Backend Jobs in Web3

Founding CTO / Technical Lead – Messenger & Stablecoin Payments

• Hold stablecoins through embedded self-custodial wallets
• Send money directly inside messenger conversations
• Pay other users and merchants through QR codes
• Accept payments in physical stores and online
• Buy and sell stablecoins through integrated partners
• Fund and use a stablecoin-connected payment card
• Recover their accounts without managing complicated seed phrases

• Own the overall technical architecture of the Ihsan platform
• Design and review the architecture of Ihsan Pay
• Lead and supervise the internal engineering team
• Evaluate and select infrastructure providers such as Privy, Turnkey, Sumsub, Rain, Helius and on/off-ramp partners
• Ensure Ihsan Pay remains genuinely self-custodial
• Define wallet-signing, account-recovery and key-export architecture
• Establish engineering, security, testing and documentation standards
• Review backend, mobile and blockchain code
• Design systems capable of scaling from the MVP to millions of users
• Ensure clear separation between user funds, company systems and partner-controlled financial services
• Build procedures for transaction reconciliation, incidents and provider failures
• Recruit and mentor additional engineers
• Manage infrastructure, deployment, observability and disaster recovery
• Coordinate independent security audits and penetration testing
• Translate the product vision into a practical technical roadmap
• Communicate technical decisions clearly to non-technical founders and stakeholders

1. Review the existing Ihsan messenger architecture and codebase.
2. Define the technical architecture for Ihsan Pay.
3. Select the embedded-wallet and blockchain infrastructure.
4. Supervise a proof of concept for self-custodial USDC transfers over Solana.
5. Design chat payments, QR payments and merchant-payment requests.
6. Establish a secure wallet-recovery and key-export model.
7. Review Sumsub, on-ramp and Rain card integrations.
8. Recruit or supervise the founding payments engineer.
9. Produce a documented roadmap from prototype to production.

• At least 8 years of professional software-engineering experience
• Previous experience as a CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, principal engineer or technical architect
• Experience leading and hiring engineering teams
• Strong backend and distributed-systems knowledge
• Experience with secure, high-availability consumer platforms
• Strong understanding of payment systems, financial infrastructure or digital assets
• Ability to evaluate architecture and security beyond individual technologies
• Experience designing systems involving APIs, webhooks, queues, reconciliation and idempotency
• Strong understanding of application security, authentication and incident response
• Experience taking products from early architecture to production scale
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Willingness to remain technically hands-on

• Experience with consumer fintech, payments, remittance, wallets or neobanking
• Experience with Solana, stablecoins or blockchain payment infrastructure
• Experience with Privy, Turnkey, Web3Auth, Fireblocks or MPC wallets
• Experience integrating KYC, on/off-ramp or card-issuing providers
• Experience with React Native, TypeScript, Go and PostgreSQL
• Experience with messaging or real-time communication systems
• Experience scaling systems to millions of users
• Experience working across regulatory and technical teams
• Previous founding-engineer or early-stage CTO experience
• Understanding of self-custody and the distinction between technical and legal control over funds

• Managing developers without understanding the underlying architecture
• NFT or token-launch projects
• Experimental smart contracts
• Outsourcing all technical decisions to agencies
• Producing strategy documents without participating in execution

• The existing Ihsan technology platform has been independently reviewed.
• Ihsan Pay has a secure and documented architecture.
• Two users can send USDC through an Ihsan username, chat or QR code.
• Wallet addresses, seed phrases and network fees are hidden from ordinary users.
• Ihsan cannot independently move users’ self-custodial funds.
• Recovery, transaction monitoring and reconciliation are tested.
• The internal engineering team has clear responsibilities and standards.
• A realistic roadmap exists for merchant payments, on-ramps and card integration.

• Shape a new messenger and payment ecosystem from an early stage
• Own major architectural decisions instead of inheriting legacy infrastructure
• Build technology intended to create meaningful global impact
• Work at the intersection of messaging, stablecoins and everyday payments
• Build and lead the future engineering organization
• Receive competitive compensation and meaningful long-term equity participation

• Your CV and LinkedIn profile
• GitHub profile or relevant technical work
• Examples of systems you have architected or scaled
• The size and structure of teams you have led
• A description of your precise role in previous fintech, payment, wallet or blockchain products
• Your location, availability and compensation expectations
• Whether you are interested in a full-time or fractional-to-full-time arrangement

1. How would you determine whether an embedded wallet is genuinely self-custodial?
2. How would you structure a technical review of an existing messenger before adding payments?
3. What are the greatest technical risks in combining a messenger with self-custodial stablecoin payments?
4. How would you divide responsibilities between Ihsan, the wallet provider, on-ramp providers and a card provider?

Apply via email: vincent@ ihsan.com