Head of Finance & Custody - VARA
Payward, Inc. is a global financial infrastructure company and the parent organization behind Kraken. It provides trading, custody, payments, lending, staking, tokenized assets, derivatives, and market data infrastructure to consumers, professional traders, institutions, enterprises, fintechs, banks, exchanges, asset managers, and onchain platforms.
Funding history
Investors
Projects
About Payward, Inc.
Payward, Inc. operates a unified financial infrastructure platform powering a portfolio of products including Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, CF Benchmarks, and Payward Services. Its shared architecture provides global liquidity, risk and margin management, collateral and settlement, compliance and licensing, and operational infrastructure across crypto, tokenized assets, and traditional markets. Through Payward Services, the company offers APIs and infrastructure for crypto trading, custody, on/off-ramps, tokenized equities, derivatives, staking and yield, payments, and benchmark data. Payward operates across more than 190 jurisdictions and serves consumers, professional traders, institutional investors, enterprises, fintechs, banks, exchanges, asset managers, and DeFi/onchain protocols.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will own financial and regulatory reporting for a VARA-regulated Dubai VASP entity while overseeing the safeguarding of client money and virtual assets. You will build the entity’s finance controls, manage reconciliations and reserve coverage, coordinate audits and regulatory reporting, maintain capital and liquidity workflows, and advise management on client-asset impacts.
Requirements
- Qualified Accountant with ACA, CIMA, ACCA, or equivalent qualification
- Significant relevant experience in financial services
- Experience in safeguarding, custody, or client asset and client money control environments
- Working knowledge of VARA’s rulebook architecture or ability to build this knowledge rapidly
- Experience in group reporting focused on financial accounts and external or regulatory reporting
- Knowledge of IFRS and/or US GAAP
- Analytical, problem-solving, and stakeholder communication skills
- Cross-functional project management experience
- Leadership skills across finance, compliance, and risk
- Strong organisation and attention to detail
- Ability to manage multiple regulatory deadlines
- Ability to operate with minimal supervisory oversight
Responsibilities
- Own monthly, quarterly, and annual management and financial accounts
- Prepare and submit VARA regulatory reporting packs
- Prepare local-entity forecasts and budgets
- Lead the statutory audit process
- Develop and maintain the finance control environment and risk register
- Monitor and report on safeguarding of client money and virtual assets
- Reconcile client virtual assets and client money daily
- Maintain the reserve asset coverage workbook
- Maintain client money placement timelines and escalate aged exceptions
- Enforce no-rehypothecation controls over custody assets
- Maintain client-asset safeguarding procedures and controls
- Maintain capital, net liquid assets, and insurance workflows
- Own the breach-notification playbook
- Maintain and test the client-asset return element of the wind-down plan
- Oversee third-party safeguarding service providers
- Advise management on client-asset impacts of new products, services, and markets
Benefits
- Remote work
