Human-Craft FZCO is publishing this search on behalf of a confidential client seeking an elite Chief Technology Officer (CTO). This is not a traditional CTO role focused on general IT or writing code. This is a senior-level, hands-on architectural leadership position with one core mission: to build, operate, and own mission-critical, transactional systems where reliability, security, and correctness are non-negotiable. Think payments, bookings, and financial states—systems where failure has real financial and legal consequences.
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Job Title: CTO Job in Dubai – Transactional Systems & Payments Architecture
Full Time
📍 Location: Dubai, UAE 🇦🇪
Company: Human-Craft FZCO (on behalf of a confidential client)
Apply nowPosition Overview: CTO – Transactional Systems
The client is searching for a CTO who is an architect of reliability. You will be the ultimate owner and accountable leader for designing and launching transactional infrastructure, including payments, bookings, and status management systems. Your expertise must lie in state machines, event-driven architecture, idempotency, and financial-grade security. You are responsible for ensuring systems operate flawlessly, securely, and with full auditability 24/7. This role offers high autonomy, direct impact on core product architecture, and a quality-driven engineering environment.
Key Responsibilities & Ownership Areas
As the accountable leader, you will own the following critical domains:
- Transactional Infrastructure: Design and launch the core infrastructure for payments, bookings, and transactional statuses.
- System Architecture: Build and govern state machine and event-driven architectures to ensure data consistency and recoverability from failures.
- Financial Integrity: Implement idempotent operations to prevent double charges and integrate payment providers with robust webhook, retry, and reconciliation logic.
- Security & Governance: Ensure full auditability, traceability, role-based access control (RBAC), and secrets management for legally sensitive data.
- Production Accountability: Organize production support, define SLAs, lead incident response and post-mortems, and be ultimately responsible for system reliability.
Candidate Requirements (Mandatory Experience)
| Requirement Category | Specific Qualification |
|---|---|
| Core Domain Expertise | Proven, hands-on experience with payments, webhooks, idempotency, and transaction reconciliation. Must understand that an HTTP 200 response does not equal a successful transaction. |
| Architecture | Demonstrated experience in designing and operating state machines and event-driven systems. Ability to explain system states and failure recovery in detail. |
| Security & Control | Hands-on experience with RBAC, audit logs, and secrets management for systems handling financially or legally sensitive data. |
| Production Mindset | Experience running live production systems with SLAs, managing incidents, and conducting post-mortems. A strong ownership mindset for system reliability is paramount. |
| Language | Fluent English is mandatory. |
Strong Advantages (Preferred Profile)
- Experience in FinTech, escrow, booking platforms, or wallet-based systems.
- Background in regulated or quasi-banking environments.
- A track record of scaling transactional platforms.
- Direct involvement in incidents with real financial impact (and the learnings from them).
Profiles That Are Not a Fit
This role is highly specialized. It is not suitable for professionals whose experience is limited to:
- Marketing websites, landing pages, or CRM/admin panels.
- Primary focus on UI/UX with limited backend/system ownership.
- No exposure to real-money transactions or production incidents with financial consequences.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Is this a hands-on coding CTO role?
No. This is an architectural, governance, and ownership role. You are responsible for ensuring systems are built and operate correctly by the engineering team, not for writing the code yourself.
2. Why is the client confidential?
The client is likely a high-growth startup or established firm in a sensitive sector (FinTech, regulated platform) preparing for a major launch or scale-up, requiring discreet hiring for a pivotal leadership position.
3. What does “transactional systems” specifically refer to?
It refers to systems that process business-critical transactions where money or valuable assets change hands, such as payment processing, booking engines, escrow services, or wallet transfers. Data consistency and auditability are paramount.
4. What is the most critical skill for this role?
Ultimate accountability for system outcomes. The ideal candidate has a proven track record of owning the reliability and security of systems where mistakes cost real money, and possesses the architectural depth to prevent those mistakes.