VP of Engineering, Trade

Precision Labs; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

zerohash seeks a VP of Engineering to lead the Trade organization, owning the technical vision and architecture for high-performance trading systems. You will scale a multi-team engineering group, recruit and mentor managers and senior engineers, and partner with CTO and product to set standards, priorities, and culture.

This role demands hands-on expertise in low-latency, high-throughput trading tech and strong executive communication.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software design and development experience, with deep hands-on backend and distributed systems expertise.
• 8+ years of engineering leadership including managing managers and senior engineers.
• Proven track record scaling engineering orgs (30+ engineers) at fintech/trading venues or crypto.
• Experience owning multi-team technical strategy and roadmap at VP/Director level.
• Strong executive communication and cross-functional partnership skills.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for the trade organization.
• Build, lead, and scale a multi-team engineering organization with managers and ICs.
• Ensure trading systems reliability, performance, and risk, including matching engines and FIX connectivity.
• Set org-wide technical standards, priorities, and culture with CTO and other VPs.

Skills

Distributed systems

Executive communication

Cloud computing

C++/Rust/Go

Leadership

Education

BS/MS in CS or Engineering

Tools

AWS

Job description

About the Role

zerohash is hiring a VP of Engineering to lead our Trade organization, the team responsible for the trading technology that powers execution, liquidity, and market access across our platform. As zerohash scales, we're looking for a leader with deep, hands-on trading systems expertise, a proven track record building and scaling high-performing engineering organizations, and the presence to represent trade engineering at the leadership table. We believe the best engineering leaders are technologists first, with a product and business mindset, who seek outsized impact across the company.

Candidates must be located within a 1-hour driving radius of one of our main office hubs (Chicago, NYC, UK/Amsterdam for EMEA).

Responsibilities

• Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for zerohash's trade organization, and align it with company strategy and the roadmaps of the transact, tokenize, and core teams
• Build, lead, and scale a multi-team organization - hiring, developing, and retaining engineering managers, principal/staff engineers, and individual contributors as the team grows
• Act as the executive owner of trading systems reliability, performance, and risk, including matching engines, order/execution infrastructure, market data, and FIX connectivity
• Partner directly with the CTO, SVP Engineering, product leadership, and zerohash's other VP(s) of Engineering to set org-wide technical standards, priorities, and engineering culture
• Represent engineering to company leadership and key partners/clients on matters related to trading technology
• Recruit, coach, and develop engineering managers and senior technical talent; build durable career paths for the team
• Partner with Compliance, Risk, and Legal to ensure trading systems meet the regulatory requirements relevant to zerohash's markets
• Drive build-vs-buy, technical debt, and architecture trade-off decisions at an organizational level
• Stay technically credible, engage deeply enough in system design and code-level decisions to earn the trust of senior engineers and maintain competency with the codebase and system architecture

Requirements

• 15+ years of software design and development experience, with deep hands-on background in backend and distributed systems
• 8+ years of engineering leadership experience, including managing managers and senior/principal/staff engineers
• Proven track record building and scaling engineering organizations (30+ engineers) at a high-growth fintech, trading firm, exchange, or crypto company
• Experience owning multi-team technical strategy and roadmap at a VP, Director, or Head of Engineering level
• Prior exposure to fast-growth startups and comfort operating with ambiguity
• Exceptional executive communication skills
• Strong cross-functional partnership skills with Product, Compliance, Risk, and Legal
• Cloud computing experience, with AWS highly desirable
• BS or MS in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent experience
• Strong bias toward serving your team and stakeholders, with a growth mindset

Domain Knowledge

• Solid understanding of market structure, order types (Limit, Market, Stop, IOC, FOK), trade lifecycle, and common risks associated with electronic trading
• Familiarity with regulatory requirements relevant to trading systems (e.g., MiFID II, Reg NMS)

Deep Understanding of Trading Systems

• 10+ years of hands-on experience developing, deploying, and maintaining high-performance, low-latency trading systems (e.g., central limit order books (CLOBs), matching engines, market data feeds)
• Proven experience with FIX Protocol (4.2 and higher) and implementing highly reliable FIX Gateway solutions

High-Throughput / Low-Latency Development

• Expertise in highly concurrent, multi-threaded, low-garbage/zero-garbage code in languages commonly used in finance such as C++, Rust, or Go
• Demonstrable experience optimizing system performance to achieve single-digit microsecond latency

Core Financial Infrastructure

• Strong background building and managing mission-critical backend systems such as trade booking systems, high-throughput accounting/ledger systems, and real-time credit/risk limit systems
• Experience with distributed system