Vice President Programmer Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

zerohash is hiring a VP of Engineering to lead our Trade organization, the team responsible for the trading technology that powers execution, liquidity, and market access across our platform. As zerohash scales, we're looking for a leader with deep, hands-on trading systems expertise, a proven track record building and scaling high-performing engineering organizations, and the presence to represent trade engineering at the leadership table. We believe the best engineering leaders are technologists first, with a product and business mindset, who seek outsized impact across the company.

Candidates must be located within a 1-hour driving radius of one of our main office hubs (Chicago, NYC, UK/Amsterdam for EMEA).

• Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for zerohash's trade organization, and align it with company strategy and the roadmaps of the transact, tokenize, and core teams
• Build, lead, and scale a multi-team organization - hiring, developing, and retaining engineering managers, principal/staff engineers, and individual contributors as the team grows
• Act as the executive owner of trading systems reliability, performance, and risk, including matching engines, order/execution infrastructure, market data, and FIX connectivity
• Partner directly with the CTO, SVP Engineering, product leadership, and zerohash's other VP(s) of Engineering to set org-wide technical standards, priorities, and engineering culture
• Represent engineering to company leadership and key partners/clients on matters related to trading technology
• Recruit, coach, and develop engineering managers and senior technical talent; build durable career paths for the team
• Partner with Compliance, Risk, and Legal to ensure trading systems meet the regulatory requirements relevant to zerohash's markets
• Drive build-vs-buy, technical debt, and architecture trade-off decisions at an organizational level
• Stay technically credible, engage deeply enough in system design and code-level decisions to earn the trust of senior engineers and maintain competency with the codebase and system architecture

• 15+ years of software design and development experience, with deep hands-on background in backend and distributed systems
• 8+ years of engineering leadership experience, including managing managers and senior/principal/staff engineers
• Proven track record building and scaling engineering organizations (30+ engineers) at a high-growth fintech, trading firm, exchange, or crypto company
• Experience owning multi-team technical strategy and roadmap at a VP, Director, or Head of Engineering level
• Prior exposure to fast-growth startups and comfort operating with ambiguity
• Exceptional executive communication skills
• Strong cross-functional partnership skills with Product, Compliance, Risk, and Legal
• Cloud computing experience, with AWS highly desirable
• BS or MS in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent experience
• Strong bias toward serving your team and stakeholders, with a growth mindset

• Solid understanding of market structure, order types (Limit, Market, Stop, IOC, FOK), trade lifecycle, and common risks associated with electronic trading
• Familiarity with regulatory requirements relevant to trading systems (e.g., MiFID II, Reg NMS)

• 10+ years of hands-on experience developing, deploying, and maintaining high-performance, low-latency trading systems (e.g., central limit order books (CLOBs), matching engines, market data feeds)
• Proven experience with FIX Protocol (4.2 and higher) and implementing highly reliable FIX Gateway solutions

• Expertise in highly concurrent, multi-threaded, low-garbage/zero-garbage code in languages commonly used in finance such as C++, Rust, or Go
• Demonstrable experience optimizing system performance to achieve single-digit microsecond latency

• Strong background building and managing mission-critical backend systems such as trade booking systems, high-throughput accounting/ledger systems, and real-time credit/risk limit systems
• Experience with distributed system design and messaging frameworks (e.g., Aeron, Kafka, ZeroMQ) for data distribution and persistence

• Healthcare Insurance: zerohash covers roughly 100% of employee premiums as well as a portion of spouse/children (U.S. only)
• Vision & Dental Insurance (U.S. only)
• Chance to earn equity
• Maternity & Paternity leave (after 6 months)
• WeWork All Access Membership
• WFH Yearly Stipend
• L&D Yearly Stipend (after 6 months)

zerohash is the leading crypto and stablecoin infrastructure platform and the operating system for digital money, powering the next generation of financial services. Founded in 2017, zerohash enables banks, brokerages, fintechs, and payment companies to offer crypto trading, stablecoin payments, and tokenized assets without having to build or manage complex blockchain infrastructure on their own.
The zerohash platform supports three core pillars: Trade, Transact, and Tokenize. Through a single integration, customers can launch regulated crypto buy, sell, and custody services; enable 24/7 stablecoin-based funding, payouts, and settlement; and issue and manage tokenized assets with built-in compliance, risk controls, and reporting. By abstracting away technical, regulatory, and operational complexity, zerohash allows partners to treat digital assets as just another financial primitive: fast, programmable, and global.
zerohash is trusted by some of the world's most recognized financial and consumer brands, including Interactive Brokers, Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, DraftKings, Gusto, Worldpay, Kalshi, One Pay, among others. Today, zerohash infrastructure supports millions of end users across brokerage, wealth, payments, and marketplace platforms globally.
The company is deeply regulated and compliance-first, operating across the U.S. and internationally with licenses and approvals that allow partners to enter crypto and stablecoins with confidence. zerohash has become a trusted partner for enterprises seeking to modernize financial products while meeting the highest standards for security, risk management, and regulatory oversight.
To date, zerohash has raised over $280 million in funding from a mix of leading venture firms and strategic investors, including Morgan Stanley, Interactive Brokers, SoFi, Point72 Ventures, Bain Capital Crypto, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and more.
zerohash has been featured in top-tier media outlets such as Bloomberg, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, Forbes, and CoinDesk, and its leadership team regularly contributes to global conversations on the future of payments, investing, and financial infrastructure.
At zerohash, we're building the infrastructure that makes digital money work securely, compliantly, and at global scale.

All zerohash employees are guided by the following characteristics and core principles:

• Independence/Ownership - An ability to work autonomously. Join zerohash, pitch ideas, and shape the work you do.
• Passion - We are innovating quickly and challenging the status quo. We want you to think big, be creative and make a difference every day.
• Collaborative - A good attitude and respect for others. We're teammates, not co-workers. Everything we do is a shared success and equally a shared failure - we talk in terms of "we" not "me".
• Initiative - An ability and passion for learning and asking questions. We will champion you, challenge you and push you to achieve your best - and we expect you to do the same.
• Empathy - An ability to listen, respect, and understand your co-workers, customers, and everyone you interact with no matter how different they are to you.
• Adaptability - An ability to respond quickly. We are in a fast-paced industry and so we expect you to be creative when solving a new problem and comfortable under pressure.
• Transparency - We believe that transparency is critical to empowering everyone to make the best decisions, both the company to its people and vice versa.
• Integrity - Integrity creates trust. As both an organization collectively and as individuals, it is our most valuable asset.

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For candidates based in Colorado, please contact colorado-wages @zerohash.com to request compensation and benefits information regarding a particular role(s). Please include with your email the city you reside (or intend to reside in Colorado) and the title/link to the roles you're interested in.

**We've recently seen an increase in individuals impersonating zerohash recruiters to target job seekers. Please stay vigilant and keep the following in mind to ensure you are communicating with the real zerohash team:

• Verified Emails Only: Official outreach will only come from a @zerohash.com email address.
• No Messaging Apps: We will never contact you via unsolicited text messages, WhatsApp, or Telegram.
• Official Applications: Only apply directly through our careers webpage (zerohash.com/careers) or zero-hash.breezy.hr.

See something suspicious?
If you want to verify an interview request or report a fake job posting or suspicious communication, please contact us immediately at talent @zerohash.com. This email is for fraud reports only. Candidate application inquiries will not be responded to.