Particle Research Limited is hiring a Chief Technology Officer to build the trading engine for Cronos Labs, enabling a unified app for tokenized stocks, crypto perpetuals, prediction markets, and spot trading. The core mandate is a hybrid onchain Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) and matching engine with institutional-grade risk infrastructure. This is a greenfield build, owning the full technical stack.
What You'll Do
- Architect and ship the off-chain Sidecar Sequencer (Rust) with <5ms P50 tick-to-trade latency, 100K OPS throughput, and <1ms latency variance.
- Integrate the matching engine with Cronos EVM for onchain settlement (<60s settlement delay). Route between onchain CLOB and offchain RFQ for best execution.
- Build the full risk stack: collateral weighting, cross-asset netting, initial margin checks, dynamic maintenance thresholds.
- Design and implement a unified margin system where tokenized equities can margin crypto trades and vice versa.
- Design and implement the liquidation engine, auto-deleveraging (ADL) system, and insurance fund architecture to survive correlated market crashes.
- Build perpetual futures with funding rate mechanisms, leverage management, and position lifecycle.
- Integrate manipulation-resistant price feeds for liquidation triggers, mark price computation, and cross-market reference pricing.
- Oversee Cronos chain upgrades, USDC migration, bridge and cross-chain infrastructure, smart contract security and audit pipeline.
- Oversee mobile-first consumer app development, embedded wallet with passkey-based authentication, account abstraction, and TEE/verifiable compute for signing.
- Oversee CI/CD, infrastructure reliability, automated testing, and performance benchmarking.
- Coordinate with the Crypto.com tokenization team on shared workflows and align timelines across organizations.
What We're Looking For
- Deep trading infrastructure and risk management experience: built matching engines, margin systems, liquidation engines, or real-time risk platforms.
- Derivatives market structure fluency: understands and has built systems for Perpetuals, options, funding rates, mark price computation, portfolio margin at production scale.
- Hands-on blockchain/DeFi depth or proven ability to ramp fast: EVM smart contracts (Solidity), protocol design, bridge security, token standards. If crossing over from TradFi, must reach Solidity PR-review fluency within 90 days.
- A professional network in risk engineering: can name specific people to recruit as Head of Risk Engineering.
- 12+ years engineering, 5+ in senior technical leadership roles (VP Engineering, CTO, Head of Engineering, Chief Architect).
- Systems-level technical depth: can review PRs, debug smart contracts, make real-time architecture calls, and argue about sequencer design at the implementation level.
Nice to Have
- TradFi-to-crypto crossover trajectory: 10-15+ years building equity/FX/rates trading systems and risk platforms at institutions like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citadel, Jane Street, Two Sigma, or BFAM Partners, with subsequent crypto infrastructure experience.
- Mobile-first consumer product experience: building for retail traders who are not crypto natives. Must be willing to hire strong mobile product engineering leaders.
- Global market experience: shipping products outside the US, particularly in LatAm, SEA, and MENA markets.
Technical Stack
- Rust
- EVM
- Solidity
- Cronos blockchain
- Mobile app development
Team & Environment
You will own the full technical stack from matching engine to smart contracts to mobile app. The team spans Smart Contracts, Blockchain, DevOps, Platform, QA, Trading, and Inventory. You will have direct accountability to Crypto.com leadership (C-level role).
Benefits & Compensation
- CRO equity participation
- Executive seat (C-level role)
- Greenfield opportunity with full ownership
- Leverage Crypto.com's 150M users and global brand
Work Mode
This is a global role.
Particle Research Limited is an equal opportunity employer.
