Own the roadmap for API products and solutions, and operational capabilities—ensuring scalable, secure, and performant delivery. Manage an initial team of 12-14 engineers, structuring, mentoring, and scaling effectively as we grow. Foster a culture of continuous learning, hiring top talent, holding rigorous technical discussions, and promoting high standards. Collaborate closely with product, data science, infrastructure, and executive stakeholders to align engineering efforts with strategic business goals. Implement best practices for engineering workflows—scalability, observability, incident response, and reliability of all applications. Drive innovative architectural decisions and platform evolution to support product differentiation and speed to market.