Tech Development Lead

AKJ has established a long track record of success in the asset management and fintech space, with clients in 35 countries, $2B in ecosystem assets, and five regulatory jurisdictions, along with being an eight-time recipient of HFM's Best Hedge Fund Platform award. But we are only getting started and are now at a pivotal moment as we build the foundation for the next era of asset management. AKJ is redefining how asset management work gets done. As 24/7 markets, agentic AI, and tokenisation reshape an industry most legacy providers can't keep pace with, we are developing the AKJ Intelligence Stack: the first AI-native, integrated platform combining regulated infrastructure, agentic orchestration, and embedded execution within one architecture. We are also the only regulated, execution-grade alternative to the AI vendors now entering asset management. AKJ has a regulatory moat that would require years to replicate — with a staged plan to help shape the industry's next decade. We are looking for exceptional builders, thinkers and operators who want to work at the intersection of frontier AI and regulated finance – people that can see the future and want to help shape it. We look forward to the prospect of you joining our team! The Tech Lead will drive the technical delivery of the Orbital Platform, take ownership of architecture, code quality, team development, and will serveas the primary technical contact for the legacy technology stack. The successful candidate will also lead the front, middle and back-office support function and deputise for the CTO as required from time-to-time Core responsibilities span defining system architecture across the FIX engine, Smart Order Router, OMS, and platform services; leading design reviews; mentoring engineers; coordinating with prime brokers and vendors on integrations; owning FIX protocol implementation; and upholding code quality through testing and CI/CD standards, alongside hands-on contribution to critical development work. The ideal candidate brings deep technical expertise, including 5+ years of expert-level Kotlin (with Rust and Go proficiency), strong grounding in frameworks such as Ktor, Kodein DI, and Coroutines, and advanced experience with PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB, Redis, and Kafka in production. We’re expecting the successful candidate to be AI native, using modern engineering process and practices, extra credit given for those whom have applied it in highly regulated environments; Given the regulated environment we operate within, secure thinking and ideally secure computing practices as a first class principle. This would require the candidate to be familiar with DEVSEC CI pipelines and regular dependency management/update process within a 24*6 production setting. Hands-on FIX 4.2/4.4 implementation experience is essential, along with domain knowledge across order and execution management systems. Candidates should also have current experience leading engineering teams of five or more, plus familiarity with architectural patterns like event sourcing, CQRS, and microservices. Preferred qualifications include experience building or operating a bespoke FIX engine (the platform runs a custom Rust-based engine rather than an off-the-shelf solution), prime broker integrations, regulatory knowledge (MiFID II, EMIR), and observability tooling at scale (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus).