Founding Chief Technology Officer (New York)

About Ceno

Ceno is building the neobank for the US-to-Asia corridor: one account where Americans invest in global equities, hold and move USD, KRW, and JPY, and run a financial life that spans two continents.

We're starting with the hardest and most valuable piece: a retail brokerage that gives US investors direct access to Korean and Japanese equities. USD in, USD out, with FX, custody, KYC, and tax reporting handled invisibly by an AI-native, agentic back end. Recent regulatory changes in Korea opened direct market access to overseas brokers for the first time, and we intend to turn that opening into the default way America invests in Asia.

The product promise is true localization: buying any global equity feels exactly like trading the US markets, with the research, filings, and news that local investors trade on translated and delivered in real time by our AI research engine. From there the map expands, market by market, until global equities sit on one shelf, with stablecoin-enabled settlement moving money across the Pacific in minutes instead of days. The AAPI community is our beachhead; US retail is the market.

Ceno is a regulated fintech infrastructure company, not just a consumer investing app: direct access to foreign equities on regulated partner rails, a bilingual research-to-trade experience, transparent multi-currency FX, and a long-term path toward Ceno-owned brokerage infrastructure, internal ledgering, and stablecoin-enabled settlement. We're seed-stage, on a multi-phase path to our own FINRA-licensed broker-dealer, and building the founding engineering team now.

Why this role exists

Ceno's technology is the company: the brokerage, the ledger, the research pipeline, and the compliance guardrails are all things we build. This is a founding CTO role to own that from the ground up, and it carries three of the company's hardest mandates.

• Own the technical vision. Ceno's technical vision, architecture, execution, and engineering culture, from the ground up.
• Stay hands-on. Write code, design core systems, evaluate vendors, and work directly with broker and infrastructure partners.
• Partner with the CEO. Take Ceno from early product build to production-ready brokerage infrastructure, and join regulatory, partner, and investor diligence.

This is a hands-on executive role for the early stage of the company. The right person has built systems where correctness matters: trading, brokerage, payments, banking, crypto exchange, market data, ledgers, custody, or other regulated financial infrastructure. This is a founding-team seat with full ownership of technology from day one.

What you will own

• End-to-end architecture. Define Ceno's technical architecture across mobile, backend, broker integrations, market data, ledgering, AI research, compliance tooling, and internal operations.
• The first app layer. Build the customer-facing app on top of regulated brokerage partner rails, preserving a clean path toward deeper Ceno-owned infrastructure over time.
• Modular integrations. Design modular broker, clearing, custody, FX, KYC/AML, banking, and stablecoin-ready integration layers.
• The trade lifecycle. Own it from order entry through routing, acknowledgement, fill, partial fill, cancellation, rejection, settlement, confirmation, portfolio update, and reconciliation.
• Ledger and reconciliation. Build or supervise internal ledger and reconciliation systems for cash, buying power, pending deposits, FX conversions, positions, fees, tax lots, settlement events, and corporate actions.
• Compliance-aware guardrails. Build product guardrails for KYC/AML, OFAC, suitability, marketing claims, research DISCLAIMERS, and investment‑advice risk.
• Market data and data rights. Own the architecture for delayed vs. real‑time quotes, user entitlements, redistribution restrictions, vendor integrations, and cost controls.
• AI research pipeline. Build the architecture for Ceno's AI research‑translation pipeline: ingestion, extraction, translation, summarization, source citation, ranking, and alerts.
• Ledger and treasury model. Architect it so future stablecoin settlement corridors can be added without rebuilding the account system.
• Security and reliability. Establish standards from day one: encryption, secrets management, RBAC, secure SDLC, monitoring, alerting, incident response, and disaster recovery.
• The engineering team. Hire and lead Ceno's first engineers.
• Technical face of Ceno. Represent the company in technical conversations with investors, broker partners, banks, infrastructure vendors, regulators, and strategic partners.

Who we are looking for

Must-have

• Senior engineering leadership experience, typically 8 to 10+ years in software engineering, with meaningful architecture ownership and experience hiring or leading engineers.
• Hands‑on technical strength today. You are still close enough to the codebase to make core architecture decisions yourself and write production code when needed.
• Experience building or operating production systems in fintech, brokerage, payments, lending, neobanking, crypto exchange, FX, market data, fintech ledgering, or an analogous money‑moving domain.
• Experience with systems where correctness, audit trails, customer money, and operational recovery are real constraints.
• Comfort in regulated or high‑compliance environments: you understand that engineering decisions have regulatory consequences and build accordingly.
• Strong understanding of APIs, distributed systems, databases, queues and streams, observability, secure deployments, and incident response.
• Practical knowledge of broker, clearing, custody, payment, exchange, bank, market‑data, or similar financial‑infrastructure integrations.
• Familiarity with KYC, AML, OFAC, fraud controls, account opening, funding flows, customer data protection, and regulated financial operations.
• AI‑native engineering instincts: using AI‑assisted development tools and agentic workflows to accelerate product, operations, research, and compliance work while maintaining quality, security, and auditability.
• Ability to build consumer‑grade product flows without compromising compliance, auditability, data rights, or financial correctness.
• Strong communication with founders, engineers, product and design, counsel, compliance, investors, vendors, and financial‑institution partners.
• Founder‑stage temperament: ambiguity, resourcefulness, urgency, and willingness to partner closely with the CEO on regulatory, partner, and investor conversations.

Strong nice‑to‑have

• Retail brokerage, broker‑dealer technology, order management systems, execution management systems, clearing, custody, market data, or securities settlement.
• Broker or clearing APIs such as Interactive Brokers, Apex Clearing, DriveWealth, or Alpaca.
• Experience at or building products comparable to Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, Coinbase, Kraken, Wise, Revolut, Stripe, Plaid, Webull, Futu/Moomoo, Toss, Kakao Pay, a clearing firm, an exchange, a broker‑dealer, or a regulated fintech infrastructure company.
• Designing double‑entry ledgers, event‑sourced ledgers, reconciliation workflows, or financial accounting systems.
• Multi‑currency balances, FX conversion, treasury operations, cross‑border payments, or stablecoin settlement.
• USDC or other payment stablecoins, wallet or custody infrastructure, fiat on/off ramps, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, or fiat‑stablecoin reconciliation.
• Working in or around FINRA/SEC‑regulated environments: broker‑dealer operations, books and records, supervisory controls, or audit response.
• Building AI or LLM systems with rigorous evaluation, provenance, cost management, and quality controls.
• Prior founding CTO, technical co‑founder, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, or early senior engineering leadership experience.

Not the right fit

• Manager‑of‑managers who no longer builds. At this stage the CTO is a builder first: writing code and designing core systems.
• Narrow AI‑only specialists. This is regulated brokerage infrastructure across mobile, backend, ledgering, and integrations, not an AI‑only role.
• Consumer‑app generalists who don't want regulated‑infrastructure ownership. Correctness, auditability, and operational tooling are the jobs from day one.