R&D Director

Hypernative builds a real-time Web3 security infrastructure that protects protocols, chains, wallets, and institutional participants from on-chain threats before damage occurs. Our platform operates in adversarial, high-scale environments where correctness, latency, and resilience are critical.

We are looking for an R&D Director to lead and scale multiple engineering teams responsible for Hypernative’s core platform. This role sits at the intersection of architecture, execution, and people leadership.

If you enjoy owning complex systems, mentoring strong engineers, and driving delivery in a fast-growing company, this hands-on senior leadership role is for you.

Responsibilities

Technical & Architectural Leadership

• Own the technical direction and architecture of one of Hypernative’s product lanes
• Lead design decisions in distributed, low-latency, security-critical systems
• Ensure high standards for reliability, performance, observability, and operational readiness
• Influence both architecture and organizational growth at a critical stage
  
  

• Lead multiple R&D teams through team leads and senior engineers
• Mentor engineering managers and help grow future technical leaders
• Build a strong engineering culture focused on ownership, quality, and continuous improvement
  
  

• Translate product and business goals into clear technical plans and milestones
• Ensure predictable delivery while managing technical debt and long-term scalability
• Work closely with Product, Security, and DevOps teams on prioritization and execution
• Partner with Product and Customer-facing teams to align technical solutions with real customer risk scenarios
• Represent R&D in leadership discussions and strategic planning
  
  

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, including senior leadership roles
• Strong background in backend systems, distributed systems, or infrastructure
• Strong knowledge of AWS architecture, including cloud-native services and production-scale environments
• Proven experience leading multiple teams or a large, complex engineering group
• Hands-on software engineering background, with experience in technologies such as Python, Node.js, and React
• Comfortable making architectural and tradeoff decisions in high-stakes, security-critical environments
• Strong communication skills and ability to work effectively across functions
• Experience in startups or fast-scaling R&D organizations - an advantage
• Experience with data pipelines, streaming, or large-scale data processing - an advantage