Director of Technology (CTO) – FinTech Platform

About the role

We are seeking a Director of Technology (CTO‑equivalent) to lead the technology strategy and execution for Kafaa Capital’s Shariah‑compliant digital investment platform. The role will shape architecture, drive engineering excellence and ensure the platform remains scalable, secure and reliable.

Key responsibilities

• Define and execute technology strategy, system architecture and engineering standards across backend, web, mobile and data integrations.
• Lead system modernization, refactoring, performance optimisation and establish robust software engineering practices.
• Translate business goals into technical roadmaps, balancing feature delivery, technical debt and security priorities.
• Own end‑to‑end delivery of core platform initiatives such as onboarding, KYC, payment flows, open banking and investment lifecycles.
• Manage cloud infrastructure, environments, CI/CD pipelines, disaster recovery and operational performance for development and production.
• Establish observability, logging and incident‑response standards to ensure high availability.
• Ensure compliance with CMA cybersecurity guidelines, NCA Essential Cybersecurity Controls, PDPL and AML/KYC operational controls.
• Oversee external penetration testing, vulnerability remediation, third‑party vendor risk management and audit evidence preparation.
• Lead technical integrations with banks, payment gateways, identity verification providers and financial market infrastructure.
• Build, mentor and lead the internal engineering team while managing external contract partners.

Required profile

• Saudi national (mandatory).
• CMA 1 Certification (General Securities Qualification Certificate) – mandatory.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or related field.
• Minimum 6 + years of professional software engineering experience, including hands‑on production work.
• Minimum 3 + years in an engineering leadership role with hiring, team management and delivery responsibility.
• Proven track record of owning complex systems end‑to‑end in fast‑paced environments.
• Professional working proficiency in both Arabic and English.

Required skills

• Cloud infrastructure design and management.
• CI/CD pipeline implementation.
• Disaster recovery planning.
• Observability, logging and incident‑response frameworks.
• Production monitoring and performance optimisation.
• System design and scalability engineering.
• Penetration testing and vulnerability remediation.
• Integration with banking networks, payment gateways and identity verification providers.
• Financial market infrastructure integration.