Head of Engineering - Options

Keyrock • New York, NY

20h • Remote

About The Position

Since its beginnings in 2017, Keyrock has grown to be a leading change-maker in the digital asset space, renowned for its partnerships and innovation. The company has over 200 team members from 42 nationalities, with backgrounds ranging from DeFi natives to PhDs. Keyrock is predominantly remote with hubs in London, Madrid, Brussels, Singapore, New York, and Paris. They trade on more than 80 exchanges and work with a wide array of asset issuers, offering services such as market making, options trading, high-frequency trading, OTC, DeFi trading desks, and asset and wealth management. Keyrock aims to expand as a full-service capital markets and asset & wealth management financial institution through organic innovation and inorganic growth. They are pioneers in adopting the Rust Development language for algorithmic trading systems, upgrade Web3 ecosystems by injecting liquidity into promising DeFi, RWA, and NFT protocols, and push industry progress with research and governance initiatives. Keyrock is actively building the future of digital assets. The company is looking for a Head of Engineering / Engineering Lead with strong experience in systematic options trading to lead the Options Engineering team. This role involves leading the team, driving continuous improvement across the trading infrastructure, and supporting the evolution of their systematic options trading platform, including automated quoting, execution, risk controls, pricing workflows, and production reliability. Candidates based in European time zones or the US East Coast time zone are primarily sought.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in systematic trading, options market-making or low-latency trading systems.
• Strong hands-on experience with Rust, C++, or C.
• Willingness to become deeply proficient in Rust, if not already.
• Strong understanding of algorithmic options trading, including automated quoting, execution, pricing, risk controls, and market data workflows.
• Experience building or maintaining low-latency trading systems, ideally within options or derivatives markets.
• Experience working with SQL databases in production environments.
• Familiarity with functional testing, component testing, and production-grade validation practices.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, service boundaries, and production reliability.
• Strong team player with the ability to lead, mentor, and guide engineers.
• Pragmatic approach to problem-solving, system design, and implementation.
• Able to balance latency, reliability, safety, complexity, and delivery speed.
• Comfortable making technical decisions under uncertainty.
• Demonstrates outside-the-box thinking while staying grounded in practical delivery.
• Communicates clearly and effectively, especially in unfamiliar or ambiguous contexts where clarity is critical.
• Able to work closely with traders, quants, risk, product, and infrastructure stakeholders.
• Strong ownership mindset, especially for production trading systems.

Nice To Haves

• PostgreSQL preferred.
• Strong knowledge of gRPC and experience working with Node.js-based services is preferred.
• Previous experience with crypto exchange connectivity and/or FPGA technologies is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow an Options Engineering team of around 7 engineers.
• Drive continuous improvement across the trading infrastructure.
• Support the evolution of the systematic options trading platform, including automated quoting, execution, risk controls, pricing workflows, and production reliability.
• Own and evolve an existing Rust-native systematic options trading platform.
• Provide strong technical direction across trading infrastructure, system design, performance, reliability, and risk controls.
• Work pragmatically through complex engineering and trading-system challenges.
• Partner closely with trading, quant, product, risk, and infrastructure stakeholders.
• Balance technical leadership with people leadership, delivery ownership, and operational discipline.

Benefits

• A competitive salary package.
• Autonomy in your time management thanks to flexible working hours and the opportunity to work remotely.
• The freedom to create your own entrepreneurial experience by being part of a team of people in search of excellence.
• Committed to building a positive and collaborative work environment.
• Welcome employees of all backgrounds, and hire, reward and promote entirely based on merit and performance.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees