Aditi Desai

Head of Engineering / Director of Engineering, R3 Limited

Aug 2023 to Dec 2025

R3 delivers currency and financial technology solutions · Fintech · London

• Co-Led engineering for R3's CBDC platform, a greenfield distributed ledger system for tokenised central-bank money (retail & wholesale)
• Scaled and led a 30-person distributed engineering organisation across UK and Mumbai, with full accountability for delivery outcomes, engineering quality, and team performance
• Championed the adoption of AI-assisted development tools, including GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and ChatGPT/GPT-4, through a structured programme of experimentation and pilots across testing, code review, and documentation generation
• Established team norms and agreed principles for responsible AI tool use, covering code ownership and review standards
• Co-Led ISO 27001 certification across the engineering department on a greenfield codebase, embedding SDLC best practice while laying foundations for a scalable AI development practice
• Introduced quarterly product increments with tangible client demos, improving delivery predictability and stakeholder confidence in a complex, regulated programme
• Partnered with C-suite and product leadership on AI adoption strategy, engineering org design, and process innovation, translating executive vision into executable engineering direction
• Led the API strategy for R3's CBDC platform across REST and GraphQL, including public REST APIs and SDKs for client integration, and GraphQL services for bank-facing regulatory reporting and web/mobile client views (transactions, wallets, dashboards), including API governance and collaboration
• Drove the Operational Readiness Review (ORR), enforcing standards for deploying distributed services in a regulated environment, covering quality, performance, scalability, observability, security, and compliance

Senior Engineering Manager (Transform Group), Simply Business

May 2019 to Jul 2023

InsurTech providing insurance for SME businesses in the UK/US · Insurance · London

• Led engineering teams to deliver new insurance product capabilities and distribution channels, including direct, embedded, and partnerships for Transform engineering group
• Introduced a team of engineers focussed on Product Discovery and Innovation for designing and testing new ideas in the insurance market, paving the way for new value streams, products, and features
• Managed and coached multiple product focussed teams with ~20 engineers whilst building and scaling high-performance teams
• Worked with senior engineering leaders, architecture owners, and product leaders to drive key design and architectural decisions that solve and break down complex business problems to tangible technical components for iterative value delivery
• Assisted senior management in team topologies, capacity planning, metrics, talent, and retention strategy
• Partnered with Talent team as Hiring Manager for hiring, interviews, and placement of engineers and new roles
• Partnered with product & engineering leaders and business stakeholders to understand objectives, budget targets, build roadmaps to develop and execute tech strategy
• Delivered custom system integrations for distribution partnerships, including Barclays Business, Amazon Sellers, Compare the Market, and MoneySupermarket

Sr. Technology Manager, TUI

Feb 2017 to May 2019

A leading global travel and leisure experience company · Travel · London

• Led delivery and deployment of new product features and projects to TUI web and retail sites as part of a £5m budget, responsible for 8 partner scrum development teams
• Enabled a continuous delivery pipeline and shift-left initiatives, including feature-driven development, Git branching strategy, and test automation, reducing time to market by 50% within 6 months
• Drove key solution decisions and approvals aligned with the strategic vision of the department, ensuring value-driven prioritisation for the technical backlog
• Standardised and maximised use of the agile toolkit to improve team collaboration and efficiency