Description

The opportunity

A new financial markets infrastructure venture is being established in Oman, backed by prominent institutional investors and operating under an international common law framework. The platform is a greenfield central securities depository being built to go-live in 2027.

We are hiring a Head of Product Technology to own the technology platform end-to-end: the application and the infrastructure on which it runs. This is not background plumbing. The application is the product. The infrastructure is the foundation on which settlement finality, system resilience, latency performance, and operational availability are delivered. The post-holder must understand both layers as one integrated whole and own them as one.

In build, the post-holder is the architect of the platform from a blank sheet: technology reference architecture, infrastructure topology, hosting strategy, network and database design, integration patterns, security architecture, and resilience and disaster-recovery architecture. In run, the same person operates the platform and the team they have designed. This is not a sit-in-your-office role.

What the role covers

• Designing the technology reference architecture from a blank sheet: application architecture, infrastructure topology, database platform, network design, integration patterns, security architecture, and resilience and DR architecture
• Owning the application end-to-end: design, configuration, integration, data model, change management, and support
• Owning the infrastructure that hosts the platform: compute, storage, network, virtualisation, database, and middleware, whether on-premise, hosted, or cloud
• Owning platform resilience: high availability design, backup and recovery architecture, disaster recovery, business continuity, and tested failover
• Owning end-to-end platform performance including transaction latency, capacity planning, and headroom strategy
• Owning first-line platform security: secure configuration, hardening, identity and access management, vulnerability management, patching, and security incident response
• Owning the technical relationship with the build vendor; holding them to account on functional, technical, and operational delivery
• Designing the human operating model for the platform: team shape, shift patterns, on-call rotations, incident command structure, runbooks, and third-party support arrangements
• Owning all integrations between the platform and external systems: custodians, settlement banks, exchange, SWIFT, Bloomberg, and ISIN infrastructure
• Line managing the Application Managers, Database Administrator, and the wider platform engineering team as it builds

Requirements

Who we are looking for

At least 12 years in financial-services platform technology, with substantial time spent owning a mission-critical platform end-to-end across both application and infrastructure layers. Direct, demonstrable experience architecting a mission-critical regulated financial platform from a blank sheet: this is non-negotiable. Direct, demonstrable experience as the technical authority on a CSD, custody platform, post-trade platform, capital markets platform, or core banking system of comparable mission-criticality: also non-negotiable.

Hands-on technical credibility across both application and infrastructure layers: able to read code, query a database, design a network topology, debug an integration, and challenge a vendor's technical decisions with authority. Demonstrated experience holding a major build vendor or system integrator to account on technical delivery. Deep understanding of how a regulated financial-services business works, not just the technology underneath it. Fluent in English.

Experience in financial market infrastructure (CSD, CCP, exchange, or payment system) is an advantage. So is familiarity with CPMI-IOSCO principles and experience designing SWIFT, Bloomberg, and ICSD integrations.

What this is

The platform does not exist yet. The architecture has not been designed, the infrastructure has not been built, and the operating model has not been written. The person who takes this role will have done all of it. If you have genuinely architected and owned a mission-critical regulated financial platform from a blank sheet, and you have the hands-on credibility and delivery drive to do it again, this is worth a conversation.