Director of Financial Services, Industry Lead

Blockstream was founded in 2014 by Dr. Adam Back and a group of fellow cryptographers and engineers who are passionate about Bitcoin and its potential to change the world. Today, Blockstream is the leading Bitcoin company, providing cutting-edge infrastructure solutions for enterprises, institutions, and individual Bitcoin users. We develop industry-leading Bitcoin self-custody solutions, Bitcoin-based financial products, second-layer scaling technologies, and enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure.

We are seeking a Director of Financial Services, Industry Lead
, a senior leadership role serving as the primary technical, architectural, and strategic authority for clients across banking and financial services. This position is accountable for identifying market needs, shaping industry-specific solution strategy, and providing expert architectural guidance to clients at executive and board levels.

This role owns the translation of market demand and client business challenges into scalable, secure, and compliant architectural solutions. The Director, Industry Lead, Financial Services works closely with executive stakeholders, commercial leadership, and Product & Engineering to influence go-to-market strategy, portfolio direction, and long-term product evolution.

• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team responsible for translating market demand and complex financial-services client challenges into scalable, secure, and compliant architectural solutions
• Own the identification, analysis, and prioritization of market needs across banking, custody, payments, tokenization, and digital assets
• Define and lead industry solution and architecture strategy, ensuring alignment with market demand, regulatory requirements, and company growth objectives
• Act as the senior-level trusted advisor and architectural authority for clients, guiding strategic technology and architecture decisions
• Lead executive client engagements, architectural discovery sessions, and solution strategy workshops to define future-state architectures
• Set architectural direction for end-to-end solutions, covering front-end, back-end, integration, cloud infrastructure, Dev Ops, and security
• Drive customer solutions strategy within the Service and Enterprise Products organization, identifying product utility, efficiencies, and architectural synergies
• Translate market insights and client requirements into standardized solution patterns, architectural principles, and reference architectures
• Elevate the Enterprise Team’s competitive positioning by simplifying complex architectures and accelerating enterprise adoption
• Demonstrate deep expertise in banking architectures and processes, including core banking platforms (e.g. Avaloq or equivalent) and integration of blockchain technologies into regulated financial systems
• Oversee and support complex client engagements from solution strategy through delivery and referenceable outcomes
• Provide executive guidance on regulatory and compliance considerations for crypto custody, digital assets, and blockchain-based solutions, with a focus on Swiss and European regulations
• Serve as the Voice of the Market and Voice of the Customer at a leadership level, influencing product strategy, feature prioritization, and roadmap planning
• Own the creation, governance, and evolution of reference architectures and best-practice frameworks reflecting industry standards and market adoption patterns
• Act as a senior escalation point for complex architectural and technical challenges in partnership with Product & Engineering leadership
• Partner with commercial leadership on deal strategy, shaping solution architecture, delivery models, SLAs, and commercial structures
• Contribute to resource planning and prioritization across Product & Engineering during strategic pursuits and deal execution
• Represent the company externally through executive briefings, conferences, and industry events

• 10+ years of experience in technology leadership, banking, or financial services transformation
• Proven leadership in building and managing high-performing teams,…