A FinTech Engineering Practice — Not an Advisory Shop
AZdev embeds senior engineers and Fractional CTOs into FinTech, payments, and AI/ML companies. We pair with your team on the highest-risk components, ship through to production, and hand off stronger than we found it.
What we actually do
We embed engineers into FinTech and adjacent regulated companies, usually as Fractional CTOs or as senior practitioners on a specific high-risk system — a payments stack, a ledger redesign, a real-time payments integration, or a production ML pipeline.
Engagements typically last 6+ months, run 2–3 days per week, and end with a planned handoff. We work alongside your founders and engineering leadership — not as a vendor, not as an advisor.
We have shipped against real production constraints for named clients including Netspend, Uphold, Equifax, HelloHive, Latent Sciences, and others.
How we work
Three phases. Each one is a real deliverable, not a slide.
Read the codebase, the team, and the regulator
We do not produce a 40-slide deck. We read the code, sit with engineers, audit the vendor stack, and meet with the people who own the regulatory relationship. Output is a short written assessment naming what is broken, what is fine, and what to do first.
Pair with senior engineers on the riskiest parts
We embed in your engineering org — standups, code review, hiring panels, architecture reviews. We pair on the components where a wrong call has the highest blast radius: payment flows, ledger, fraud rules, sponsor-bank state, model governance.
Through to production, with a handoff plan
We stay through the cutover and the first audit cycle, then plan a handoff. The goal is to leave your team stronger than we found it — not to create a dependency. We help recruit your replacement when it is time.
Industries we serve
We focus on the regulated and high-stakes corners of engineering — where wrong calls compound and trust is hard to recover.
FinTech & Payments
Card issuing, lending, deposit accounts, money movement, credit-building features, mobile banking. Sponsor-bank, BaaS, and direct-rail patterns.
AI/ML for Regulated Industries
Production ML/LLM for finance, healthcare, and ad-tech — with the guardrails, evaluation harnesses, and model governance that regulated content actually requires.
Banking-as-a-Service
Non-bank FinTechs launching banking products through BaaS providers — provider evaluation, integration architecture, compliance ownership, and migration when needed.
FinTech Compliance Engineering
PCI DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type I/II, BSA/AML alignment, FINTRAC for Canadian FinTechs, OSFI Guideline B-13, NYDFS Part 500.
Principles
What we will and will not do.
Hands-on, not advisory
We write code, run incident reviews, sit on hiring panels, and ship cutovers. If you need a deck, hire a strategy firm.
Honest reads, even when they cost us a deal
Sometimes the right answer is "you do not need us" or "defer this for six months." We will say it. The repeat-engagement rate justifies it.
No conflicts on direct competitors
We will not advise two FinTechs in direct head-to-head competition. If a conflict appears, we surface it immediately.
Engineering quality matters more than process
A small senior team that ships beats a large team that ceremonializes. We optimize for the former in everything we recommend.
Where we work
AZdev is headquartered in Toronto, with an EU registered office in Dublin. The bulk of client work is across North America — most engagements are with US East Coast FinTechs (NYC, Boston, Atlanta) and Canadian FinTechs.
We work primarily remote, with periodic on-site as engagements require. For Canadian FinTech context — OSFI, Interac, FINTRAC, RTR — see our Toronto practice page.
Ready to talk?
30 minutes, free, no pitch. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.