Fintech · Team leadership · Release process
Fintech Product Launch
- Period
- 2023 — 2024
- Role
- Lead Frontend Engineer
- Industry
- Fintech
- Result
- 30days to ship
The challenge
What was actually broken
Joined a payment-processing product that was already four months behind schedule. Two developers on the team, no functional release process, no environment to validate changes before customers saw them, and no one on the team could give a reliable launch date. The client and the CEO had both run out of patience.
The approach
How I addressed it
- Spent the first week reviewing the code and observing how the team operated. By the end of that week I had identified three risks that would have prevented the launch if left unaddressed
- Over the following three weeks hired six people — front-end developers, back-end developers, QA engineers and a project manager — with clearly defined ownership for each role from day one
- Established a controlled release process so every change was validated before reaching customers. A development environment for the team to work in, a staging environment for final verification, and production for end users — each with automated checks to prevent regressions
- Replaced ad-hoc handovers with a structured release cycle. Weekly releases, daily check-ins, a single source for release notes, and clear ownership at every stage
- Worked directly with the two original developers on the most critical modules, so ownership transferred to the new team without slowing anyone down
Stack
The tools behind it
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- GitLab CI
- Cypress
The outcome
What was delivered
- Team scaled from 2 to 8 members across roles
- First production release delivered in 30 days, recovering a four-month delay inherited from before I joined
- Release process stable from week one, with zero emergency rollbacks in the first quarter
- Releases settled into a weekly cadence — predictable enough for the client to plan integrations around it
Facing a similar situation?
A 30-minute call, no sales. We will quickly know whether I am the right person for the job.