CTO – Product and Engineering — Insurance Distribution Network

The mandate

A listed insurance distribution network is asking engineering to accelerate digital quoting, carrier connectivity and adviser tools while margins narrow. Delivery teams appear fully committed, yet releases queue behind shared components, production defects consume senior capacity and short-term product promises keep reopening architecture decisions. More activity will not create more pace. The board has approved a new CTO seat to join product and engineering choices under one accountable leader.

The CTO – Product and Engineering will steward approximately AED 5,250 million in assets and investment and lead about 500 employees and material partners. The scope spans product engineering, architecture, platform services, quality, reliability, developer experience and strategic suppliers. Product and commercial leaders remain critical peers, but the CTO owns the technical capacity and health behind every roadmap commitment.

Margin compression makes portfolio discipline essential. Each initiative must show customer or distributor value, carrier dependency, engineering effort, run cost and reliability consequence. The executive will stop or simplify features whose revenue case depends on permanent manual support. Work on resilience, security and regulatory obligations must occupy visible capacity rather than arrive as an unexplained delay.

Architecture should create speed through stable boundaries. Common identity, policy data, workflow and integration services need product ownership, service levels and adoption plans. Country or carrier variants will survive only where evidence justifies them. The CTO must also reduce change failure, improve production ownership and give teams safe routes to release more frequently.

Supplier economics require attention. External squads and packaged platforms can add capability, but contracts often reward deployed people or licences rather than working outcomes. Build, buy and partner decisions should include integration, operability, data rights and exit cost.

Engineering productivity will be measured at system level. Individual utilisation can rise while work waits for environments, carrier decisions or manual release approvals. The CTO will use flow and reliability evidence to change team boundaries, internal platforms and governance. Technical career paths should reward production ownership, architecture stewardship and the development of others, creating credible successors rather than a small circle of indispensable experts.

Why this seat is open

This is a planned new appointment for the next operating model, not an incumbent replacement. The board has allowed four to six months for a careful search before the next capital and talent cycle. Existing responsibilities remain in place until the remit activates.

What you will own

• Reconcile the product roadmap with available engineering capacity and technical dependencies.
• Define architecture boundaries that enable carrier and country variation without uncontrolled duplication.
• Improve release quality, production reliability, recovery and security evidence.
• Steward AED 5,250 million of assets, investment, risk acceptance and forecasts.
• Govern platform services, adoption, lifecycle cost and legacy retirement.
• Reset supplier and external-engineering arrangements around delivered value and exit readiness.
• Lead 500 employees and partners with strong technical and product-engineering succession.
• Give the board clear trade-offs among pace, scope, reliability and margin.

The first 12 months

In the opening 90 days, baseline roadmap demand, capacity, dependencies, release flow, defects and incidents. Meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to pace and reliability, including advisers, carrier partners, product, operations, risk and engineers. Identify commitments without credible teams or architecture, assess leaders and stabilise immediate production exposure. Agree board gates for new investment and material launches.

Months four to nine should re-sequence the portfolio, settle common platform ownership and deliver a bounded improvement in one high-value journey. Fill leadership gaps, reduce avoidable hand-offs and retire work that consumes capacity without customer or economic benefit. The first value should appear in release frequency, lower rework, better availability or capacity returned to priority products.

By year end, release confidence, architecture health and engineering productivity should improve repeatably. Delivery needs to finish within 10% of the approved value case, and forecasts must reconcile capacity, cash, customer and people assumptions across three quarters. Priority risks should close by agreed dates with independent proof; severe escalations cannot remain open beyond 30 days.

What the board will measure

• Predictability and frequency of safe releases against capacity-aware commitments.
• Change failure, escaped defects, availability and recovery for critical journeys.
• Engineering cost and contribution by product and common platform.
• Adoption and retirement outcomes from architecture simplification.
• At least 90% retention of critical talent and ready-now cover for 70% of direct reports.
• Quantified improvement in pace without reliability deterioration, supported by named data ownership.

The person

You are a CTO, Product Engineering Leader or Technology Executive with 18–22 years in financial services or a comparable regulated platform business. You have owned product and engineering consequences together, including budget, talent, architecture and production service.

Your accountable P&L, book, budget or portfolio has been at least AED 3,050 million, and you have led no fewer than 500 people. You can show a delivery acceleration where reliability improved rather than merely surviving, with results sustained for two reporting periods.

You can refuse unsupported commercial promises, explain technical debt in economic terms and retain strong engineers while changing how work is funded and owned.

Compensation and terms

Fixed compensation is AED 1.9–2.7 million plus annual incentive and LTI. The permanent role is based in Dubai on a hybrid pattern, supports international relocation and allows notice up to six months.

Confidentiality

The organisation and architecture will be disclosed only after reciprocal interest and confidentiality. Composite facts are not identifying clues.