---
title: 'Head of Financial Systems Engineering at Kraken'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-financial-systems-engineering-kraken-united-states-8xg5zbz5kwa0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-30'
---

# Head of Financial Systems Engineering at Kraken

- **Company:** [Kraken](https://feeny.ai/companies/kraken)
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $134k–$299k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-10-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-30
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kraken.com/c1653d03-d959-4032-8591-26a929d1e37d

## Job description

Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients. Kraken is on a mission to build the most trusted bridge between crypto and traditional finance. The Financial Systems Engineering team connects activity across products, payments, banking, and digital assets to the data, ledgers, controls, and applications Finance relies on. Our engineers bring expertise in data engineering, complex transaction flows, financial systems, and reconciliation. We partner with Treasury, Accounting, Tax, FP&A, Product, Risk, Security, Compliance, and platform engineering to make financial data reliable, explainable, and auditable.

The opportunity

- Report to the CFO and lead the engineering vision for Kraken’s financial systems, translating Finance priorities into a clear technical strategy and delivery roadmap
- Assess the current landscape, including fragmented data, processes, and technical debt. Define a target architecture and phased transformation plan based on evidence, business needs, and sound engineering judgment
- Lead, coach, and grow a team of specialists across financial systems, data engineering, integrations, and ledger-related services. Establish clear ownership and develop technical leaders
- Set standards for the completeness, quality, lineage, and ownership of financial data, from source events through transaction and balance records, reconciliation, accounting, and reporting
- Contribute to architecture decisions for ledgers, subledgers, financial data models, APIs, and integrations across fiat and crypto activity. Determine what should be standardized and where distinct product flows need governed treatment
- Partner with Accounting and Treasury to improve account and legal entity attribution, financial controls, reconciliation, exception handling, and the traceability of records across internal and external systems
- Lead modernization and migration without disrupting close, reporting, fund movements, or other critical Finance operations. Define validation checkpoints and criteria for retiring legacy processes and systems
- Establish end-to-end testing, documentation, observability, release controls, and incident response practices that account for the financial impact of upstream changes
- Partner with Product, platform engineering, Risk, Security, Compliance, Tax, and Legal on system boundaries, access controls, resilience, regulatory needs, and auditability
- Evaluate build, buy, and integration options; review consequential designs; and communicate architectural decisions, sequencing, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to Finance and Engineering leaders

## What you will tackle first

In your first year, you’ll build the foundations for a more reliable, scalable Finance architecture:

- Move key reconciliations from a monthly to a daily cadence, with clear ownership and a process for resolving exceptions
- Reduce the time needed to find the root cause of reconciliation breaks from weeks to days
- Map and validate the source tables and transformations that actually feed financial statements, establishing lineage and ownership
- Complete the UAT data lake connections needed to test financial data flows end to end before changes reach production

## What you bring

- Significant software engineering and technical leadership experience, including leading experienced teams through complex financial systems or data architecture change
- A strong track record of hiring, coaching, and developing specialists while creating clear ownership, high engineering standards, and effective cross-functional partnerships
- Deep understanding of ledgers, subledgers, double-entry concepts, reconciliation, settlement, and the path from an operational event to an auditable financial record
- Experience with crypto or digital asset infrastructure and the challenges of connecting on-chain activity, internal balances, custody or wallet flows, and traditional financial systems
- Strong technical judgment in distributed systems, data engineering, APIs, event-driven processing, and integrations across complex platforms
- Experience defining a target architecture and delivering a transformation roadmap across fragmented or legacy systems while sustaining production reliability
- Experience designing for data completeness, accuracy, lineage, reconciliation, access control, and auditability
- Sound judgment in production operations, including incident response, monitoring, debugging, change management, and reliability improvements
- Ability to partner with senior Finance and Engineering leaders and translate financial, operational, and control needs into a practical engineering roadmap
- Ability to lead experts and make informed architecture decisions without needing to be the deepest specialist in every domain; clear communication of priorities and tradeoffs to executives and technical teams
- Experience with Rust, TypeScript/Node.js, or Python; finance applications such as NetSuite, Kyriba, or BlackLine; and SOX or SOC control environments is valuable

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis. Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

Stay connected [Follow us on Twitter](https://twitter.com/krakenfx) [Learn on the Kraken Blog](https://blog.kraken.com/#:~:text=Enter%20your%20email%20address) [Connect on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/kraken-exchange/)

[Candidate Privacy Notice](https://www.kraken.com/legal/candidate-privacy-notice)

## About Kraken

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Kraken is a global cryptocurrency exchange and technology platform that provides secure trading, custody, and financial services for retail and institutional clients.
- **Entity Type**: Private (last known valuation ~$10B as of 2023; multiple funding rounds from investors including Tribe Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (operates as a fully remote-first organization)
- **Founded**: 2011
- **Founders**: Jesse Powell (CEO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Cryptocurrency exchange, digital asset custody, and financial technology.
- Target customers: B2C (retail investors, professional traders) and B2B (institutions, family offices, hedge funds).
- Mission: "Accelerate the global adoption of crypto, so that everyone can achieve financial freedom and inclusion."

## Products & Services
- **Spot & Margin Trading**: Buy/sell 200+ cryptocurrencies with advanced order types and leverage.
- **Kraken Pro**: Professional-grade trading interface for active traders with low fees and deep liquidity.
- **Futures & Derivatives**: Regulated crypto derivatives trading (Kraken Futures) for institutional and qualified retail clients.
- **Kraken Staking**: Earn rewards by staking supported assets directly on the platform.
- **Kraken NFT Marketplace**: Buy, sell, and mint NFTs across multiple blockchains.
- **Kraken Bank (US)**: Wyoming-chartered Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) offering custody and banking services for digital assets.
- **Kraken Wallet**: Self-custodial mobile wallet for managing crypto and NFTs.
- **Kraken Institutional**: Dedicated suite for institutions including OTC trading, custody, and prime brokerage.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed; last reported private valuation of approximately $10 billion in a 2023 secondary transaction (conflicting reports suggest a lower valuation in 2024 due to market conditions).
- **Key Metrics**: Over 10 million users globally; one of the longest-operating exchanges (since 2011); industry-first Proof of Reserves audit; $50+ billion in quarterly trading volume (estimated).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Tribe Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Blockchain Capital, Fidelity, Human Capital, and others.
- **Growth Signals**: Grew from ~3,000 to over 4,000+ employees since 2020; entered new markets (e.g., stock and ETF trading in 2024); expanded into NFT marketplace and bank charter; consistently ranked among top trusted exchanges by security and transparency.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Security & Transparency**: Longest-running Proof of Reserves program; never suffered a major security breach; regulated in multiple jurisdictions (US, UK, EU, Canada).
- **Global Remote Culture**: Fully remote-first since inception, hiring top talent from 70+ countries without location constraints.
- **Crypto-Native**: Leadership deeply embedded in crypto ethos; products built for both beginners and advanced traders.
- **Regulatory Compliance**: Licensed in key markets and operates a US bank, giving it an edge as regulatory scrutiny increases.

## Strategic Focus
- **Expand Product Suite**: Moving beyond pure crypto into stocks, ETFs, and traditional finance integration (via Kraken Bank).
- **Institutional Growth**: Doubling down on prime brokerage, custody, and OTC services to capture institutional flows.
- **Global Licensing**: Securing regulatory approvals in more jurisdictions (e.g., EU MiCA, UK FCA) to serve local markets.
- **Self-Custody & DeFi**: Investing in wallet infrastructure and decentralized finance capabilities for user sovereignty.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Kraken describes itself as "remote-first, not remote-friendly." Asynchronous communication, radical transparency, and extreme ownership are core. Team members from 70+ countries.
- **Work Arrangement**: Fully remote globally; no headquarters attendance required. Flexible schedule with async workflows.
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Competitive salary regardless of location; option to be paid in crypto; equity grants; flexible PTO; wellness program (fitness coach, wellbeing apps); mental health coaching for employees and dependents; remote workstation setup bonus.
- **Hiring Process**: Structured, fully virtual process including CV screen, talent screen, role-specific interviews, and a practical case study. Emphasis on crypto conviction, self-starters, and collaborative humility.
- **Engineering Culture**: High ownership, autonomy, and impact. Decisions documented in writing; performance evaluated on output rather than hours. "Dogfooding" the product is encouraged.

## Sources
1. [Kraken Careers](https://www.kraken.com/careers)
2. [Kraken Job Listings (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kraken.com)
3. [Kraken Culture Page](https://www.kraken.com/culture)
4. [The Kraken Employee Value Proposition - Kraken Blog](https://blog.kraken.com/news/the-kraken-employee-value-proposition)
5. [Remote isn’t a perk. It’s how Kraken operates. - Kraken Blog](https://blog.kraken.com/news/industry-news/remote-is-how-kraken-operates)

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