Sagar Chand Agarwal — Engineering Leader

I'm a technology leader with 8+ years building fintech platforms, scaling engineering teams, and shipping products that move the needle on real business outcomes.

Currently serving as CTO at BeyondIRR, a Hyderabad-based wealth management fintech, where I've grown the engineering team from 2 to 15, architected multi-cloud infrastructure across AWS, GCP, and Azure, and shipped an LLM-powered AI portfolio assistant that changed how our clients interact with their investments.

My engineering philosophy: systems should be simple at the boundaries, powerful at the core. I believe the best engineering orgs are built on psychological safety, clear ownership, and a relentless focus on delivery over process.

Outside of work I write about distributed systems, fintech architecture, and engineering leadership. I'm deeply interested in how AI is reshaping financial services — and how to build teams that can harness it responsibly.

I hold an M.S. in Machine Learning & AI from Liverpool John Moores University and have built everything from real-time trading pipelines to AI chatbots in production.

Core Skills

Python FastAPI Microservices AWS GCP Azure LLMs Agentic AI ETL Pipelines Kubernetes ISO 27001 Team Scaling Kafka Elasticsearch

Jan 2024 – Present

Chief Technology Officer

BeyondIRR · Hyderabad, India

Leading technology strategy and execution for a wealth management fintech. Scaled the engineering team from 2 to 15, architected multi-cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) achieving 99.9% uptime, and shipped LLM-powered AI systems for portfolio management. Drove ₹2+ Cr in new business through technical leadership. Led ISO 27001 compliance, VAPT assessments, and full DPDP Act adherence.

PythonMulti-cloud LLMsETL Pipelines ISO 27001Team Leadership

Apr 2022 – Dec 2023

Software Engineering Team Lead

BeyondIRR · Hyderabad, India

Led development of InvestLane — a multi-sector investment management platform. Built high-performance FastAPI microservices backend with real-time mutual fund data pipelines. Established CI/CD standards, code review practices, and engineering best practices that became the foundation of the team's culture.

FastAPIMicroservices CI/CDReal-time Pipelines

Feb 2021 – Apr 2022 · 1 yr 3 mos

Lead Software Consultant

Upwork · Remote (Hyderabad, India)

Contracted as a senior backend engineer for a fast-growing, bootstrapped eCommerce SaaS platform serving Amazon and eBay sellers, working 30–45 hrs/week within a distributed global team. Built and maintained RESTful APIs with Python and Flask for core marketplace integrations; worked with Amazon MWS API for order management, inventory sync, and listing workflows. Designed and optimised PostgreSQL schemas for high-throughput eCommerce data (orders, SKUs, pricing, fulfilment) and implemented Redis caching to reduce latency under peak seller traffic. Triaged inbound support tickets via Intercom, translating user issues into fixes shipped directly to production. Collaborated asynchronously across global time zones using GitHub, Slack, ClickUp, and Loom in a fast-ship, short-feedback-cycle environment.

PythonFlask PostgreSQLRedis Amazon MWS APIREST APIs

Dec 2019 – Feb 2021

Senior Software Consultant

Team8 Solutions LLC · Hyderabad, India

Designed and built a full-cycle recruitment platform for the energy sector. Implemented resume parsing (Sovren), skill taxonomy-based job matching, and candidate search using PostgreSQL and Elasticsearch. Deployed the full stack on Kubernetes.

KubernetesElasticsearch PostgreSQLResume Parsing

Mar 2018 – Dec 2019

Software Engineer

TECHSOPHY · Hyderabad, India

Built full-stack features on the TXP enterprise platform using Node.js and Python. Developed a Rasa NLU-powered AI chatbot for conversational automation integrated with real-time backend systems. Automated deployment workflows with CI/CD pipelines in a cloud-native environment.

Node.jsPython Rasa NLUChatbot

Jul 2017 – Feb 2018

Software Engineer

GrabOn + Upwork · Hyderabad, India

Led development of BestPriceOn, a price comparison engine, building backend APIs with Flask and MongoDB and scraping pipelines for e-commerce data. Also built a real estate property search platform with map visualizations (Leaflet.js), improving page load times by 40% and organic traffic by 28%.

FlaskMongoDB Leaflet.jsSEO

Education

2020 – 2022

M.S. ML & AI

Liverpool John Moores University

2020 – 2021

PG Diploma ML & AI

IIIT Bangalore

2013 – 2017

B.Tech. Computer & Comms

LNMIIT Jaipur

def process_portfolio(data): pipeline = ETLPipeline() pipeline.ingest(data) return pipeline.transform() # 10GB+ daily class FinancialETL: def __init__(self): self.sources = []

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Architecture

Building Financial ETL Pipelines That Don't Break at 3AM

How we process 10GB+ of financial data daily at BeyondIRR — design decisions, failure modes, and the lessons we learned the hard way.

Feb 2025 · 8 min Read →

class AgentOrchestrator: def __init__(self, llm): self.llm = llm self.tools = [] def run(self, query): plan = self.llm.plan(query) return self.execute(plan)

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AI / LLMs

LLM Agents in Fintech: What Actually Works in Production

We shipped an agentic AI chatbot for portfolio management. Here's what the papers don't tell you about running LLMs in a regulated financial environment.

Jan 2025 · 11 min Read →

layers = [ "Channels", "App Services", "Shared Services", "Infrastructure", ] # Kubernetes · Postgres # Elasticsearch · Redis

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System Design

Building a Modern Talent Intelligence Platform

A complete architectural deep dive — layers, deployment, auth, and the full tech stack behind a production-grade recruitment platform.

Mar 2025 · 8 min Read →

// Team growth: 2 → 15 // Hiring principle #1: // Hire for judgment, // not just skills. const hiringBar = { judgment: 'critical', curiosity: 'required', skills: 'coachable' }

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Engineering Leadership

Scaling an Eng Team from 2 to 15: The Mistakes I Made

Going from a scrappy 2-person team to a 15-person org is not just about hiring. It's about letting go, building systems, and learning when to stay out of the way.

Dec 2024 · 9 min Read →

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "data" { bucket = "beyondirr-data" tags = { Environment = "prod" Compliance = "ISO27001" } } # 99.9% uptime target

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Cloud Infrastructure

Multi-cloud Without the Chaos: Our AWS + GCP + Azure Setup

Why we chose multi-cloud, how we avoid vendor lock-in, and the architecture patterns that keep our fintech platform running at 99.9% uptime.

Nov 2024 · 7 min Read →

// ISO 27001 Audit Prep // 114 controls // 12 months to certify // Zero surprises const security = { vapt: 'quarterly', access: 'zero-trust', logs: 'immutable' }

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Security

ISO 27001 for Startups: A CTO's Survival Guide

We got ISO 27001 certified as a 15-person fintech. No expensive consultants. Here's the exact process, the tools we used, and what we'd do differently.

Oct 2024 · 12 min Read →

SELECT portfolio_id, SUM(value) as nav, LAG(nav) OVER ( PARTITION BY portfolio_id ORDER BY date ) as prev_nav FROM holdings GROUP BY 1, date

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Fintech

Real-time Portfolio NAV: The Database Design That Scaled

Portfolio valuation sounds simple until you're doing it for thousands of clients with complex instruments in real time. Here's the schema and query design that made it work.

Sep 2024 · 10 min Read →

I'm always open to interesting conversations — whether that's about engineering leadership, fintech architecture, AI systems, or a new role that looks like an interesting challenge.

The best way to reach me is email. I respond within 24 hours on weekdays.

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[email protected]

🔗

linkedin.com/in/sagarchandagarwal

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GitHub

github.com/sagaragarwal94

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Location

Hyderabad, Telangana, India

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