Founding Engineer

About Ceno

Ceno is building the neobank for the US-to-Asia corridor: one account where Americans invest in global equities, hold and move USD, KRW, and JPY, and run a financial life that spans two continents.

We're starting with the hardest and most valuable piece: a retail brokerage that gives US investors direct access to Korean and Japanese equities. USD in, USD out, with FX, custody, KYC, and tax reporting handled invisibly by an AI-native, agentic back end. Recent regulatory changes in Korea opened direct market access to overseas brokers for the first time, and we intend to turn that opening into the default way America invests in Asia.

The product promise is true localization: buying any global equity feels exactly like trading the US markets, with the research, filings, and news that local investors trade on translated and delivered in real time by our AI research engine. From there the map expands, market by market, until global equities sit on one shelf, with stablecoin-enabled settlement moving money across the Pacific in minutes instead of days. The AAPI community is our beachhead; US retail is the market.

Ceno is a regulated fintech infrastructure company, not just a consumer investing app: phase one runs on regulated partner rails, phase two is our own brokerage infrastructure, with an internal ledger, FX engine, and stablecoin-enabled settlement corridor. We're seed-stage, on a multi-phase path to our own FINRA-licensed broker-dealer, and building the founding engineering team now.

Why this role exists

Ceno's brokerage is only as good as the systems that move customer money. This is a founding engineering role focused on backend and infrastructure, and it carries three of the company's hardest deliverables.

• Stand up the production systems. Build the scalable systems that move customer money: partner-broker integrations, the trade lifecycle, the internal ledger, FX, and market data.
• Architect with the CTO. Partner directly with the CTO on architecture and ship production code from week one.
• Own it, don't wait for a spec. You will not be handed a spec; you will help define how the infrastructure is built.

This is not a narrow backend role. It is a chance to own critical regulated infrastructure from the earliest days and help define how US investors access Asia. This is a founding engineering seat with real ownership from week one.

What you will own

• Partner-broker integrations. API integrations in the US and Korea, sandbox testing, and handling real-world spec drift.
• The trade lifecycle. Order entry, routing, fills, cancellations, settlement, portfolio updates, and post-trade reconciliation.
• The internal ledger. A double-entry ledger and reconciliation systems for cash, positions, FX conversions, and fees.
• Audit-grade foundations. Append-only event logs, idempotent handlers, replayable state machines, and structured observability.

Who we are looking for

Must-have

• 5+ years building, shipping, and operating production backend systems.
• Strong fluency in a modern backend language (Go, TypeScript, Python, Java, Rust) and data infrastructure (PostgreSQL, Redis, queues or event streaming).
• A track record of designing systems that scale: clean service boundaries, thoughtful data models, and an instinct for what breaks under load.
• Disciplined testing, observability, and incident response. You have been on call for a system where bugs cost money, data, or user trust.
• Founder-stage temperament: comfort with ambiguity, urgency, and broad ownership.

Strong nice-to-have

• Fintech, brokerage, payments, or crypto-exchange experience, especially code that touched customer money, orders, or balances.
• Broker or clearing integrations such as Interactive Brokers, Apex, DriveWealth, or Alpaca; FIX protocol or market-data experience.
• Double-entry or event-sourced ledger design and reconciliation workflows.
• Multi-currency cash management, FX, cross-border payments, or stablecoin settlement.
• Experience in regulated or high-compliance environments; Korean or Japanese fluency or broker experience.

Not the right fit

• Engineers who want a spec handed to them. This role helps define how the infrastructure is built.
• Engineers who treat correctness, auditability, and on-call ownership as someone else's job. Here the systems move real money.
• People who want a narrow backend lane. The seat comes with broad ownership of critical regulated infrastructure.

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