Chief Technology Officer / Founding CTO

Industry: Fintech / Neobank / Payments

Location: Sydney / Hybrid / Remote

About the company

We're an early-stage fintech building modern banking and payments technology from the ground up: secure, scalable, customer-centric financial products designed to operate in a regulated environment. We're looking for a hands-on Chief Technology Officer / Founding CTO to lead our technology strategy, build the platform, and shape the product from concept through to launch and scale.

About the role

This is a founding leadership role for someone who has walked the path from founding engineer to senior technology leader, who has built a neobank or payments platform from scratch and grown into the kind of leader who can now do it again, faster and better, from the top.

You'll define the architecture, select the stack, build the engineering capability, and work closely with the founders to turn product ideas into secure, scalable financial technology. Early on, this is highly hands-on: you're in the code and the architecture decisions. Over time, you'll build the team and operating model needed to scale.

This role requires direct, hands-on experience in neobanking, digital banking, payments, wallets, stored value, or transaction platforms. General SaaS or enterprise CTO backgrounds without this domain exposure won't be a fit; we need someone who already understands ledgers, reconciliation, and the specific failure modes of moving other people's money.

Key responsibilities

- Define and lead technology strategy, roadmap, architecture, and execution
- Build the core platform: cloud infrastructure, backend systems, APIs, databases, DevOps, monitoring, security, and data foundations
- Design systems fit for payments and digital banking, with ledger integrity, reconciliation,



and auditability built in from day one
- Select the stack and engineering practices, drawing on prior experience of what holds up at scale in a regulated setting
- Stay hands-on: code review, implementation guidance, and technical problem-solving
- Shape product flows, payment flows, reconciliation processes, and backend operations
- Evaluate and manage banking partners, payment processors, KYC/AML vendors, and fraud tools
- Make sound build-vs-buy calls based on speed, cost, complexity, and regulatory need
- Hire, mentor, and lead the engineering team as it grows
- Establish engineering practices across code review, testing, CI/CD, and release management
- Partner closely with founders and stakeholders across product, operations, compliance, and risk

AI expectations

AI is a core capability across the business. You'll be expected to:

- Drive an AI-first approach across the software development lifecycle
- Use AI tools to materially improve engineering productivity and quality
- Identify high-value AI use cases, including fraud detection and operational efficiency
- Ensure appropriate governance, security, and compliance for AI use in a regulated environment

Skills and experience: what's essential

- A founder's-eye view of engineering, earned the hard way: you started as a founding or early engineer at a startup, ideally a neobank, payments company, or wallet platform, and grew into a CTO,



Head of Engineering, or VP Engineering role.
- Direct neobank/payments domain experience is non-negotiable: digital banking, wallets, stored value, transaction platforms, card issuing/acquiring, open banking, or closely related regulated fintech.
- Strong hands-on engineering capability: you can still read and write code, not just review architecture diagrams
- Solid grounding in cloud infrastructure, backend systems, APIs, databases, cybersecurity, and scalable system design
- Working knowledge of payment flows, transaction processing, reconciliation, and controls
- Comfort operating inside compliance, operational risk, and regulatory constraints
- A track record of hiring, mentoring, and building engineering teams from a small base

Highly regarded

- Experience with card issuing, acquiring, open banking, remittance, KYC/AML, fraud detection, or transaction monitoring
- AWS, Azure, or GCP experience
- Experience scaling an engineering team from a handful of people to a real organization

What we're looking for

- Self-driven, comfortable owning outcomes without close supervision
- Hands-on and detail-oriented; willing to get into complex problems personally
- Calm and adaptable, with robust critical thinking under uncertainty
- Practical and execution-focused, balancing speed, quality, and risk
- Accountable for both technical and business outcomes

What we offer

- A genuine founding technology leadership opportunity, building the platform, team, and culture from the ground up
- Significant influence over product, architecture, and company direction
- A fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment with meaningful ownership
- Competitive salary package, with potential equity participation

📌 Chief Technology Officer / Founding CTO (Sydney)
🏢 FIRESOFT People
📍 Sydney