Thomas Reina

Thomas Reina Occupation Chief Technology Officer Employer Options Xchange Group Location New York, New York LinkedIn Profile Website http://optionsxchange.com Thomas Reina is an American financial technology executive who serves as the chief technology officer of Options Xchange Group and previously served as the head of exchange technology at the Investors Exchange (IEX) and chief technology officer of the International Securities Exchange (ISE). Background Citibank Reina began his career in systems architecture and software engineering, accumulating more than fifteen years of technical experience prior to entering the exchange sector. At Citibank, one of the major commercial banks, he worked as a systems developer focused on infrastructure engineering and application security architecture. His responsibilities included designing backend data layers, transaction delivery protocols, and authentication frameworks for distributed, web-based banking platforms. During the late 1990s, global retail and institutional banks accelerated the transition of financial transaction processing from isolated mainframe networks to web-accessible distributed systems. This migration required fault-tolerant server architectures that could maintain data integrity under heavy network traffic while preventing unauthorized access. Reina worked alongside software engineers and infrastructure architects to build secure transaction gateways, developing expertise in high-throughput network architectures that later informed his work in electronic trading environments. International Securities Exchange Reina joined the International Securities Exchange (ISE) in 2000, the year the firm began operations as the first fully electronic options exchange in the United States. In May 2007, the exchange named him technology development officer, a corporate officer role in which he managed trading software development teams. In this capacity, he reported directly to the chief information officer Daniel Friel and worked closely with the technology architecture officer John Ryan to build order-matching modules, market data feed handlers, and interface connectivity for broker-dealers. His team supported the exchange's execution capacity during an expansion period for equity and index options, processing order flow for market makers, proprietary trading firms, and institutional investors seeking continuous price discovery and deep liquidity. Reina later served as senior vice president of technology development before earning promotion to chief technology officer of the International Securities Exchange (ISE) on April 1, 2016. He took over the role from Robert Cornish, who advanced to chief information officer upon Daniel Friel's retirement. As chief technology officer, Reina oversaw systems engineering across the operator's multi-exchange footprint, which included the ISE Gemini and ISE Mercury venues. He managed technical partnerships with infrastructure vendor Exegy to deploy hardware-accelerated market data feeds engineered to comply with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Systems Compliance and Integrity (Reg SCI) standards for exchange operational resilience. Reina directed exchange technology until Nasdaq acquired ISE in June 2016. New York Stock Exchange Reina joined the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in November 2016 as head of technology and served in the role until October 2020. In this capacity, he oversaw exchange engineering across the operator's equity and derivative platforms, managing software delivery and trading functionality. To accelerate the rollout of commercial features, he reorganized horizontally structured technical groups into dedicated delivery teams aligned directly with exchange business units. Under his engineering direction, the exchange delivered trading enhancements that supported seven consecutive quarters of quarter-over-quarter market share gains and nearly doubled contract volume across its listed options markets, serving order flow from proprietary trading firms, market makers, and institutional investors. During his tenure, the U.S. capital markets faced expanded regulatory reporting mandates alongside rising execution volumes in electronic trading. Reina directed the exchange's technical implementation for the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), collaborating with industry working groups and external technology providers to establish data transmission frameworks for complete order lifecycle tracking. He also conducted technical architecture sessions with member trading firms—including high-frequency trading groups, hedge funds, and brokerages—to review order routing protocols, feed latency, and gateway connectivity. These technical initiatives facilitated member integration with exchange matching infrastructure, supporting transparent price discovery and deterministic liquidity access. Investors Exchange Following his tenure at NYSE, Reina joined the Investors Exchange (IEX) as senior vice president and head of exchange technology. At IEX, he directed the core engineering teams responsible for maintaining and optimizing the venue's national securities exchange architecture. He reported to senior executive leadership, collaborating with chief executive officer Bradley Katsuyama, president Bryan Harkins, and chief technology officer Robert Park to oversee trading engine operations, gateway connectivity, and post-trade reporting infrastructure. During his time at IEX, the U.S. equities market experienced rising message traffic and accelerated adoption of complex automated routing strategies by proprietary trading firms and institutional investors. Reina managed the engineering teams responsible for ensuring low-variance, deterministic execution schedules and rigorous system uptime across the exchange's matching processes. His mandate focused on maintaining exchange performance while supporting structural mechanisms such as the exchange's speed bump architecture, designed to promote fair price discovery and protect resting liquidity across cash equity markets. At Options Xchange Group, Reina joined an executive management team that included chief strategy officer Sean Feeney, chief revenue officer James Hyde, head of engineering Billy Mullins, and chief legal officer Clare Saperstein. The venture formed during a period of record multi-list equity and index options volume, where market participants required deterministic execution times and transparent connectivity to trade against high-frequency quoting streams. Reina led the engineering design of the exchange's architecture to provide capacity scaling and data transparency for exchange members, market makers, and asset managers executing complex multi-leg derivative transactions. Education Reina graduated from Trenton State College. References

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