Job description

1. JOB PURPOSE

The CTO owns the company's technology strategy, architecture and engineering delivery, building and leading the team that ships and operates the company's platform. The role is accountable for the reliability, security and scalability of all systems supporting BNPL origination, payments, settlement and merchant integrations, and for ensuring the company's technology stack meets Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) requirements and withstands regulator and client security review. This is a hands-on, builder-operator role: the CTO hires and leads the engineering team, sets the reference architecture, and remains accountable for what gets shipped — not only for direction.

2. KEY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Architecture and technology strategy

•     Own the company's end-to-end reference architecture, including core platform, payments/settlement rails, merchant and partner integrations, and data infrastructure.

•     Set and evolve the technology roadmap in line with the company's business plan, product priorities and regulatory obligations.

•     Make and defend architecture and build-vs-buy decisions, including at implementation detail level, not only strategic level.

•     Evaluate and select core technology partners, vendors and infrastructure providers (cloud, payment processors, core banking/BNPL platform components).

Engineering delivery and team leadership

•     Build the engineering organization from the ground up: define team structure, hire engineers, and establish engineering roles, levels and career paths.

•     Personally lead and remain technically close to delivery — writes code, reviews architecture and code at a line-by-line level, and unblocks the team on hard technical problems.

•     Own the engineering roadmap and be accountable for on-time, quality delivery against it, not just for setting direction.

•     Establish engineering practices: SDLC, code review, testing, CI/CD, release management and incident response.

Security, resilience and regulatory readiness

•     Own the security architecture of all systems, including data protection, access controls, encryption, key management and secure coding practices.

•     Prepare for and lead the company's systems through CBK and other regulator security/technology reviews, as well as client and partner security assessments (e.g., bank and merchant due diligence).

•     Establish and maintain business continuity, disaster recovery and incident response plans for all critical systems.

•     Ensure technology change management, vendor risk and third-party access are governed and auditable.

Data, infrastructure and operations

•     Own infrastructure reliability, scalability and cost — uptime, performance, capacity planning and incident management for production systems.

•     Ensure data architecture supports accurate financial reconciliation, reporting and audit trails across BNPL receivables, merchant settlements and customer transactions.

•     Drive automation and scalable engineering practices while preserving appropriate controls, logging and auditability.

Governance and stakeholder engagement

•     Advise the CEO and Board on technology risk, technical debt, build capacity and major technology investments.

•     Participate in relevant management and Board committees, presenting clear, decision-useful technical updates.

•     Maintain working relationships with CBK (on technology/security matters), external security auditors, Internal Audit, Compliance and Risk Management.

•     Ensure prompt remediation of technology and security audit findings, escalating overdue or high-risk matters to the CEO.

Skills

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

•     Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline; advanced degree a plus.

•     Minimum 10–12 years of progressive engineering experience, including at least 4–6 years leading an engineering team (not only serving as an architect).

•     Demonstrated, current hands-on ability: still writes code and can defend design decisions in technical depth.

•     Has carried at least one system through a regulator or enterprise/client security review — required, not preferred.

•     Experience in regulated financial services, payments, fintech, banking or BNPL strongly preferred.

•     Experience standing up a technology function or team from an early stage, ideally in a new market.

•     Familiarity with CBK or comparable regional regulatory expectations is a plus; Arabic proficiency helpful but not required.