RAJA KATHIRESAN

Chief Technology Officer in regulated financial technology.

Twenty-five years in core banking, payments and lending — and, more recently, production AI inside regulated environments. Started as a core banking developer, which is why I stay close to architecture rather than above it.

4technology organisations built from zero
50engineers at peak, across three countries
1M+retail customers served across five CEE markets
EMEAdigital banking delivery at Citi

Where I go deep

Banking and payments

Core banking, card and account rails, ledger and reconciliation design, PSP integration, real-time transaction processing.

PSD2 · KYC/AML · ISO 20022 · idempotency · settlement

Regulatory delivery

Building under supervision: control frameworks mapped to obligations, audit evidence, and acting as technical counterpart to regulators and external auditors.

FMA · EBA · ISO 27001 · CISSP

Engineering organisations

Scaling teams from a handful to fifty across borders. Management layers, career paths, incident response, release discipline.

multi-country delivery · P&L · board reporting

Applied AI in production

Self-hosted models where data cannot leave owned infrastructure. Inline inference on the critical path, not batch afterthoughts.

Python · Rust · PyTorch · vision models · GPU infra

Record

Dec 2025 — presentVienna · remote

Fintech CTO

EqualyzAI — ESG fintech programme for a pan-African mobile money operator

Technology ownership for the platform: architecture, delivery and engineering, reporting into programme leadership.

Voice-first interaction in local languages, so customers with low literacy can transact without reading or typing. KYC and AML controls with a full audit trail against the operator's regulatory obligations.

Sovereign AI stack on open-source and fine-tuned models, GDPR compliant by architecture.

Qwen 3 · Whisper · Meta MMS fine-tuned for local languages · Python

Feb 2024 — Sep 2025UAE & Saudi Arabia

Chief Technology Officer

Seen App — multi-tenant payment processing platform

Real-time ML fraud scoring runs inline in the authorisation path rather than as a batch job after settlement, so a bad transaction is stopped before it clears.

Built the ledger and reconciliation model, PSP integrations, idempotent transaction handling, and merchant onboarding with KYC.

Later extended into automated invoice processing. Chose self-hosted vision models over conventional OCR because receipts and invoices are layout-heavy, and text extraction throws away the structure that carries the meaning. Ran on self-hosted GPU rather than third-party APIs to keep merchant financial data inside owned infrastructure. 100,000 documents processed in the first three months.

Python · Rust · ColPali · BGE · Temporal · Qdrant · AWS · self-hosted GPU

Apr 2023 — Nov 2023Vaduz, Liechtenstein

Chief Technology Officer & CISO

Licensed digital asset institution

Technology and security architecture for a banking licence application under the Liechtenstein FMA.

Designed the custody model and key management scheme: HSM-backed, multi-signature, segregated hot and cold tiers. Built the security control framework mapped to regulatory requirements and assembled the audit evidence package.

Acted as sole technical counterpart to the regulator, external auditors and legal counsel throughout. Application submitted to the FMA; mandate concluded as scoped.

Oct 2019 — Mar 2023Vienna, Austria

Chief Technology Officer

Fairo — Raiffeisen Bank International group venture

50 engineers at peak (30 steady state), three countries · €20M+ budget · P&L ownership · director of two legal entities (Austria, Ukraine) · board reporting

Digital banking and accounting platform for freelancers and small businesses, built as a startup outside the banking entity.

Integrations with two banking partners in Ukraine and Romania. Full PSD2 compliance and real-time transaction processing. Navigated banking licence requirements in Austria and Ukraine. KYC, AML and GDPR built into the platform rather than bolted on.

Scaled engineering from 2 to 50 across Austria, Ukraine and Romania — establishing the tech lead and engineering manager layer, career paths, code review standards, incident response and release management across three countries.

Employed through CreativeDock, the venture builder, from October 2019 to March 2021, transferring to the Fairo legal entities once they were established.

Nov 2015 — Aug 2019Vienna & Belgrade

Head of Group Digital Banking Competence Center

Addiko Bank AG

Built the group's digital banking and fintech capability from zero across five CEE markets serving more than a million retail customers.

Launched Viber Pay, one of the region's first digital payment initiatives — 100,000 users in six months, with regulatory approval secured across CEE markets.

Established the Group Digital Competence Center in Belgrade from scratch: hiring, structure and delivery governance across distributed teams. Led the mobile-first platform rebuild — native iOS and Android on an API-first architecture — deployed across Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.

Feb 2008 — Oct 2015Warsaw, Poland

Head of EMEA Digital PMO / Technology

Citi

Digital banking delivery across Europe, the Middle East and Africa for retail and commercial banking, at 90%+ on-time delivery under continuous regulatory oversight.

Launched a new mobile banking app across all EMEA markets. Owned internet banking and Smart Branch, including the branch and iPad applications used by branch staff and direct sales agents.

Relocated the regional technology function from London to Poland and rebuilt it from scratch — 20+ people, hiring, onboarding and knowledge transfer with no delivery gap. Shipped under PSD, MiFID and EU banking regulation with audit-ready controls throughout.

2001 — 2008India & Europe

Architect, engineer, core banking developer

Accenture · IBM Software Labs · Oracle

Enterprise application engineering across banking, telecom and automotive. Started on Flexcube core banking at Oracle, which is where the rest of this came from.