He confirmed the news on Thursday, May 1, via his LinkedIn page.

Gurbhej Dhillon, who joined in May 2022 after holding key roles at Goldman Sachs, described the decision as a personal one, “the close of an amazing chapter” and the start of “a short but much-needed break.

“Leading the engineering team at Flutterwave has been a rewarding experience,” he wrote. “Together, we’ve built and improved key systems, expanded our capabilities, and grew the team.”

While that may sound like a routine handover, the timing is hard to ignore. Dhillon’s exit follows the departures of Chief Financial Officer Oneal Bhambani in November 2023 and Chief Operating Officer Bode Abifarin in March 2024. 

This trifecta of resignations leaves leadership gaps at a time when the company is recalibrating its focus, changing from IPO ambitions to profitability, according to recent comments by CEO Olugbenga Agboola.

During his time at Flutterwave, Dhillon led several technical overhauls. The company boosted its system performance to manage increased demand.

Flutterwave relaunched the Send App, a product now operational in over 34 countries. Strategic partnerships were also secured, including with Microsoft and Capgemini, which brought in new tools, frameworks, and operational capacity.

The impact of these moves was particularly visible in the global expansion of Flutterwave’s engineering team. Offices in India were established. The Lagos hub was broadened.

“Partnering with Microsoft and Capgemini helped us access new technologies and expand our impact in the fintech space,” Dhillon noted in his farewell post.

Still, the bigger picture at Flutterwave is not without complications. While the company has made visible strides like partnering with Nigeria’s SMEDAN to boost MSME access to digital payments and launching operations in Ghana with Affinity Bank, the succession of high-profile exits threatens to overshadow these achievements.

Dhillon didn’t hint at his next destination, choosing instead to focus on rest and reflection. “While I’m taking some time to rest, recharge, and reflect, I am excited about what lies ahead,” he said.

The company has yet to publicly name a replacement. 

• Dhillon started his engineering career at Jetblue, where he was an Application Developer and has since enjoyed 20 years of success as a Software Developer and engineering leader.  

• Dhillon joins Flutterwave, a $3 billion payments technology company, to improve its architecture, grow its infrastructure and better support the company’s growth and expansion objectives. 

• Dhillon is a global Developer Community Leader who believes in the amazing work that African developers have done, which he plans to contribute to.

Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company, today announced the appointment of former Goldman Sachs’ Managing Director, Gurbhej Dhillon as Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Dhillon joins at a key time for Flutterwave, following its recently completed Series D funding round, valuing the company at over $3 billion, and maintaining its rapid expansion. 

As the new CTO, Dhillon will be responsible for further development of Flutterwave’s innovative technology platform which currently supports integrations with key technology partners like VISA, Mastercard, Discover Card Networks, and customers like Uber, Flywire, Booking.com, etc.

He will focus on improving the architecture and infrastructure, as well as providing leadership enabling other engineering and product leaders to create the best solutions that support business growth for customers. 

Dhillon joins Flutterwave from Marcus by Goldman Sachs, where he was the CTO and Head of Lending Engineering. He has extensive experience in enterprise application architecture across financial services and consumer businesses. At Marcus, he was responsible for launching platforms to significantly grow businesses while improving customer experience and established strategic partnerships with several Fortune 500 companies. 

Before that, Dhillon was CTO for Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Capital Markets team, responsible for the design, architecture, and build-out of strategic platforms that enabled clients to execute equity and debt product offerings. 

Dhillon is a great supporter of the Developer Community in Africa and admires the work they have done in recent times, building creative solutions at a world-class standard. 

In his role as CTO of Africa’s leading technology company, Dhillon hopes to support the Community to attain higher levels. 

Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said: “I look forward to working closely with Gurbhej as we continue to expand rapidly. With the needs of our customers constantly evolving, we remain focused on driving further innovation across the business and continuing to develop our cutting-edge technology platform that simplifies payments and connects the African market with the world. Gurbhej’s experience and deep expertise in developing financial technology platforms will be instrumental in Flutterwave’s further growth.” 

Commenting on his appointment, Gurbhej Dhillon said: “I am delighted to be joining the Flutterwave team at such an exciting time for the company.  As a leading financial technology company in Africa, Flutterwave is well-positioned to capitalise on the global trends in payment digitisation and continues to drive Africa’s digital transformation, creating further opportunities for customers and merchants alike. It is a very crowded market with lots of new entrants so it is vital that we as a company continually look to innovate our products and services, improve our existing architecture and create endless possibilities for everyone.”

In February 2022, Flutterwave introduced a series of new products and services, including Fintech-as-a-Service, Capital, Grow and Card issuing, that would take the technology beyond payments. The fintech made improvements to existing products, such as a new powerful dashboard, Barter v4, and an AI-powered compliance process.