Forward Deployed Tech Lead – Payments & Tokenized Money (80-100%)

About Sygnum

Sygnum is a global digital asset banking group, founded on Swiss and Singapore heritage. We empower professional and institutional investors, banks, corporates and DLT foundations to invest in digital assets with complete trust. Our team enables this through our institutional-grade security, expert personal service and portfolio of regulated digital asset banking, asset management, tokenization and B2B services.

In Switzerland, Sygnum holds a banking licence and has CMS and Major Payment Institution Licences in Singapore. The group is also regulated in the established global financial hubs of Abu Dhabi, Luxembourg and is registered in Liechtenstein.

We believe that the future has heritage. Our crypto-native team of banking, investment and digital asset technology professionals are building a trusted gateway between the traditional and digital asset economies that we call Future Finance. To learn more about how Sygnum’s mission and values are shaping this digital asset ecosystem, please visit sygnum.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X.

Our Values

A key pillar of our success are the Sygnum values that define and unite us a team. We proudly call them our SYGN values:

• S stands for the importance we hold in Seeking and seizing opportunities, and the way we take personal ownership for delivering results for our clients;
• Y represents the way we say Yes to maintaining the highest level of integrity and fairness in everything we do. Sygnumers always display confidence without attitude;
• G reminds us to always Grow and win together. We only succeed by supporting each other and challenging ourselves, and our team-mates, to reach for new heights;
• N is here for Nose for value because we are always looking to focus on what matters most to our clients, partners and team.

Sygnum has one of the most diverse teams in the industry. Diversity plays a central role in keeping our work culture open, our teams productive and energised, and our solutions at the forefront of the industry. In the spirit of our SYGN value to “grow and win together”, we fully embrace an equal opportunity mindset in the way we onboard, develop and promote our team members.

About the role

Money is changing. The infrastructure moving it needs to change with it. As a Forward Deployed Tech Lead Payments & Tokenized Money, you will help build the technical foundation for how money moves through Sygnum. We are building towards a future where clients no longer need to understand the infrastructure and the assets behind a payment. They express what they want to achieve. Sygnum determines how value gets there.

That may mean traditional banking rails, an internal transfer, a stablecoin, a tokenized deposit or another settlement network. The technological challenge is to connect these different forms of money and infrastructure into one secure, intelligent and scalable experience.This is where you come in.

You will join a newly established team with the opportunity to shape its technical foundation, engineering practices and architecture from the start.

Together, we will build and evolve both the technology behind the Payments Experience and the Payments & Tokenized Money Orchestration that powers it. From the Payments UI to backend orchestration, APIs and integrations with core banking, custody, blockchain and settlement infrastructure, you will help define the architecture that brings these worlds together.

As a forward-deployed Builder Team, Product and Engineering work closely with our clients, Relationship Managers, front-facing teams and domain experts. We start with real problems, build working solutions, validate them quickly and turn what works into reusable product capabilities.

We are also rethinking how an engineering team builds. AI agents and AI-enhanced development will become part of how we design, code, test and deliver software. As Forward Deployed Tech Lead, you will help shape these practices while ensuring that accountability for architecture, security, quality and production outcomes always remains clear.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who enjoys both designing the system and building the team that can deliver it. You will lead technical architecture and solution design, guide and grow Software Engineers and take technical ownership from initial problem definition through to production.

The opportunity is bigger than building the next payment feature. It is about creating the technical foundation that allows Sygnum to move money across traditional and tokenized financial infrastructure without exposing that complexity to the client. Simple for the client. Intelligent underneath. Secure and scalable by design.

Your main responsibilities

• Own the architecture. Shape and evolve the technical architecture behind the Payments Experience and the Payments & Tokenized Money Orchestration
• Build the orchestration. Translate client intent into execution across forms of money, rails, compliance paths and settlement routes, integrating with the underlying banking, custody, blockchain and settlement infrastructure
• Stay hands-on. Write and review code, lead solution design and establish strong engineering practices using AI-enhanced development approach
• Lead the engineers. Coach and grow the team, guide delivery and create strong technical ownership
• Build from real problems. Work closely with Product, clients, Relationship Managers and domain experts to turn real needs into working technical solution
• Connect traditional and tokenized infrastructure. Integrate core banking, payments, custody, blockchain, stablecoins, tokenized deposits and settlement networks into a coherent architecture
• Build for reuse. Turn successful solutions and pilots into reusable APIs, components and orchestration capabilities
• Engineer for banking. Ensure security, reliability, resilience, observability and operational readiness from the start
• Own the technical outcome. Take responsibility from early problem definition and architecture through implementation and production

Our ideal candidate

You enjoy the combination of building systems, solving business problems and leading engineers. You are comfortable with ambiguity, remain hands-on and know that innovation in banking only matters when it can be delivered securely and reliably.

You bring a strong sense of ownership, sound technical judgement and the drive to turn ambitious ideas into production-ready solutions. You bring a zero-defect mindset, with a strong focus on engineering quality and reliability. You are excited by the opportunity to build something new, while equally committed to building it properly.

Technical expertise

• Strong experience delivering and operating critical platforms in banking, financial services or fintech, ideally involving payments, settlement, transaction processing or booking systems
• Strong Java 21+ skills with Quarkus or Spring and experience designing robust REST APIs with an API-first mindset
• Experience with PostgreSQL or comparable relational databases and AWS or comparable cloud environments
• Experience with distributed, microservice and event-driven architectures, including building secure, resilient and observable production systems
• Experience with front-end development, ideally React, and integrating front-end applications with distributed back-end systems.
• Experience integrating, operating and evolving third-party platforms and external services, including working with external providers throughout the platform lifecycle
• Strong interest in AI-enhanced software engineering and in using AI agents across the software development lifecycle, with practical experience considered a plus

Payments & Tokenized Money

• Strong understanding of payments and transaction processing, ideally including payment initiation, payment rails, settlement workflows and integration with banking or core banking systems
• Strong understanding of custody and blockchain infrastructure, including wallets, blockchain transaction lifecycles and integration with custody infrastructure
• Good understanding of tokenized money, including stablecoins and tokenized deposits, and how these forms of money interact with payments, custody and settlement infrastructure
• Understanding of how traditional banking and tokenized financial infrastructure interact and the technical trade-offs involved in connecting the two
• Strong interest in the business value and client problems behind the technology and balancing technical excellence with real world outcomes

Leadership & Collaboration

• Proven hands-on technical leadership, including leading architecture and production delivery for complex systems.
• Ability to lead, coach and grow an engineering team while remaining technically hands-on.
• Strong collaboration across Product, business, Architecture, Security, Operations and external providers to translate business needs into pragmatic technical solutions.
• Clear and pragmatic communication, able to explain technical decisions, constraints and trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable making decisions in ambiguous, fast-changing environments, with a collaborative, low-ego approach that promotes ownership and constructive challenge.
• High integrity, professionalism and ownership of technical and production outcomes.
• Fluent in English and German.

Our Offer

Joining Sygnum means being part of a dynamic, global team that is building a trusted gateway between the traditional and digital asset economies. Working at Sygnum, you will experience our fast-paced, exciting work environment that embraces meritocracy and collaboration and open communication. Alongside our ambitious long-term mission, we also come together for reaching important milestones and annual crypto-industry anniversaries like Bitcoin Pizza Day, and regularly celebrate together at themed company events as part of our journey to shape Future Finance.

Sygnum offers a range of benefits to all team members. These include:

• Participation in our entrepreneurial incentive scheme from day one
• Hybrid working, with up to two days per week working from home and three days in the office
• Option to work remotely from approved countries for up to 20 days per year
• Access to mentoring and buddy programmes
• Option to purchase additional annual leave through our FlexY Days programme
• One-month fully paid sabbatical after five years of continuous employment

If you are passionate about the potential of blockchain to shape Future Finance and your profile is a good fit for this position, please send us your CV today!