Previously

Engineering Director, Google
Senior Director, Microsoft
Principal Software Engineering Manager, Microsoft

Company

Remitly provides an increasing number of immigrants with access to cheaper, faster, and more reliable ways to move money across borders to their loved ones in need. The company is driven by its tagline, “Promises Delivered.”

The remittance industry currently takes a staggering $40bn or 8% of transfer balances in commissions and does so in a way that is opaque to the user, as well as delivering the funds in extremely inconvenient formats.

Remitly strives to put more money in the hands of the recipient through a simplification of the remittance process, enabled by a modern technology platform that disrupts the $588 billion of transfers a year and dramatically improves the experience for all parties.

The company is adding new payment options and send-receive corridors regularly, continuing to deliver on is the continued expansion of its immigrant-focused global payment network.

Search Background

Given Remitly’s continued growth following an IPO, the CTO will drive the long-term technical vision to optimize global scale all in an effort to build peace of mind for customers and continued growth opportunities for Remitly’s tech workforce.

Reporting directly to the CEO, the CTO will be responsible for defining and executing the strategy that will determine the evolution of the technology that underpins Remitly’s scaling – from millions to hopefully billions of users and a partner ecosystem spanning most of the countries in the world.

Requirements

We sought an executive who had the experience of picking up from a settler CTO and re-assessing the current organizational and technological health plus engineering cadence and culture in order to revise the vision for the next phase of growth.  Remitly expect the next few years to see a scaling of the team to over 500 engineers in order to fulfill the product roadmap ambitions.

Most of the team is based in Seattle with pockets dispersed across the US and Europe.  Whilst direct exposure to the fintech ecosystems was not a rigid requirement, an experience of building software at an international scale and ideally with product features that have high transactional throughput that demonstrates data integrity and high levels of resilience was very important.

We also sought a leader who has been immersed in world-class engineering organisations from technology brands known for creating compelling consumer experiences where there is passion for solving ‘the complexity of simplicity.

Finally, we needed that person to be a strong value and culture fit for Remitly.

Result

Having mapped the leading technology brands on the West Coast with these contextual overlaps and put together a very strong diverse slate of candidates, Ankur rose to the top based on values fit, stage commensurate scaling experience and domain knowledge.

Matt Oppenheimer

CEO

Our brand is built on trust, which means that our platform needs to always perform, be resilient, and adhere to a myriad of global compliance and security standards. Finding our next CTO was a critical hire to support our growth and scale our solutions. Working with Sam and the Erevena team was a wonderful experience. The depth of research, quality of the shortlist and finesse of the search process and closure of the candidate was top notch and we are happy to have Ankur on the team.

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