Chuck Ocheret, a 30-year software-engineering veteran in the finance, multimedia, and science industries, has joined VRBex, a cryptocurrency exchange and security-token trading platform, as its first chief technology officer, effective immediately, the company announced today.
Ocheret was most recently chief innovation officer at NEX Optimisation, a financial-technology firm, which he joined in August 2016. His focus there was on the integration of distributed ledger, AI, cloud, and cybersecurity technologies. He is also on the CFTC’s (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) Technical Advisory Committee.
VRBex pre-sale ICO opened on April 23. It runs through June 18 at 7 a.m. (EST). The main sale begins that same day at 8 a.m. (EST) and closes on July 23 at 8 p.m. (EST).
Ocheret reports to VRBex CEO Gene Grant, who said, “Chuck is deeply knowledgeable about building end-to-end systems in a robust way to make sure people’s assets and digital wallets are secure. His experience with fintech companies and disruptive approaches, which requires tremendous interaction with regulators, will be a key contributor to the success of VRBex.”
Throughout his career, Ocheret, who will divide his time between New York and VRBex’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, has run technology, architecture, and development at tier-one hedge funds and investment banks where his responsibilities included the supervision of algorithmic trading, program trading, index and statistical arbitrage, and client and market connectivity for high-volume trading operations.
Before NEX Optimisation, he spent three years as director of cloud product development and R&D at CSC, a global provider of IT and professional services across all sectors.
“Building elegant, industrial-grade, secure, and high-performance systems is my business,” Ocheret said. “At VRBex, we’re building systems from inception that will allow agility within this rapidly evolving technical, business, and regulatory environment. Trust is a big issue in financial services and is sorely needed in the cryptocurrency markets. We’ll provide that.”
Ocheret holds degrees in biomedical and electrical engineering from The Johns Hopkins University. He began his career at Bendix as an engineer in the algorithm development group and held software-engineering positions with increasing executive responsibility at companies, such as American Data Systems and Market Vision.
He joined Morgan Stanley as a senior staff engineer, responsible for implementation of one of the first real-time automated trading and research environments.
As a partner at Thinkbank and later as Managing Director at WR Hambrecht+Co, Ocheret was responsible for OpenIPO, OpenBook, and other auction systems, including the Freddie Mac reference note auction system.
In 2005, Ocheret joined UBS as executive director and head of U.S. Program Trading and as U.S. Equities architect. He went on to Managing Director positions at Bear Stearns, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.
In 2012, Ocheret founded ReadyPosition, a consultancy providing advisory services and custom software services for BBVA, Sberbank, and a wide variety of startups.
