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Fractional CTO · Fintech

A fractional CTO who's
shipped regulated systems.

Fintech is where the demo-to-production gap gets expensive. Money movement, real-time data, audit, fraud, and compliance aren't features you bolt on later — they're the architecture. I'm Igal: 20+ years building AI and backend systems at real scale, including regulated fintech platforms. I embed as your technical co-founder and take it to production — without the full-time equity.

Book a 30-min call Is this a fit? →
The fintech gap

The wrong boundary early
becomes a compliance liability later.

In most products, a shaky architecture is a rebuild. In fintech, it's a rebuild plus an audit finding, a data-exposure risk, and a reconciliation nightmare. The constraints that feel like friction early — least-privilege access, PII/PCI boundaries, real-time fraud checks, an audit trail — are exactly the things that are ruinous to retrofit. They have to be in the design from day one.

What goes wrong in fintech builds

  • Compliance as an afterthought. Boundaries drawn for speed, then re-drawn under audit pressure.
  • Real-time under-engineered. Fraud, ledgers, and reconciliation that were fine at ten users break at a thousand.
  • Data sprawl. PII and money data leaking across services with no clear ownership.
  • No incident readiness. When a payment path fails, nobody can see which step, which service, which state.

This is for you if

  • Regulated, real traction. Funding or paying users, and the technical stakes just got real.
  • No technical co-founder. You need someone who owns architecture and outcomes, not ticket intake.
  • AI in the loop. Fraud models, agents, or data pipelines that have to survive real money and real users.
  • Speed without debt. You can't wait six months for a CTO — but the foundation has to pass an audit.
What you get

Senior technical ownership,
tuned for regulated products.

Architecture and service boundaries designed for audit and least-privilege from the start. Compliance-aware infrastructure — data ownership, access control, observability, and incident readiness on the money paths. Real-time and reconciliation systems that hold at scale. Hiring input, architecture reviews, and someone in the room when a payment path fails at 2am. Most engagements start with a two-week Discovery Sprint and continue into an embedded role.

Proof — fintech architecture

Lead Architect across three independent teams on an AI-powered fintech platform.

Stepped in as Lead Architect on an AI-driven fintech platform running three independent development teams. Audited the existing system, standardized the stack and service boundaries, and designed a scalable infrastructure model each team could build against on its own — without stepping on each other or the compliance surface. Elsewhere: a real-time data-mining engine architected and shipped 0→1 for a security-intelligence startup, and a platform rebuilt for 200k DAU that cut infrastructure cost from $3,400 to $1,500/month.

3 teams
Aligned on one architecture
Real-time
Fraud & data systems, 0→1
200k DAU
Platform, ~56% cost cut
Questions

Common questions.

What does a fractional CTO for a fintech startup actually do?
Owns the technical direction a regulated product needs but can't yet justify a full-time CTO for: architecture and service boundaries, compliance-aware infrastructure, data and money-movement reliability, hiring input, and incident response. Senior leadership on a retainer, not a contractor taking tickets.
Do you understand fintech compliance and security requirements?
Yes. Fintech architecture has to assume audit, PII/PCI boundaries, least-privilege access, and real-time fraud and reconciliation from day one — retrofitting them later is expensive and risky. I've architected regulated fintech platforms and real-time data systems where these constraints drove the design, not decorated it afterward.
How is a fractional CTO different from hiring a dev agency for our fintech build?
An agency delivers a scope and leaves; a fractional CTO owns the architecture and its consequences over time, and is incentivized for your product to last — not to bill the next change request. For a regulated product where an early wrong boundary becomes a compliance liability, that ownership matters.
We have engineers but no senior technical leadership. Is that a fit?
That's the most common case. I set architecture and service boundaries the team builds against independently, review the hard decisions, and stay on for the incidents — so your engineers move fast without accumulating debt you'll pay for at scale.
How do engagements start?
Most start with a 2-week Technical Discovery Sprint: I assess what you've built, design the right architecture, and hand back a prioritized roadmap and risk register. You leave knowing exactly what to build and in what order — most clients continue from there into an embedded engagement.

Think we might be a fit?

I work with a small number of early-stage startups at a time. Tell me where your product is — if I'm not the right call, I'll say so.

Book a 30-min call
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