Head - Technology - FinTech/Digital Payments

Reporting To: CTO / CEO

Location: Mumbai preferred - Hyderabad may be considered

Work Model: Work from Office - 5 days a week

Experience: 15+ years

About the Organisation:

This mandate is confidential; the organisation's identity will be shared with shortlisted candidates.

Our client is a well-established and rapidly growing financial services and fintech organisation, building technology-led products and platforms for a large and expanding customer base.

This role offers an opportunity to lead the technology and engineering evolution of a large-scale, high-availability digital financial platform, with significant ownership across technology strategy, architecture, engineering, platform reliability, cloud, security and AI.

Role Overview:

We are looking for a technology-first engineering leader who combines strategic thinking with deep technical expertise and a strong track record of building and scaling mission-critical digital platforms.

The role will lead technology strategy, architecture and engineering execution while remaining closely connected to system design, platform engineering, production operations, scalability and reliability.

The individual will work closely with Product, Business, Risk, Operations, Compliance and senior leadership to translate business priorities into secure, scalable and high-performing technology platforms.

Key Responsibilities:

Technology Strategy & Architecture:

- Define and execute the technology strategy, architecture roadmap and platform modernisation agenda.

- Drive scalable, resilient and secure architectures across microservices, APIs, event-driven systems and cloud-native platforms.

- Remain actively involved in architecture reviews, technology selection and critical technical decisions.

- Challenge architectural assumptions and drive the right balance between scalability, reliability, security, speed and cost.

Engineering & Platform Leadership:

- Lead and scale a large engineering organisation across Software Engineering, Architecture, Platform Engineering, DevOps/SRE, QA and Cloud/Infrastructure.

- Drive engineering excellence across development, CI/CD, DevOps, DevSecOps, observability and automation.

- Build platforms capable of supporting significant growth in users, merchants and transaction volumes.

- Mentor and provide technical direction to Architects, Engineering Managers and senior technology leaders.

Production, Reliability & Security:

- Own platform availability, performance, resilience, scalability and production engineering.

- Lead critical production incidents, RCA and resolution of complex performance and reliability challenges.

- Drive robust SRE, observability, disaster recovery and business continuity practices.

- Strengthen secure architecture, fraud/risk controls and technology compliance in regulated financial environments.

Payments, Product & Business Partnership:

- Lead technology for high-volume digital and transaction platforms, with strong understanding of payments and financial technology ecosystems.

- Partner with Product, Risk, Operations, Business and Compliance teams on platform and product delivery.

- Oversee integrations with banks, payment networks and other financial partners.

- Drive technology decisions with clear focus on customer experience, transaction success, platform reliability and business outcomes.

AI & Technology Transformation:

- Drive adoption of AI/GenAI, intelligent automation and AI-assisted engineering across technology and operations.

- Lead legacy modernisation, platform transformation and technology simplification.

- Identify opportunities to improve engineering productivity, operational efficiency and technology economics.

Ideal Candidate Profile:

- 15 - 22 years of technology experience, including 7+ years in senior engineering/technology leadership.

- Experience leading technology for large-scale digital platforms, preferably in FinTech, Digital Payments, Banking Technology, Financial Services or Payment Networks.

- Proven experience building/scaling high-availability and high-volume transaction platforms.

- Strong experience managing large engineering organisations while remaining technically connected to architecture and engineering decisions.

- Strong exposure to digital payments, UPI/real-time payments, payment processing, payment gateways, transaction platforms, reconciliation/settlement or banking integrations will be highly relevant.

- Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices/API architecture, cloud, Kubernetes, DevOps/SRE, security and performance engineering.

- Strong understanding of AI/ML, GenAI and technology automation.

- Experience operating in regulated financial-services environments and working with senior business, regulatory and executive stakeholders.