Fractional and interim CTO

Fractional CTO for games and platforms that move real money.

I'm Fin. I ran payments infrastructure at Zepz, the group behind WorldRemit and Sendwave. I'm building Virtuverse, an MMO designed around a real-cash economy, and for three years I've worked as a community liaison between Entropia Universe players and its developer. I also build AI agent systems myself.

I work with payments and fintech scale-ups too.

Available now for fractional and advisory work. Based in Gothenburg.

Book an intro call How I can help

$1bn+moved each month on payments infrastructure I ran at Sendwave and Zepz

$20mannual technology budget I managed at Zepz

130+countries receiving money through those platforms

16 yearsin technology, mostly start-ups and scale-ups

Experience

Senior Engineering Manager, Governance and Trust Products MuralMar 2026 to now

Governance, security and trust products for a visual collaboration platform.
Engineering Manager, Search Management and Search Scaling Elastic2024 to 2026

Led around 15 engineers spread from the US West Coast to APAC.
Z

Director of Platform Engineering Zepz (WorldRemit and Sendwave)2021 to 2024

Core platform, infrastructure and CI/CD for every brand, including merging the two infrastructure teams.
S

Senior Engineering Manager Sendwave (YC W12)2020 to 2021

First infrastructure hire and one of Sendwave's first dozen engineers. Grew the engineering team to 40+, split the monolith into services, cut infrastructure spend by 15%, and saw the company through its $500m acquisition by WorldRemit.
Founder Virtuverse2018 to now

A sci-fi MMORPG built around a real-cash economy, in development.
i

Engineer to CTO iotec Global2013 to 2018

AI-driven programmatic advertising, technology team of 40+.

Before 2013: software engineering roles.

How I help

When to call me

Games and virtual economies

Your game has a real economy

Once money moves between players, you have payments, payouts, fraud and KYC/AML exposure to deal with, and an economy that has to stay stable. I've run payments infrastructure at scale and I'm designing a real-cash economy for Virtuverse.

Trust and compliance is slowing you down

Platform holders, payment providers and regulators all want answers before you launch. At Zepz I owned the security and compliance work for PCI DSS assessments and financial audits.

You want AI in your pipeline

Agent-written code, automated playtesting and balance simulation. I build and use all three on my own games, and can set them up for your team.

Start-ups and scale-ups

Your CTO has left

Or the founding engineer can't run a growing team alone. I run technology while you hire a permanent lead, help with the hiring, and hand over to them.

Engineering isn't delivering

Dates kept slipping. At Sendwave and Zepz I set a few delivery measures the board could follow and worked on the build pipeline.

Builds 68% faster, and each change shipped two days sooner.

Costs are growing faster than revenue

The cloud bill was climbing with volume. I made cost one of the requirements for every architecture decision.

$800k a year off the cloud bill at Sendwave and Zepz. At iotec Global, 9x more load without the cost rising to match.

You're raising, selling or being audited

Investors and acquirers look closely at technology. I've been through PCI DSS and financial audits at a payments company, and I work in governance, security and trust today.

Two teams need to become one

After WorldRemit bought Sendwave, I merged the two infrastructure teams: 40+ people across several time zones.

No regretted leavers through the merger.

You're building a payments product

At Zepz I was responsible for the core platform, infrastructure and CI/CD tooling across every brand. Today the group moves around $17bn a year, about 140,000 transactions a day across 5,000+ corridors.

Engagements

Ways to work together

Fractional and advisory work is available now. Interim roles are by arrangement.

Fractional CTO

Available now · one to three days a week

For companies that need a senior technology lead but not a full-time one yet. Usually strategy, hiring, budgets and reporting to the board.

Advisory

Available now · short, fixed scope

Technical due diligence, architecture and cost reviews, or a technology adviser for the board. For studios: an economy and monetisation architecture review, or a payments and compliance check before launch.

Interim CTO

By arrangement · full time, fixed term

I run technology while you look for a permanent CTO, then hand over to them.

Approach

How I work

Measures the board can read

Each team owns a few numbers tied to the business, covering delivery, quality, cost and customer experience. Those numbers go in the board pack.

Teams built around the product

Each team owns a part of the product end to end, so it can ship without waiting on the others. I design the structure to still work when headcount triples.

Hiring for the next stage

Hiring, onboarding and performance processes that turn the first engineers into leads and managers, who then hire the next group.

At Sendwave I was the hiring manager for every Python engineer we hired over two years, and made the final call on each one.

Cost as a design input

Technology costs should grow more slowly than revenue, so I treat cost as one of the requirements when choosing an architecture.

Keeping good people

Regular skip-level conversations, being open about what's happening and why, and taking career progression seriously.

Planning the handover

I plan my exit from the start. By the end, the team, its measures and its leaders are in place, and I'm no longer needed day to day.

Work

Games and AI I've built

Virtuverse, WorldFall and Farhold are where I work out how game economies and balance hold up. VIDA and SynthKit are AI tools I use to build them.

Online game · Founder · 2018 onwards

Virtuverse

A sci-fi MMORPG built around a player-driven, real-cash economy, where almost everything is crafted and traded by players. It's in development and being rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5. The real-money economy is not live yet.

I grew the team to around 15 people at its peak. It has 10,000+ sign-ups, and around 6,000 active players across live tests and the community.

For a studio: I've designed an economy where items carry real value, and I know where those economies come under pressure.

Unreal Engine 5
Economy design
Live tests

virtuverse.io Steam

Browser strategy game

WorldFall

A persistent strategy game in the browser. Players build a base on a 3000 by 3000 map that is generated fresh each season, push towards the Fall Site, and fight turn-based battles.

Every change runs against simulated players before release.

Simulated players catch balance and economy problems before real players do. I can set this up for your game.

3D in the browser
Balance simulation
AWS

Play WorldFall

Browser idle game

Farhold

A civilisation-builder in the style of Kittens Game and Trimps. You grow a settlement, research a tech tree and send out expeditions.

Simulated players test the pacing. They found a boss fight in the original design that couldn't be won.

Balance simulation
React

farholdgame.com

AI assistant for developers

VIDA

A voice-first assistant that keeps track of what I'd otherwise have to remember, flags what's slipping, and works through development tasks overnight. It merges its own changes only after they pass automated checks against a written spec.

The data, memory and integrations belong to the owner, so switching AI provider is a small change.

AI agents
Voice interface
TypeScript

hey-vida.com

AI developer tool · Coming soon

SynthKit

A planning model splits a feature into small tasks, each with a written contract, and cheaper coding agents build them in parallel.

Each change is checked against its contract before it's merged. I use it on my own games.

AI agents
Developer tools
TypeScript

synthkit.ai

Community

Between players and a developer

For three years I've been a community liaison between Entropia Universe players and its developer, MindArk. Entropia has run a real-cash economy since 2003, which makes player trust a large part of the work.

Entropia Legends

$50,000 prize pool

A competitive event for 52 teams and over 200 players, run on a platform I built.

entropialegends.com

Community liaison

I moderate community spaces, help new players get started, and take player feedback to the developers.

EU Suggestions

Players post and vote on ideas, and the developers reply through official accounts.

Skills

What I bring

Leadership

Org design
Hiring
Budgeting
Board reporting
Mergers and integration

Payments and compliance

Cross-border payments
PCI DSS
Financial audit
Security
Due diligence

Architecture and cloud

AWS
GCP
Azure
Kubernetes
Terraform
Cost control

Engineering

TypeScript
Python
Rust
PostgreSQL

Games and AI

Unreal Engine 5
Economy design
Balance simulation
LLM agents
Agent orchestration

Need a technology leader?

Available now for fractional and advisory work. Interim roles by arrangement.

Refer me when a CTO has just left, engineering has stopped delivering, a game needs a real economy built properly, or a raise or audit is coming.

fin@virtuverse.io LinkedIn

Based in Gothenburg. I work remotely across Europe, and I've led teams spread from the US West Coast to APAC.