Job Description
Vice President of Software Engineering Location: Chicago, IL About the Opportunity Take the helm of a sophisticated engineering organization powering high-concurrency, real-time financial trading environments. As a key member of the executive team, you will drive the modernization of mission-critical systems and lead a large-scale department through its next phase of technical and operational excellence. This is a high-impact role for a transformative leader ready to oversee the architecture and delivery of global-scale execution platforms. Responsibilities Strategic Technical Leadership: Direct the engineering vision for a comprehensive suite of client-facing interfaces and the underlying real-time engines that facilitate trade execution and market data processing. Organizational Scaling: Provide mentorship and professional development for a high-performing layer of Engineering Directors, fostering a culture of technical rigor and accountability. Operational Excellence: Champion initiatives to enhance system reliability, deployment security, and overall predictability within the software development life cycle. Platform Evolution: Oversee the transition toward modern, scalable architectures capable of supporting 24x7 high-availability financial operations. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with the C-suite and product leadership to align technical roadmaps with commercial objectives and market demands. Requirements (Must-have) Executive Leadership: Demonstrated success as a "leader of leaders," specifically managing a department of 100+ engineers through intermediate management layers. Fintech Domain Expertise: Deep experience within the financial technology sector, specifically involving high-growth platforms, order management systems (OMS), or execution infrastructure. Distributed Systems at Scale: Proven track record of managing high-availability, low-latency distributed systems that operate in a continuous, global environment. Process Transformation: Experience implementing rigorous engineering standards and improving delivery metrics in a complex technical ecosystem. Communication: Exceptional executive presence with the ability to translate complex technical challenges into strategic business outcomes for stakeholders. Preferred Qualifications (Nice-to-have) Experience leading large-scale legacy-to-cloud or monolith-to-microservices migrations. Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field. Active involvement in the broader engineering community or a history of driving technical innovation at the industry level. Compensation & Benefits Executive-level base salary and performance-based incentives. Comprehensive executive benefits package including health, retirement, and equity participation.