CTO – Product and Engineering — Digital Bank

The mandate

A listed digital bank needs materially faster product engineering, but its reliability margin is narrow. Asset-quality pressure is generating urgent changes in credit, collections and customer support while growth teams continue to demand features. Architecture debt, manual release controls and shared specialists make apparent acceleration unsafe unless priorities and engineering practices change together.

The CTO – Product and Engineering will influence approximately AED 85,000 million in loans and deposits and lead around 550 employees and material partners. Scope covers product technology, software engineering, architecture, data interfaces, quality, developer experience, reliability, technical risk, vendors and workforce capability. Executive accountability is held by the Group Chief Executive or designated executive committee sponsor.

The CTO will begin with flow evidence. Demand, work in progress, dependencies, review queues, defects, incidents and productive capacity should be visible by value stream. More releases are not useful if they create operational recovery, unstable credit decisions or customer rework. Priority must reflect customer, asset-quality and risk consequence.

Product and engineering ownership will be joined. Each team needs a clear customer outcome, service boundary, decision authority and operational duty. Product leaders cannot hand specifications to technology, and engineers cannot treat usability or portfolio outcome as someone else’s problem. Discovery will test need and feasibility before major build commitment.

Architecture choices will balance speed and health. Standards for identity, data, decisions, events and observability should reduce reinvention. Exceptions require a consequence, owner and retirement date. The CTO will fund selective debt removal where it releases delivery capacity or lowers material risk, rather than pursue an abstract clean-up.

Release confidence will come from engineering controls. Automated testing, secure pipelines, production-like environments, feature controls, telemetry and rollback need to support smaller changes. Independent risk remains independent, but evidence should emerge from normal delivery. Manual approval that adds delay without improving assurance will be redesigned.

Asset-quality work requires traceable decisions. Credit rules, data, model interfaces, treatment strategies and customer communications must be versioned and monitored. Changes should show cohort impact and unintended consequences. The CTO will ensure speed does not obscure why a customer received a decision or how it can be corrected.

Reliability will use customer-relevant service objectives. Availability alone can hide failed onboarding, delayed payments or inaccessible hardship support. Incident review should remove systemic causes and recurring toil, with leadership attention proportional to customer and control impact.

Engineering productivity will not be inferred from activity counts. Lead time, completion, change failure, toil and adoption should be read together. Contractor and vendor output must include code quality, documentation, knowledge and operability. Capacity claims should reconcile to finance and workforce plans.

The organisation will strengthen product-minded engineering leaders and technically credible managers. Principal engineers need influence across teams; successors should be tested through architecture and incident decisions. Hiring, development and partner use will follow the chosen value streams.

Why this seat is open

This planned new role is part of the next operating model, not a replacement. A four-to-six-month search places the appointee before the next capital and talent cycle while existing leaders retain formal accountability until activation.

What you will own

• Increase product-engineering flow without sacrificing reliability or control.
• Influence technology across an AED 85,000 million digital-bank perimeter.
• Join product, architecture and operational accountability by value stream.
• Strengthen release automation, telemetry, rollback and quality evidence.
• Deliver traceable asset-quality and customer-treatment changes.
• Lead approximately 550 employees and partners with stronger technical succession.
• Reduce architecture debt that constrains capacity or creates material risk.
• Give capital sponsors credible delivery ranges and intervention points.

The first 12 months

The opening 90 days should reconcile demand, capacity, architecture and severe reliability exposure. Meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to delivery, including customers, product, credit, risk, operations, engineers and vendors. Assess leaders and agree value-stream gates.

Months four to nine should reduce work in progress, improve pipelines and simplify priority architecture. Deliver asset-quality changes through controlled releases and remove recurring incident toil. Initial value may be faster safe completion, lower failure, released contractor capacity or improved customer treatment.

By year end, release confidence, architecture health and engineering productivity should improve repeatedly. Delivery must remain within 10% of approval and forecasts should reconcile change, cash, customer and people over three quarters. Priority risks need independent sustainability evidence; serious escalation cannot age beyond 30 days.

What the board will measure

• Lead time, completion and change failure by product value stream.
• Customer-relevant reliability and recovery from material incidents.
• Asset-quality decisions traceable through data, rule and release versions.
• Architecture debt removed with evidenced capacity or risk benefit.
• More than 90% retention for pivotal specialists and immediate cover across 70% of direct roles.
• Vendor output accepted for quality, knowledge and operability.

The person

You are a CTO, SVP Engineering or Product Technology Head with 18–22 years in banking or a comparable regulated digital business. You have accelerated product delivery while improving reliability and made consequential architecture trade-offs under portfolio pressure.

Your accountable P&L, book, budget or portfolio has been at least AED 49,300 million, and you have led 500 or more people. You can show sustained results over two reporting periods.

You understand digital banking, credit journeys and modern engineering. You can challenge feature urgency, technical perfection and risk process with evidence while maintaining customer trust and executive followership.

Compensation and terms

Fixed compensation is AED 1.9–2.7 million plus annual incentive and LTI. The permanent Dubai appointment follows a hybrid pattern, supports international relocation and permits notice up to six months.

Confidentiality

The bank, product roadmap and asset-quality priorities remain unnamed. Identifying details follow a confidential fit discussion; scale and context are composite.