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Pre-Launch · Filing seed · Series A — Q4 2026

Leadership · Executive bench

Hiring the first five seats in 2026.

The executive bench for a clearing house is hired deliberately and in sequence. Each role is load-bearing for a different pillar of the institution — product, risk, law, technology, and the member relationship. The five seats below are open and actively being recruited. If one of them is yours, we want to know.
Open roles
5 executive seats
Target close
H1 2026
Location
New York · remote considered
Contact
careers@wavestar.space

How we hire

Principles for the executive bench.

A clearing house is an institution, not a startup dressed in institutional clothing. The bench is recruited with the expectation that the people on it will be running a regulated utility ten years from now — and will look back on the decisions they make in 2026 as the ones that determined whether that utility was credible.
  • 01

    Regulated-industry experience is mandatory

    Every executive role at Wavestar sits upstream of a live regulatory filing. We do not hire anyone into a load-bearing seat whose exposure to a regulated environment is theoretical. This is a non-negotiable.
  • 02

    Pay market for the discipline, not for the hype

    We benchmark against DTCC, CME Group, ICE, and major-bank clearing divisions — not against the venture-backed technology market. The compensation bands reflect that. The equity package reflects the asymmetry of what we are building.
  • 03

    Founders' intensity, operators' patience

    We need people who can put in the hours of a startup and the discipline of a bank. Those two modes have to coexist in the same person — intensity on the things that are load-bearing, patience on the things that need to be boring.
  • 04

    The first hires set the institutional temperature

    The first five executives will set the hiring standard for the next fifty. We over-invest in these conversations because the downstream compounding of a wrong hire at this stage is enormous.

Open roles

The founding bench — five seats.

  • 01

    Head of Clearing

    Owns ORCH. Directly responsible for the clearing engine, the CCP novation model, the default-fund waterfall, and the member-margin framework. Background: senior operator from a DCO, CCP, or major exchange clearing division. LCH, CME, ICE, OCC, Eurex, or equivalent. Reports to the CEO; sits on the Risk Committee.
  • 02

    General Counsel

    Owns the legal function end-to-end. Lead counsel on the four regulatory tracks (FinCEN MSB, SEC ATS, CFTC DCO, SEF/ DCM), the member rulebook, and the public filings archive. Background: senior securities or derivatives lawyer with agency-side experience or a partner-track background at a top firm. Reports to the CEO; board secretary by default.
  • 03

    Chief Technology Officer

    Owns the engineering organisation and the architecture of the platform — registry, Attest, ORCH's matching core, Terminal, Market. Background: senior engineering leader from a high-stakes distributed-systems environment (exchange, payments rail, cryptocurrency exchange infrastructure, or equivalent). Reports to the CEO; sits on the technology committee.
  • 04

    Head of Regulatory

    Owns the regulator relationship. Manages the filing cadence, the comment-letter process, and the ongoing examination workflow once we are licensed. Background: agency alumnus (FinCEN, SEC, CFTC, FCC) or senior regulatory-affairs operator from a systemically-important institution. Reports to the General Counsel; direct line to the CEO on matters of public record.
  • 05

    Head of Member Services

    Owns the operator-facing relationship. Membership onboarding, member rulebook interpretation, default management drills, and the annual transparency report. Background: senior client-service operator from a clearing house, custody bank, or major ground-station operator with commercial experience across the space industry. Reports to the CEO.

Compensation

What the offer looks like.

The executive package has three components: a market-rate cash salary benchmarked against comparable roles at DTCC, CME, ICE, and major-bank clearing divisions; a meaningful founding-team equity package vesting on a standard four-year schedule with a one-year cliff; and a performance-linked component tied to the regulatory filing milestones for the first two years.

Medical and retirement benefits are covered at market-leading rates. Relocation support to New York is available for candidates with the right profile, as is substantive remote-first arrangement for candidates with the right track record. We do not hold candidates hostage on geography.

You are hiring for the institution you want to be at year ten, not the company you are today. Everything else is cost discipline.
Wavestar·Compensation philosophy

Placeholder

The first bios will appear here.

Seats and status

Founder · CEO
Mitchell McLennan

See the founder page.

Head of Clearing
Open

Target close: H1 2026.

General Counsel
Open

Target close: H1 2026.

Chief Technology Officer
Open

Target close: H1 2026.

Head of Regulatory
Open

Target close: H2 2026.

Head of Member Services
Open

Target close: H2 2026.

Apply

If one of the seats is yours, send the shortest serious note you can write.

Routing is simple. Every inbound for the executive bench is read by a founding-team member personally. No recruiter screen, no cover-letter ritual, no template response. The subject line tells us which seat and the first three sentences tell us why.

Apply by emailAll open roles