About the role
Looking to join a world-class blockchain development team? Ava Labs makes it simple to deploy high-performance solutions for Web3, led by innovations on Avalanche. The company was founded by Cornell computer scientists, who partnered with Wall Street veterans and early Web3 leaders to execute a promising vision for redefining the way people build permissionless networks. Ava Labs is redefining the way people create value with Web3. Join us as we empower people to easily and freely digitize all the world’s assets on one open, programmable blockchain platform. Lead the engineering org building Fortary's institutional digital asset platform: custody, trading, lending, staking, and treasury management for regulated financial institutions. You'll own the architecture and technical strategy for our distributed MPC custody system, grow the team, and partner with Product, Security, and executive leadership to ship secure, resilient infrastructure at institutional scale. This is a leadership role at the intersection of distributed systems, applied cryptography, and institutional finance. You set technical direction, you're accountable for what ships, and you build the org that ships it. What you'll do Lead multiple teams delivering Fortary's custody, transaction authorization, key management, wallet infrastructure, and blockchain integrations Own the architecture and roadmap for the distributed MPC custody platform, including disaster recovery, governance, and transaction policy controls Partner with Product, Security, BD, and executives to prioritize investments against customer, regulatory, and business needs Support multiple deployment models: managed platform and licensed software Ensure engineering practices meet the security, compliance, and governance bar required as Fortary moves toward chartered-institution status Lead incident response for outages, security events, and key management scenarios Hire, mentor, and grow engineering managers and senior engineers Drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering across the org What you'll bring 10+ years in software engineering, 5+ leading teams shipping production-scale secure distributed systems Track record owning large-scale, security-critical platforms from architecture through production Deep expertise in modern cryptography and secure key management: MPC, threshold signatures, TEEs, HSMs Experience building cloud-native systems (Kubernetes, IaC, CI/CD, observability) with security and resilience as first-order concerns Fluency in the compliance frameworks for regulated finance: SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, AML/KYC, and awareness of the SEC/CFTC/OCC/MiCA landscape Experience across digital asset infrastructure: custody, trading, staking, treasury, and blockchain settlement Ability to communicate credibly with executives, institutional customers, auditors, and regulators Bonus Experience scaling an org toward a chartered or licensed financial entity ( **This is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, a final offer amount may vary based on factors including but not limited to experience and geographic location.) Background delivering both managed-service and licensed-software products ( **This is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, a final offer amount may vary based on factors including but not limited to experience and geographic location.) WHY AVA LABS? If you've ever thought about joining an early stage Web3 company - this is it! We're a global, world-class team of experts in computer science, economics, finance, marketing, and law with offices in New York City and Miami. We're highly passionate about Web3 and redefining the way people build and use finance and decentralized applications of all kinds. The company received early-stage funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant. Join us and be a pioneer in a new technology that will have implications across a range of verticals such as finance, gaming, investing, collectibles, among many others. Ava Labs is committed to diversity in the workplace and we’re proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not hire on basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, parental status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, or any other basis protected by local, state or federal law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.