Brian Aznar
Chief Technology Officer at Republic
Brooklyn, New York, United States
About Brian Aznar
Brian Aznar is Chief Technology Officer at Republic. Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States.
I build the secure, compliant infrastructure that brings private markets on-chain — and I run engineering AI-first. With 25+ years at the intersection of engineering, capital markets, and digital and real-world assets, I lead the teams that turn regulated financial products into scalable, tokenized platforms. As Global CTO at Republic, I run an 80+ person global engineering, infrastructure, security, and data organization. I'm an AI-forward engineering leader. I've made Republic's entire software development lifecycle AI-native — embedding agentic, spec-driven workflows across development, testing, and review — increasing delivery throughput 4x year-over-year with a leaner team, and standing up an internal AI Guild that ships LLM/RAG products into the platform. My conviction: organizational context, not raw model capability, is what separates real AI leverage from hype in a regulated business. On the platform side, my teams deliver compliant, high-performance infrastructure across tokenization, digital wallets, investor platforms, and blockchain integration — spanning Reg CF, Reg D, and Reg S offerings, smart-contract-powered cap tables, digital onboarding, and institutional-grade wallet systems (MPC, multisig, cold storage). Highlights include launching the world's first 24/7 exchange for tokenized private-market securities, consolidating Republic's U.S. and international platforms onto a unified cloud-native stack, and achieving SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certification in eight months. Earlier, I led engineering organizations at 21Shares (VP of Software Engineering), Voice / Block.one (VP of Engineering), Major League Soccer (Head of Engineering), and Condé Nast (Senior Director of Engineering). Throughout, my focus has stayed the same: connecting modern software engineering with the evolving needs of financial services — platforms that are innovative and performant, and also resilient, secure, and built to scale in regulated environments.
Skills
Additional experience
Strategic Advisor
Kaiber
February 2024 – March 2026
Education
- Bachelor of Science, Virginia Tech
