Interim Head of Digital Assets UK Financial Institution. Next Gen Payments: Stablecoins + Ramps - Strategy + Execution
A senior digital assets leadership mandate at a UK financial institution that is about to step decisively into stablecoins, tokenisation and the next generation of international settlement infrastructure.
The individual will design the strategy, align the executive team, and lead the build. The role sits at ExCo-minus-one with direct visibility to the Board.
Who you must be:
▸ A builder, not an investor. You've built and shipped something, not just sponsored, advised, or monitored a portfolio of initiatives. You can point to a specific capability you took from concept through to commercialised, regulated, in-production.
▸ Payments-first, not crypto-native first. Your career foundation is in regulated payments: treasury, settlement, FX, cross-border, and off-ramp economics. You moved into digital assets because the payments stack is changing, not because you are chasing the cycle.
▸ Hungry and humble. This is not a CEO-of-your-own-business mandate. The institution is compliance-led and capital-conscious. You're ready to roll up your sleeves in an established organisation, take real ownership, and play the long game on converting to permanent.
▸ Regulatory and central bank fluency. You can think clearly through licensing pathways and jurisdictional choice. You treat regulator engagement as core to the mandate, not back-office hygiene. Central bank rooms do not intimidate you.
▸ Gravitas to control the narrative. Equally credible in a boardroom and on a conference stage. You can be the grown-up who distinguishes blockchain, crypto and stablecoins, and resists the conflation of all three. Comfortable walking into a regulator meeting and a Money 20/20 or Token 2049 panel in the same week.
▸ Strategic operator. You frame the question as a small number of strategic bets, clearing-and-settlement agent for which flows, build versus partner across infrastructure, whether to issue, white-label or stay out, and you resource them. You do not chase trends; you sequence them.
▸ Global lens, high-growth markets sensibility. Crypto is geography-agnostic, but the institution's core corridors are not. You understand that a "we do crypto" headline kills the wrong conversations with the wrong regulators. You frame stablecoin normalisation as a control story.
▸ Technically fluent without being a developer. Enough depth to engage substantively with infrastructure choices, partner conversations and stablecoin treasury design. Not a CTO. Not a CPO. A product and commercial athlete who can hold their own with engineers, treasurers, regulators and the Board.
The engagement:
▸ Format. Interim, inital six to twelve months.
▸ Location. London, two to three days per week in the office.