Fractional CTO Engagement for Fintech Scale-Up
A Series B fintech startup had grown to 85 engineers across 6 squads but lacked a full-time CTO after their founding CTO departed. The engineering leadership void was causing misalignment between product and engineering, slowing delivery velocity, and creating architectural debt.
Client
Confidential, Fintech Client
Industry
Financial Services & FintechTeam Lead
Vivek Parmar
Date
Q3 2022
Business Challenge
A Series B fintech startup had grown to 85 engineers across 6 squads but lacked a full-time CTO after their founding CTO departed. The engineering leadership void was causing misalignment between product and engineering, slowing delivery velocity, and creating architectural debt.
Solution & Approach
Vivek Parmar embedded as Fractional CTO for 10 months, working 3 days per week. He restructured the engineering organisation into 4 mission-aligned squads, established engineering principles and architecture review processes, resolved the monolith-to-microservices migration strategy, and helped hire and onboard a permanent CTO.
Capabilities Delivered
- Engineering organisation restructuring and squad realignment
- Architecture review board establishment
- Monolith decomposition roadmap and migration governance
- Engineering hiring strategy and senior leader recruitment
- Product-engineering alignment process design
Business Outcomes
Deployment frequency improved from bi-weekly to daily within 6 months. The engineering team's Glassdoor score improved from 3.2 to 4.4 under the new organisational structure. A permanent CTO was hired and successfully onboarded within 9 months.
Bi-weekly→Daily
Deployment frequency
4.4/5
Engineering team satisfaction
9 months
Permanent CTO onboarded
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