Chief Technology Officer (CTO) - Digital Lending / NBFC

Location: Gurugram

Work Mode: 5 days Work from Office

Experience: 15 - 20 years

Role Overview:

We are looking for an experienced Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead the technology strategy, architecture, engineering and digital platform capabilities of a fast-paced NBFC operating in the unsecured / short-term consumer lending space.

The CTO will work closely with the CEO and business leadership to translate business strategy into a scalable, secure and reliable technology roadmap. The role requires a strong combination of technology leadership, lending-domain understanding, product/platform ownership, architecture depth and engineering execution.

This is not purely a governance role. The CTO should be technically strong enough to challenge architectural decisions, evaluate platforms and technology choices, guide senior engineers and architects, and intervene effectively in critical technology or production issues.

Mandatory Experience:

- 15 - 20 years of overall technology experience.

- Significant technology leadership experience as CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Technology, Engineering Head or equivalent.

- Prior experience within an NBFC or digital lending organisation.

- Hands-on business and technology exposure to unsecured consumer lending, personal loans, short-tenure loans or payday lending.

- Strong understanding of the end-to-end digital lending lifecycle.

- Experience building or scaling high-volume customer-facing financial technology platforms.

- Experience leading sizeable engineering and technology teams.

- Strong exposure to cloud-native architecture, APIs, microservices and modern engineering practices.

Key Responsibilities:

Technology Strategy & Leadership:

- Define and execute the organisation's technology strategy in alignment with business growth, lending strategy and operational priorities.

- Partner directly with the CEO and leadership team on technology investments, product roadmap, scalability and digital transformation.

- Translate business objectives into clear technology architecture, platforms, engineering priorities and execution plans.

- Establish technology governance, engineering standards, architecture principles and delivery disciplines.

- Evaluate build-vs-buy decisions and technology/vendor investments from both technical and commercial perspectives.

Digital Lending Platform Ownership:

Provide technology leadership across the complete lending technology ecosystem, including:

- Digital customer acquisition and onboarding

- eKYC / identity verification

- Credit bureau and third-party data integrations

- Credit underwriting and decisioning

- Rules engines / scorecards

- Loan Origination Systems (LOS)

- Loan Management Systems (LMS)

- Disbursement and payment integrations

- Repayment processing

- Collections technology

- Customer servicing platforms

- Fraud detection and risk-control systems

- Partner / fintech / API integrations

Ensure that the lending platform can support rapid growth without compromising reliability, customer experience, security or risk controls.

Architecture & Engineering:

- Own the overall application, integration, data and infrastructure architecture.

- Drive scalable microservices / service-oriented and API-led architectures suited to high-volume digital financial transactions.

- Ensure appropriate use of synchronous and event-driven architectures for transaction-intensive systems.

- Lead cloud strategy and optimisation across relevant public-cloud environments.

- Establish strong practices around APIs, integration architecture, database and data architecture, CI/CD, DevOps, containerisation, monitoring and observability, performance engineering, high availability, and disaster recovery.

- Review major architectural decisions and provide hands-on technical direction to senior engineering teams when required.

Engineering Organisation:

- Build, develop and lead high-performing engineering, architecture, DevOps, infrastructure, data and technology teams.

- Establish clear organisation structure, accountability and engineering leadership layers.

- Recruit and retain strong technology talent.

- Improve engineering productivity, quality and release predictability.

- Establish measurable engineering KPIs around availability, performance, quality, security and delivery.

- Create a culture of engineering ownership rather than dependence on vendors.

Risk, Security & Regulatory Compliance:

- Ensure technology platforms comply with applicable RBI, digital-lending, cybersecurity, data-governance and information-security requirements.

- Work closely with Risk, Credit, Compliance, Legal and Information Security teams.

- Ensure strong controls around customer and financial data, access management, API security, transaction security, audit trails, data retention, business continuity, and disaster recovery.

- Support internal, statutory, regulatory and technology audits.

- Ensure technology architecture incorporates risk and compliance requirements by design rather than as an afterthought.

Data, Risk & Decisioning Technology:

- Strengthen the organisation's use of data across underwriting, fraud management, collections, portfolio monitoring and customer lifecycle management.

- Enable reliable real-time and batch data-processing capabilities.

- Work with credit and risk teams to support scalable decisioning and risk platforms.

- Evaluate appropriate applications of analytics, machine learning and AI within lending operations where they deliver measurable business value.

Vendor & Technology Partner Management:

- Evaluate technology platforms, SaaS products, infrastructure providers and strategic technology partners.

- Manage critical technology vendors against defined SLAs, security standards, scalability requirements and commercial expectations.

- Reduce inappropriate vendor dependency while retaining specialist partners where commercially or technically justified.

Required Technology Depth:

The successful candidate need not be a day-to-day programmer but must retain strong technical depth and be capable of reviewing architecture and challenging senior technologists.

Strong understanding of several of the following is expected:

- Java, Python, Golang or comparable backend technologies

- Microservices architecture

- REST APIs and API gateways

- Event-driven architecture

- Kafka or equivalent messaging technologies

- Relational and NoSQL databases

- Cloud platforms such as AWS / Azure / GCP

- Kubernetes and containerised environments

- CI/CD and DevOps

- Infrastructure as Code

- Distributed systems

- High-volume transaction processing

- Data platforms and analytics

- Application and infrastructure security

- Monitoring, logging and observability

Leadership Profile:

The CTO should demonstrate:

- Ability to operate as a business leader as well as a technology leader.

- Strong communication with CEO, Board and senior functional stakeholders.

- Ability to simplify complex technology decisions for non-technical leadership.

- Strong decision-making and execution discipline.

- Ability to balance speed of delivery with architecture, security and technical debt.

- Experience managing technology budgets and investment priorities.

- Strong ownership mindset in a high-growth and execution-intensive environment.

- Ability to remain close enough to technology to independently assess engineering quality and architectural risk.

Preferred Experience:

Preference will be given to candidates who have additionally worked with:

- Digital-first NBFCs / fintech lenders

- High-volume consumer lending businesses

- Real-time underwriting or decisioning engines

- Fraud detection and risk analytics

- Large-scale payment integrations

- Cloud migration or platform-modernisation programmes

- Data / ML-driven underwriting, fraud or collections use cases

- Rapidly scaling technology organisations

Education:

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology or a related discipline from a recognised institution.