue connectivity, market data, order management, execution.
• Collaborate with Legal & Compliance to encode obligations into system behavior.
• Partner with Operations on custody, settlement, and loan lifecycle workflows.

Skills

Leadership

Python

CI/CD

Cloud infra

PostgreSQL

Security architecture

AI coding tools

Real-time trading

Stakeholder comms

MAS familiarity

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

AWS ECS/Fargate

Infrastructure as Code

Git/CI tooling

Job description

Fintonia Group is building a tech-enabled digital assets financial services platform, with offices in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, combining a strong background in traditional finance with disruptive technology.

You will be joining a fun and fast-paced environment and will be working with a small team of seasoned industry professionals with experience working at top tier global investment banks and industry leaders.

The Role:

The Head of Engineering owns the design, build, and operation of the technology platform behind that business, and leads the engineering team building it. The Loan Management System (LMS) and Portfolio Management System (PMS) are in active development: the successful candidate will build them out from the ground up, accelerate delivery to launch, and then extend the platform into real-time trading and asset management.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the architecture of the firm's Loan Management System (LMS) and Portfolio Management System (PMS).
• Define the technical roadmap across lending, risk, and trading systems, and accelerate the current build to production launch.
• Translate product specifications from the Head of Lending into scoped, sequenced delivery with committed dates.
• Set engineering standards for code review, testing, and release, scaled to the consequence of the system being changed.

Security Architecture & Controls

• Define and own the firm's security architecture: identity and access management, secrets handling, key management, and network segmentation across services.
• Design the control framework around custody and exchange integrations: API key scoping, withdrawal permissions, and approval quorums.
• Own the audit posture required for MAS review: attributable actors on every state change, immutable transaction history, and evidentiary records.
• Establish security review standards for code, dependencies, and infrastructure.

Platform Delivery & Operations

• Own deployment and CI/CD across staging and production: containerised services on AWS ECS/Fargate, infrastructure as code, and controlled release gates.
• Own database architecture, migration discipline, and concurrency controls on all money-moving records.
• Maintain uptime, monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery against a four-hour recovery objective.

Trading & Asset Management Systems

• Architect and lead the build of real-time trading infrastructure: venue connectivity, market data ingestion, order management, and automated execution.
• Extend the platform into asset management: portfolio construction, valuation, performance measurement, and investor reporting.
• Deliver live risk and position management across both the lending book and traded positions.

Leadership & Cross-Functional Contribution

• Manage and grow the engineering team, currently two engineers.
• Work closely with the Head of Lending on product requirements, validation rules, and delivery priorities.
• Collaborate with Legal & Compliance on how contractual and regulatory obligations are encoded into system behaviour.
• Partner with Operations on custody, settlement, and loan lifecycle workflows.
• Report on technology delivery, risk, and security posture to the Fintonia Leadership Team (FLT).

Requirements:

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Minimum 10 years of experience building production systems, including several years leading engineering teams.
• Demonstrated experience building and operating real-time trading infrastructure: order management, execution, market data, or exchange connectivity.
• Proven track record defining security architecture for systems handling money or assets, including key management and privileged access controls.
• Demonstrated experience building with AI coding tools, and the judgment to apply appropriate review standards to AI-assisted work.
• Deep backend engineering expertise in Python or a comparable language, with hands‑on ownership of deployment, CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure.
• Production‑depth PostgreSQL experience, and rigour in numerical precision for financial systems.
• Experience operating within a regulated financial services environment; MAS familiarity preferred.
• Experience with event‑driven or event‑sourced architectures preferred.
• Exposure to digital asset infrastructure — custody, exchange APIs, on‑chain settlement — preferred but not required.
• Lending, margin, or credit domain knowledge is not required; product expertise sits with the Head of Lending.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with the discipline and judgment to operate within a regulated, governance‑driven firm.
• Excellent communication skills — able to engage credibly with senior stakeholders, auditors, and counterparties.