About the Company
Machines will make decisions, move value, and coordinate on behalf of organizations, instantly, autonomously, and at unprecedented scale. But the systems that govern today's economy weren't designed for that world. Turnkey is building the infrastructure for this future: programmable guardrails that enable autonomy without sacrificing control.
Founded by the team that scaled Coinbase Custody to $100M+ in ARR and secured more than $100B in crypto assets, we know how to move at pace without ever compromising on security.
Our mission is to help the world operate an economy on autopilot, safely.We're low-ego, high-agency, and deeply technical. Our team consists of experts in cryptography, security, and systems who believe great infrastructure is invisible. We're building the trustless, programmable foundation for the autonomous economy, and we're hiring people who understand what that requires.
We are seeking a Director of Engineering to lead our Product Engineering organization, the team responsible for Turnkey's core product. This spans our TEE- and HSM-based key verification and signing systems, the APIs, SDKs, and interfaces built on top of them, and the infrastructure that makes our security guarantees independently verifiable. This is a senior leadership role reporting to our CTO/Co-Founder Jack Kearney, owning both the technical direction and the people leadership of the org. If you're excited about the potential that web3 has to radically change the world for the better and have a sincere desire to help facilitate that change, join us as we redefine decentralized development.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Vision and Leadership
- Own the engineering strategy and technical vision for Turnkey's Product Engineering organization, spanning key management, the APIs and interfaces built on top of it, transaction processing, and the infrastructure that makes our security guarantees independently verifiable.
- Build, manage, and grow a high-performing engineering org, including hiring and developing engineering managers and senior ICs
- Partner closely with Product and Design leadership to translate customer and market needs into a clear technical roadmap
- Identify and evaluate emerging technologies and trends in web3 and guide their integration into our product
- Contribute to company-wide strategic planning and technical decision-making as a member of the engineering leadership team
Organizational & People Leadership
- Define and evolve the org structure, leveling, and career paths for the Product Engineering team as it scales
- Drive recruitment, onboarding, and retention of top engineering talent across the org
- Set and uphold engineering rituals (planning, incident review, on-call, etc.) that keep the org fast-moving and accountable
- Coach and develop managers and senior engineers, building a durable leadership bench
Architectural Oversight & Technical Direction
- Provide technical guidance across security-critical product systems, ensuring intelligent architectural decisions that scale with customer demand without compromising trust
- Oversee the design and implementation of TEE- and HSM-based key management and signing systems, the APIs, SDKs, and dashboards built on top of them, transaction construction and broadcast systems, and the infrastructure that makes our security guarantees independently verifiable
- Ensure the scalability, security, and reliability of product infrastructure, addressing the complexities of decentralized systems and adversarial threat models
- Define and drive processes that ensure quality and consistency across product development, from design through deployment
Qualifications & Requirements
- Proven experience managing engineering managers and/or leading a multi-team engineering org (not just individual teams)
- Deep understanding of modern application architectures and security-critical systems (e.g., HSMs, TEEs, key management), with the ability to lead in-depth technical discussions and make final calls on tradeoffs
- A track record of shipping security-critical or developer-facing products (key management, signing infrastructure, APIs, or SDKs) at scale
- Excellence at holding a high bar on software quality and engineering process, even while moving fast
- A healthy amount of paranoia:-)
Style Points
- Prior experience working in fast-paced crypto/web3 and/or FinTech companies, especially with exposure to custody, key management, or HSM/enclave-based systems
- Experience scaling an engineering org through a significant growth stage (e.g., Series B → C, or comparable)
- Actively tracking developments in the crypto ecosystem and opinionated on where it's going
We encourage individuals of all backgrounds to apply.
Compensation range
$250,000 - $290,000 USD
About Turnkey
Turnkey, founded in 2022 by Bryce Ferguson and Jack Kearney, former Coinbase engineers, in New York, provides low-level wallet infrastructure for developers. Its API abstracts private key generation, signing and policy enforcement into secure, scalable enclaves, letting apps spin up millions of non-custodial wallets with flexible permissions, social recovery and session keys. Used by exchanges, fintechs and on-chain games, Turnkey emphasizes sub-100ms signing, audited cryptography and fine-grained policies without exposing raw keys. Backed by leading investors including Sequoia and Variant, the company focuses on invisible infrastructure that makes crypto UX feel like Web2. Headquartered in New York with a remote US team, Turnkey operates with deep security expertise. Expect a high-trust engineering culture focused on key management rigor, developer experience and reliable operations.
