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.