Chief Technology & Product Officer - EVM Protocol Infrastructure

Chief Technology & Product Officer

Hands-on Engineering Leadership | EVM Protocol Infrastructure | Fully Remote

We are partnering with an early-stage blockchain infrastructure company building a new EVM-native protocol primitive designed to solve a significant and largely unresolved problem within the digital-asset market. The company has already built and deployed a working testnet product, including its core smart-contract architecture, application layer, indexer, APIs and developer tooling. The next major milestones are completing security audits, progressing toward mainnet and determining how the protocol evolves in response to customer, partner and market feedback.

They are now looking for a hands-on Chief Technology & Product Officer to lead both the technical function and the strategic development of the product. This is not a conventional executive position. The successful candidate will remain close to the code, provide technical direction and work directly with the existing engineering team, while also taking ownership of the product roadmap and helping determine what the company builds next.

The opportunity

The company is developing infrastructure that addresses a structural problem affecting tokenised markets, protocol ecosystems and digital-asset projects. Its technology introduces a new way for digital assets to consolidate and transform at the protocol level, avoiding many of the manual processes, fragmented liquidity and poor user experiences associated with traditional token migrations. The underlying architecture is technically complex, with a particular focus on EVM behaviour, smart-contract security, scalability and predictable gas costs. The foundations have been built. The priority now is to take the product through its next stages of technical and commercial maturity. You will work closely with the founder, an experienced protocol engineer and the commercial function, translating market insight into product strategy and turning that strategy into a realistic engineering roadmap.

What you will own

Engineering leadership

• Lead the technical direction of the protocol and wider platform.
• Remain hands-on in the code, particularly around architecture, reviews and critical technical decisions.
• Support, mentor and provide direction to the existing engineering team.
• Establish appropriate engineering processes as the team grows.
• Ensure the technology is designed for long-term scalability rather than only the immediate launch.

Product strategy

• Own the strategic direction and evolution of the product.
• Translate customer, partner and market feedback into clear product priorities.
• Determine which features, integrations and use cases should be pursued, delayed or removed.
• Turn the product vision into a concrete and executable technical roadmap.
• Lead product discussions from initial discovery through to shipped functionality.

Protocol security and audits

• Help scope, coordinate and review external smart-contract security audits.
• Work closely with the existing engineers and auditors to resolve findings.
• Build the processes required to support secure mainnet deployment.
• Develop toward full ownership of the protocol’s audit and security programme.

External and customer engagement

• Represent the technical and product function in conversations with customers, partners and ecosystem participants.
• Explain complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Use commercial conversations as an input into product strategy without becoming distracted by one-off customer requests.

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• Bring credibility and gravitas to important external discussions.

What we are looking for

The strongest candidates are likely to have previously operated as a:

• Startup CTO or technical co-founder.
• Founding engineer who grew into a broader leadership role.
• Head or VP of Engineering within a blockchain infrastructure company.
• Protocol engineering leader with meaningful product ownership.
• Technical product leader who has remained actively involved in development.

You should be able to demonstrate that you have personally taken a blockchain, protocol or infrastructure product from an early release through several iterations.

We are particularly interested in candidates who can explain:

• How user or commercial feedback affected the product roadmap.
• Why particular features or technical approaches were prioritised.
• What was changed, delayed or removed between releases.
• Which decisions proved incorrect and what was learned from them.
• How technical constraints were balanced against market needs.
• How the product matured as adoption, complexity or team size increased.

Essential experience

• Significant experience building blockchain, Web3 or distributed-systems infrastructure.
• Strong knowledge of the EVM and smart-contract architecture.
• Sufficient Solidity literacy to review work and provide technical direction with authority.
• Experience leading engineers while remaining technically hands-on.
• Genuine product instinct and experience owning or materially influencing a roadmap.
• Experience taking a technical product through multiple public releases or iterations.
• Strong understanding of security, audit preparation and production deployment.
• The ability to communicate effectively with customers, partners and senior stakeholders.
• Comfort operating within a small, founder-led and highly autonomous team.

Particularly relevant backgrounds

Experience within one or more of the following areas would be valuable:

• DeFi infrastructure.
• Interoperability and cross-chain protocols.
• Bridges and messaging layers.

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• Settlement infrastructure.
• Digital-asset market structure.
• Oracles and data infrastructure.
• Restaking.
• Layer 1 or Layer 2 infrastructure.
• Token standards, migrations or lifecycle infrastructure.
• Smart-contract security and audit management.

Direct experience with token consolidation, protocol migrations or related market infrastructure would be helpful, but it is not essential.

This role is unlikely to suit

• A hands-off executive who no longer writes or reviews code.
• A pure product leader without meaningful engineering credibility.
• A deep protocol specialist who has no interest in users, customers or product strategy.
• A corporate technology leader who requires significant structure and support.
• Someone primarily motivated by title rather than ownership and company-building.

Why consider the opportunity?

This is a founder-adjacent role with genuine influence over both the technology and the direction of the company.

You will join at a stage where the core technical thesis has been validated through a working product, but many of the most important product, architecture and go-to-market decisions are still to be made.

The successful candidate will have the opportunity to:

• Shape a new category of blockchain infrastructure.
• Own the technical and product roadmap.
• Remain close to complex protocol engineering.
• Build and lead the engineering function as the company scales.
• Influence how the technology is adopted by projects, protocols and infrastructure providers.
• Take meaningful ownership through a substantial equity component.

Location and package

• Fully remote.
• Base salary around $200,000, depending on experience.
• Meaningful founder-adjacent equity.
• Long-term leadership position with substantial strategic ownership.

The company is prioritising quality and long-term fit over speed. They are looking for someone who is motivated by the underlying problem, wants meaningful ownership and is excited by the opportunity to combine hands-on engineering with product and company-building.