Head of Financial Systems Engineering — Kraken

The Bitcoin Street Journal; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken’s Financial Systems Engineering team seeks a senior leader to translate Finance priorities into a strategic technical roadmap. You will drive architecture across ledgers, reconciliation, and data flows, partnering with Treasury, Accounting, Tax, and Risk to ensure reliable financial data and scalable infrastructure.

You will mentor engineers, set standards for data lineage and auditing, and lead modernization efforts that minimize disruption to close and reporting while expanding platform

Qualifications

• Significant software engineering and technical leadership experience
• Deep understanding of ledgers, subledgers, double-entry concepts, reconciliation
• Experience with crypto or digital asset infrastructure
• Strong judgement in distributed systems, data engineering, APIs, event-driven processing

Responsibilities

• Report to the CFO and lead the engineering vision for Kraken’s financial systems
• Define target architecture and phased transformation plan
• Lead and grow a team of specialists across financial systems and data engineering
• Establish data completeness, lineage, ownership from source events to reporting
• Set standards for data models, APIs, and integrations across fiat and crypto activity
• Improve controls, reconciliation, and traceability across systems
• Oversee modernization without disruption to close, reporting, or fund movements
• Define testing, observability, and release controls for financial data changes
• Collaborate with Product, Risk, Compliance, Tax, and Legal on architectural decisions

Skills

Financial systems

Data engineering

Ledger reconciliation

Architecture leadership

Rust

TypeScript/Node.js

Python

SOX/SOC controls

Job description

• Location: United States
• Sector: CryptoPerp
• Source: web3.career

Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward – the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks – has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world’s longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

Kraken is on a mission to build the most trusted bridge between crypto and traditional finance. The Financial Systems Engineering team connects activity across products, payments, banking, and digital assets to the data, ledgers, controls, and applications Finance relies on. Our engineers bring expertise in data engineering, complex transaction flows, financial systems, and reconciliation. We partner with Treasury, Accounting, Tax, FP&A, Product, Risk, Security, Compliance, and platform engineering to make financial data reliable, explainable, and auditable.

The opportunity

Report to the CFO and lead the engineering vision for Kraken’s financial systems, translating Finance priorities into a clear technical strategy and delivery roadmap

Assess the current landscape, including fragmented data, processes, and technical debt. Define a target architecture and phased transformation plan based on evidence, business needs, and sound engineering judgment

Lead, coach, and grow a team of specialists across financial systems, data engineering, integrations, and ledger-related services. Establish clear ownership and develop technical leaders

Set standards for the completeness, quality, lineage, and ownership of financial data, from source events through transaction and balance records, reconciliation, accounting, and reporting

Contribute to architecture decisions for ledgers, subledgers, financial data models, APIs, and integrations across fiat and crypto activity. Determine what should be standardized and where distinct product flows need governed treatment

Partner with Accounting and Treasury to improve account and legal entity attribution, financial controls, reconciliation, exception handling, and the traceability of records across internal and external systems

Lead modernization and migration without disrupting close, reporting, fund movements, or other critical Finance operations. Define validation checkpoints and criteria for retiring legacy processes and systems

Establish end-to-end testing, documentation, observability, release controls, and incident response practices that account for the financial impact of upstream changes

Partner with Product, platform engineering, Risk, Security, Compliance, Tax, and Legal on system boundaries, access controls, resilience, regulatory needs, and auditability

Evaluate build, buy, and integration options; review consequential designs; and communicate architectural decisions, sequencing, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to Finance and Engineering leaders

What you will tackle first

In your first year, you’ll build the foundations for a more reliable, scalable Finance architecture:

Move key reconciliations from a monthly to a daily cadence, with clear ownership and a process for resolving exceptions

Reduce the time needed to find the root cause of reconciliation breaks from weeks to days

Map and validate the source tables and transformations that actually feed financial statements, establishing lineage and ownership

Complete the UAT data lake connections needed to test financial data flows end to end before changes reach production

What you bring

Significant software engineering and technical leadership experience, including leading experienced teams through complex financial systems or data architecture change

A strong track record of hiring, coaching, and developing specialists while creating clear ownership, high engineering standards, and effective cross-functional partnerships

Deep understanding of ledgers, subledgers, double-entry concepts, reconciliation, settlement, and the path from an operational event to an auditable financial record

Experience with crypto or digital asset infrastructure and the challenges of connecting on-chain activity, internal balances, custody or wallet flows, and traditional financial systems

Strong technical judgment in distributed systems, data engineering, APIs, event-driven processing, and integrations across complex platforms

Experience defining a target architecture and delivering a transformation roadmap across fragmented or legacy systems while sustaining production reliability

Experience designing for data completeness, accuracy, lineage, reconciliation, access control, and auditability

Sound judgment in production operations, including incident response, monitoring, debugging, change management, and reliability improvements

Ability to partner with senior Finance and Engineering leaders and translate financial, operational, and control needs into a practical engineering roadmap

Ability to lead experts and make informed architecture decisions without needing to be the deepest specialist in every domain; clear communication of priorities and tradeoffs to executives and technical teams

Experience with Rust, TypeScript/Node.js, or Python; finance applications such as NetSuite, Kyriba, or BlackLine; and SOX or SOC control environments is valuable

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment

Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don’t fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you’re passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work->

As an equal opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.