The company is seeking an experienced, hands-on interim engineering leader to oversee engineering execution for a financial products team during a leadership transition. This is a 3–4-month fractional or contract engagement, with the possibility of an extension. The role is remote, with some time-zone overlap required. The leader will report to a business leader and partner closely with product and marketing stakeholders. The team is small and experienced. The company needs an accountable operator—not an advisory-only CTO—to stabilize execution, maintain delivery momentum, and shape its longer-term technology and staffing plans.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and support a senior engineering team; establish clear ownership, priorities, decision paths, and a practical operating cadence.
• Triage active initiatives and backlog; assess work in progress, commitments, capacity, technical debt, and material risks; maintain continuity of critical delivery.
• Partner with business and marketing leaders to translate priorities into clear requirements, scopes, delivery sequencing, and trade-offs.
• Oversee critical engineering dependencies and integrations across business areas, including data flows, update processes, operational handoffs, and architectural dependencies.
• Lead structured knowledge transfer from the departing engineering leader; ensure essential system documentation, integration ownership, and open issues are captured and assigned.
• Assess team health and retention risk; provide consistent leadership, recommend near-term support, and evaluate skills, capacity, and hiring needs.
• Review architecture, technology, vendors, development practices, and operational resilience; recommend pragmatic changes and identify risks requiring escalation.
• Produce a realistic longer-term engineering roadmap and resourcing recommendation aligned with business strategy, budget, and the anticipated leadership model.

Deliverables and milestones

• Early engagement: Transition and knowledge-transfer plan; engineering and team risk register; inventory of active work and critical integrations; immediate delivery and retention priorities.
• First month: Prioritized execution plan, accountable owners, engineering operating cadence, documented cross-team dependencies, and an initial talent and capacity assessment.
• Mid-engagement: Measurable progress on priority commitments; scoped product and technical requirements; architecture and technical-debt recommendations; options for unresolved integration risks.
• Engagement close: Proposed longer-term engineering and technology roadmap, staffing and leadership model, estimated resource and investment needs, and a continuity plan.

Qualifications

• Prior CTO, VP or Head of Engineering, or senior engineering leadership experience with direct people and delivery accountability; proven ability to embed quickly as an interim or fractional leader.
• Experience leading small, highly senior product engineering teams without adding unnecessary process; strong coaching, communication, and prioritization skills.
• Background in fintech, lending, investing, financial services, or similarly data-intensive and regulated digital products strongly preferred.
• Comfortable assessing integrations, APIs, data handoffs, architectural dependencies, and platform reliability, while collaborating directly with engineers on technical trade-offs.
• Demonstrated ability to bridge commercial, product, and technical stakeholders and build practical roadmaps with resource and budget implications.
• Available to begin promptly with meaningful weekly continuity; willing to own outcomes rather than provide occasional strategic advice.
• Able to commit to a part-time weekly schedule, with flexibility during the transition; remote work with some time-zone overlap required.