Director of Technology (CTO)

About Kafaa Capital: Kafaa Capital is a CMA-licensed investment platform in Saudi Arabia, specializing in Shariah-compliant sukuk-based investment and financing solutions. Headquartered in Riyadh, we are developing next-generation digital investment infrastructure with a strong focus on transparency, compliance, and innovation. We are looking for a Director of Technology (CTO-equivalent) to own our technology strategy, architecture, and engineering execution, ensuring our platform remains scalable, secure, and reliable. Key Responsibilities: • Define and execute the technology strategy, system architecture, and engineering standards across backend, web, mobile, and data integrations. • Lead system modernization, refactoring, performance optimization, and establish robust software engineering practices. • Translate business goals into actionable technical roadmaps, balancing new feature delivery, technical debt, and security priorities. • Lead end-to-end technical delivery of core platform initiatives, including onboarding, KYC, payment flows, open banking, and investment lifecycles. • Own cloud infrastructure, environments, CI/CD pipelines, disaster recovery, and operational performance across development and production. • Establish observability, logging, and incident response standards to ensure high platform availability and reliability. • Own technical readiness and compliance for CMA cybersecurity guidelines, NCA Essential Cybersecurity Controls, PDPL, and AML/KYC operational controls. • Manage annual external penetration testing, vulnerability remediation, third-party vendor risks, and audit evidence packs. • Lead technical integrations with banks, payment gateways, identity verification providers, and financial market infrastructure. • Build, mentor, and lead the internal engineering team, while managing external contract delivery partners to maintain high performance standards. Qualifications & Requirements: • Saudi national (Mandatory). • CMA 1 Certification (General Securities Qualification Certificate from CMA) - Mandatory. • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field. • Minimum 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including hands-on production work. • Minimum 3+ years in an engineering leadership role with direct responsibility for hiring, team management, and delivery. • Proven track record of owning complex systems end-to-end (architecture, delivery, and operations) in fast-paced environments. • Strong command of system design, scalability, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and production monitoring. • Professional working proficiency in both Arabic and English. Preferred Qualifications: • Previous fintech experience, particularly with regulated financial platforms, onboarding/KYC, payment flows, or investment products. • Hands-on experience integrating with banking networks, payment systems, and third-party financial data providers. • Proven experience guiding security and compliance programs through external audits or regulatory inspections. • Experience modernizing legacy codebases and leading architecture, data, or operational migrations. • Strong familiarity with Agile methodologies tailored for fast-moving engineering teams. Key Competencies: • Ownership mindset and high accountability with the ability to execute under ambiguity. • Exceptional communication skills, capable of bridging technical details for non-technical executive stakeholders. • Systems thinking, pragmatic decision-making, and risk-based prioritization.

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