Head of Blockchain & AI Engineering

As Head of Blockchain and AI Engineering at TerraStakes, you own the technology that issues, transfers and services tokenized real-world assets safely. You design and build the smart contracts, registry logic, custody integration and reconciliation systems that prove ledger, custodian and bank records agree before value moves. You apply AI where it measurably speeds up diligence and compliance, always under human control. This is a build role: the chain, token standard and custody vendor are selected through a structured evaluation you run.

What you'll do

• Own the design, delivery, testing and external audit of smart contracts across the full lifecycle: issuance at allotment, transfer controls (eligibility, restrictions and compliance actions), income distributions and corporate actions, and cancellation where required.
• Design for continuous issuance with several instruments by construction and reusable investor identity across issuances.
• Design the split between on-chain and off-chain state using event sourcing and an independently rebuildable read model, with confirmation depth and reorganization handling.
• Build reconciliation between on-chain and off-chain records that must agree before any allotment or distribution, with break tolerance, aging and escalation.
• Implement maker-checker on every privileged action, immutable audit trails, and evidence for auditors or regulators.
• Enforce the ordering on which the product rests: no instrument exists before the underlying asset is secured and offering conditions are met.
• Integrate with licensed custodians and wallet-infrastructure providers: APIs, approval policies, key management and reconciliation, ensuring the company holds no keys to investor assets.
• Run vendor evaluations and technical diligence for chain, standard, custody, identity and screening providers on merit and total cost at real volumes (continuous issuance, tens of thousands of wallets, periodic distributions).
• Own blockchain security: role-based access, multisig and timelocks, upgrade governance, threat models and incident response, within the group's security architecture.
• Take every contract through external audit and close findings before deployment.
• Deliver AI use cases such as document review, property data extraction and KYC and AML triage, each tied to a cost or risk the company carries, with measured evaluation, guardrails and full audit trails.
• Build and lead the blockchain and AI team from one person upward, working closely with Compliance, the Head of Tokenization and Issuance and the infrastructure and security lead.
• Write clearly for regulators, auditors and investors.

What you bring

• Six or more years in software engineering, including three or more in production blockchain, with mainnet contracts or repositories you wrote and shipped.
• Production smart contract development on at least one major ledger, including fuzz and invariant testing, upgrade patterns, multisig and timelocks (for example Solidity with Foundry or Hardhat, or an equivalent toolchain on another ledger).
• Working experience with identity-aware security-token or permissioned-asset standards, or an equivalent regulated ledger model, including transfer restrictions and compliance hooks.
• At least one contract taken through an external audit, with the findings fixed.
• Integration experience with a custodian or wallet-infrastructure provider: APIs, approval policies, reconciliation.
• At least one LLM or retrieval-augmented system in production, with evaluation and guardrails.
• Experience building for a regulated product (KYC and AML, VARA, ADGM, DFSA or an equivalent regime elsewhere).
• Experience leading a team of engineers.

Nice to have

• Real-world asset or security-token launches, in particular with income distributions to holders.
• Layer 2 networks, indexing and event pipelines.
• Direct interaction with UAE regulators.
• Experience building a technical function from one person upward.

What we offer

• Senior roles start part-time and convert to full-time when the seed round closes; base compensation for the initial period is deferred on terms agreed in writing before start.
• Compensation benchmarked to financial services market data for the exact job title, expressed as basic salary plus allowances in line with UAE practice.
• Equity participation in the company's share plan.
• Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates; hybrid working during the initial period.

About TerraStakes

TerraStakes is a UAE-based blockchain and AI technology company building regulated infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, starting with real estate. The company is early stage and pre-launch, meaning you set the architecture of the instrument layer inside a security and infrastructure design already laid down by the Chief Technology Officer.