Summary

The Tech Lead plays a pivotal role in bridging business objectives with technical execution. This role is not purely managerial nor solely individual contributor, but a hybrid position that combines hands-on engineering, architectural leadership, and team enablement. A Tech Lead ensures delivery excellence by actively contributing to the codebase, guiding the team technically, and aligning execution with long-term strategic goals.

At Keyrock, the Tech Lead is a senior technical contributor who drives the implementation and delivery of engineering initiatives within their Business Unit. The Tech Lead is accountable for technical execution and delivery quality, ensuring that systems are built to high standards of reliability, performance, and maintainability.

While the Head of Engineering (HoE) focuses on strategic alignment - ensuring that engineering outcomes meet the broader objectives agreed with the Head of Product (HoP) - the Tech Lead operates as the executional deputy, translating those strategic objectives into code, architecture, and delivery outcomes.

Job Description

1. Act as the technical point of accountability for the Service Market Making Business Unit.
2. Balance strategic thinking with pragmatic delivery, ensuring systems are built to last while meeting immediate needs.
3. Champion collaboration across teams, ensuring alignment between product, design, QA, and engineering.
4. Inspire and develop engineers through mentorship, coaching, and technical guidance, fostering growth and autonomy within the team.

Key Responsibilities

1. Drive Delivery and Alignment: Partner with the Head of Engineering to own delivery of entire work-streams, ensuring architecture and engineering decisions align with both immediate requirements and business strategy.
2. Balance Code and Leadership: Contribute directly through coding, while also focusing on architecture design, peer reviews, and cross-functional communication.
3. Mentor and Elevate Engineers: Provide structured feedback through design and code reviews, support skill development, and empower junior and mid-level engineers to take ownership.
4. Technical Leadership: Guide system design, ensure scalability and resilience, and optimise performance across applications and infrastructure.
5. Maintain Standards: Uphold engineering best practices, enforce coding guidelines, and partner with QA to embed automation and validation in the delivery pipeline.
6. Codebase Health: Manage technical debt, lead refactoring initiatives, and ensure long-term maintainability and operational excellence.
7. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, designers, and QA engineers to define scope, refine requirements, and plan delivery in a transparent and predictable manner.
8. Risk Management: Anticipate technical risks, dependencies, and trade-offs early, and propose mitigations to safeguard delivery timelines.

Requirements

1. Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience
2. 5+ years in a Technical Leadership position guiding teams, shaping architecture, and driving delivery of complex projects
3. Demonstrated expertise in architecting and maintaining high-concurrency, low-latency trading systems at scale
4. Advanced proficiency in Rust; working knowledge of Node.js (JavaScript/TypeScript) and Python is an advantage
5. Deep experience with data-intensive architectures and real-time data pipelines
6. Proven track record deploying, optimising and operating AWS environments for ultra-low-latency workloads
7. Hands-on experience containerising applications and managing Kubernetes clusters in production
8. Familiarity with GitOps workflows to automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration and deployments
9. Solid command of software engineering best practices, including Agile methodologies, DevOps principles and end-to-end CI/CD pipelines
10. Knowledge of DevSecFinOps principles to embed security, compliance and cost-governance throughout the delivery lifecycle
11. Demonstrated leadership of engineering teams, with a commitment to fostering collaboration, mentorship and continuous professional growth
12. Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, able to partner effectively with Product, Architecture, Quantitative Research and Operations
13. Strong analytical and problem-solving mindset, with a passion for building scalable, reliable and secure systems
14. Deep domain knowledge of finance and trading, particularly within the cryptocurrency sector
15. Experience in fast-paced, dynamic financial or fintech environments is highly desirable

We would like the successful candidate to be based in the UK or Europe. Remote and flexible work options are available.

Soft Skills & Competencies

1. Ownership & Reliability – Take full responsibility for your work. Deliver high-quality service, meet deadlines, and follow through on commitments. Anticipate and proactively address potential issues before they arise.
2. Initiative & Problem-Solving – Approach challenges with a problem-solving entrepreneurial mindset. Make sound, independent judgments and take the initiative to drive solutions rather than waiting for instructions.
3. Operational Diligence – Respond strategically to technical and operational challenges, ensuring robust and reliable trading infrastructure while instilling confidence in the team’s processes.
4. Curiosity & Growth Mindset – Continuously seek to improve your technical skills and knowledge. Stay ahead of industry trends and take the initiative to practice and explore new technologies that excite you.
5. Excellent Communication Skills with a team player mindset, collaborating within a fully remote global team.
6. We would like the successful candidate to be based in the UK or Europe. Remote and flexible work options are available.

Skills

• Analytical Thinking
• Communications Skills
• Development
• Leadership
• Problem Solving
• Rust
• Software Architecture
• Software Engineering
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Collaboration