Scaling Fintech Teams for a VC-Backed Financial Services Portfolio Company

Key takeaways

• Selby Jennings partnered with a VC-backed financial services portfolio company to scale specialist financial technology and product teams aligned with investor value creation plans
• Delivered 12 senior engineering, data, and technical leadership hires throughout the scale-up phase
• Enabled accelerated growth by strengthening the firm’s technical capability and governance standards

The challenge

A VC-backed portfolio company operating in the financial sciences and services industry needed to scale critical technical teams to support rapid product expansion and increasing client demand.

The business was struggling to compete for in-demand financial technology talent against global banks, fintech firms, and high-growth financial platforms. Operating within a regulated environment, they also required professionals with strong governance awareness and experience building secure, scalable systems.

The leadership team identified several priority areas:

• Software engineers, frontend, backend, and full stack, with experience in financial systems
• DevOps, platform, cloud, and infrastructure engineers capable of supporting secure, high-availability environments
• AI, data, and machine learning engineers focused on analytics, automation, and risk modeling
• Product design specialists with financial expertise
• Senior technical leaders to drive architecture, scalability, and delivery

The company required a specialist talent partner who understood the fintech space, investor timelines, and the link between technical capability and enterprise value, to deliver the experts they needed at speed.

The solution

Selby Jennings worked closely with portfolio leadership and key stakeholders to align hiring with commercial objectives and the broader investment thesis.

We built a targeted talent strategy centered on:

• Detailed market mapping across financial technology and data talent pools
• Access to our global network of technology professionals with financial services experience
• Rigorous qualification focused on technical depth, regulatory awareness, and scalability
• High-quality shortlists designed to reduce interview cycles and secure top performers quickly

Our consultants leveraged established relationships with technology professionals across banking, fintech, asset management, and financial software. This allowed us to engage passive candidates with direct experience building and scaling systems in regulated financial environments.

We operated as an extension of the internal hiring team, managing sourcing, screening, and process coordination to reduce time-to-hire and limit disruption to senior leadership.

The results

Throughout the firm’s scale-up phase, we secured twelve senior and specialist hires across engineering, data, and product functions. Each professional brought experience from leading financial institutions and high-growth fintech businesses, strengthening the company’s technical capability and governance standards.

The expanded engineering and platform teams increased system resilience and supported the rollout of new financial products. Data and machine learning hires enhanced analytics capability, contributing to improved client insight and operational efficiency.

As a result, the business was able to accelerate its product roadmap, strengthen its position in the highly competitive financial sciences market, and build a scalable technical foundation aligned with investor growth targets.

Summary

For portfolio companies in financial sciences and services, talent directly influences performance, valuation, and exit outcomes.

Selby Jennings combines deep financial expertise with specialist talent solutions, partnering with VC-backed firms to align hiring strategy to investment objectives and build the teams required to scale securely and drive long-term value.