Founding CTO / Technical Lead – Messenger & Stablecoin Payments
Location: Remote
Engagement: Full-time or fractional-to-full-time
Company: Ihsan
Website: Ihsan.com
SocialMedia: https://www.instagram.com/sultansamuelaziz/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sultansamuelaziz
Core stack: React Native, TypeScript, Go, PostgreSQL, Solana
About Ihsan
Ihsan is building a global messenger and super app designed to support a strong, connected and economically empowered Muslim community.
Our next major product is Ihsan Pay: a self-custodial stablecoin payment system designed to feel as simple as a modern bank account.
Users will be able to:
- Hold stablecoins through embedded self-custodial wallets
- Send money directly inside messenger conversations
- Pay other users and merchants through QR codes
- Accept payments in physical stores and online
- Buy and sell stablecoins through integrated partners
- Fund and use a stablecoin-connected payment card
- Recover their accounts without managing complicated seed phrases
We are looking for a senior technical leader to own the architecture, security and engineering execution of Ihsan Pay while strengthening the wider Ihsan technology platform.
The role
As Founding CTO / Technical Lead, you will be responsible for the long-term technical direction of Ihsan.
You will work directly with the founders, lead the existing messenger engineering team and supervise the engineers building Ihsan Pay.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You should be able to make high-level architectural decisions, review security-critical code and personally investigate difficult technical problems.
You will not be expected to build every component yourself. Your responsibility is to ensure that the right system is designed, the right people are hired and the product is built securely and reliably.
Your responsibilities
- Own the overall technical architecture of the Ihsan platform
- Design and review the architecture of Ihsan Pay
- Lead and supervise the internal engineering team
- Evaluate and select infrastructure providers such as Privy, Turnkey, Sumsub, Rain, Helius and on/off-ramp partners
- Ensure Ihsan Pay remains genuinely self-custodial
- Define wallet-signing, account-recovery and key-export architecture
- Establish engineering, security, testing and documentation standards
- Review backend, mobile and blockchain code
- Design systems capable of scaling from the MVP to millions of users
- Ensure clear separation between user funds, company systems and partner-controlled financial services
- Build procedures for transaction reconciliation, incidents and provider failures
- Recruit and mentor additional engineers
- Manage infrastructure, deployment, observability and disaster recovery
- Coordinate independent security audits and penetration testing
- Translate the product vision into a practical technical roadmap
- Communicate technical decisions clearly to non-technical founders and stakeholders
Initial priorities
During the first phase, you will:
- Review the existing Ihsan messenger architecture and codebase.
- Define the technical architecture for Ihsan Pay.
- Select the embedded-wallet and blockchain infrastructure.
- Supervise a proof of concept for self-custodial USDC transfers over Solana.
- Design chat payments, QR payments and merchant-payment requests.
- Establish a secure wallet-recovery and key-export model.
- Review Sumsub, on-ramp and Rain card integrations.
- Recruit or supervise the founding payments engineer.
- Produce a documented roadmap from prototype to production.
Required experience
- At least 8 years of professional software-engineering experience
- Previous experience as a CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, principal engineer or technical architect
- Experience leading and hiring engineering teams
- Strong backend and distributed-systems knowledge
- Experience with secure, high-availability consumer platforms
- Strong understanding of payment systems, financial infrastructure or digital assets
- Ability to evaluate architecture and security beyond individual technologies
- Experience designing systems involving APIs, webhooks, queues, reconciliation and idempotency
- Strong understanding of application security, authentication and incident response
- Experience taking products from early architecture to production scale
- Excellent written and verbal communication
- Willingness to remain technically hands-on
Strong advantages
- Experience with consumer fintech, payments, remittance, wallets or neobanking
- Experience with Solana, stablecoins or blockchain payment infrastructure
- Experience with Privy, Turnkey, Web3Auth, Fireblocks or MPC wallets
- Experience integrating KYC, on/off-ramp or card-issuing providers
- Experience with React Native, TypeScript, Go and PostgreSQL
- Experience with messaging or real-time communication systems
- Experience scaling systems to millions of users
- Experience working across regulatory and technical teams
- Previous founding-engineer or early-stage CTO experience
- Understanding of self-custody and the distinction between technical and legal control over funds
What we are not looking for
We are not looking for someone whose experience is limited to:
- Managing developers without understanding the underlying architecture
- NFT or token-launch projects
- Experimental smart contracts
- Outsourcing all technical decisions to agencies
- Producing strategy documents without participating in execution
We need a technical leader who can combine architecture, security, product judgment and team leadership.
What success looks like
Within the first months:
- The existing Ihsan technology platform has been independently reviewed.
- Ihsan Pay has a secure and documented architecture.
- Two users can send USDC through an Ihsan username, chat or QR code.
- Wallet addresses, seed phrases and network fees are hidden from ordinary users.
- Ihsan cannot independently move users’ self-custodial funds.
- Recovery, transaction monitoring and reconciliation are tested.
- The internal engineering team has clear responsibilities and standards.
- A realistic roadmap exists for merchant payments, on-ramps and card integration.
Why join Ihsan
- Shape a new messenger and payment ecosystem from an early stage
- Own major architectural decisions instead of inheriting legacy infrastructure
- Build technology intended to create meaningful global impact
- Work at the intersection of messaging, stablecoins and everyday payments
- Build and lead the future engineering organization
- Receive competitive compensation and meaningful long-term equity participation
Candidates should respect and feel aligned with Ihsan’s values and mission to serve the global Muslim community. Applicants of all backgrounds are welcome.
How to apply
Please send:
- Your CV and LinkedIn profile
- GitHub profile or relevant technical work
- Examples of systems you have architected or scaled
- The size and structure of teams you have led
- A description of your precise role in previous fintech, payment, wallet or blockchain products
- Your location, availability and compensation expectations
- Whether you are interested in a full-time or fractional-to-full-time arrangement
Please also answer briefly:
- How would you determine whether an embedded wallet is genuinely self-custodial?
- How would you structure a technical review of an existing messenger before adding payments?
- What are the greatest technical risks in combining a messenger with self-custodial stablecoin payments?
- How would you divide responsibilities between Ihsan, the wallet provider, on-ramp providers and a card provider?
Apply via email: vincent@ ihsan.com