Stefan Christensen

I lead platform, data, and AI infrastructure at Pleo.

Fifteen years scaling European fintech. Most of what I do is the work nobody else wants to own — the migrations, the cleanups, the org designs that decide whether a company scales or stalls.

5 → 15

European markets, 11 months

3×

Engineering throughput, flat headcount

70%

Card scheme cost reduction

20pp

Margin uplift on a processor migration

The path here

I joined Pleo in 2019 at around 100 people, looking to get hands-on after five years advising banks at McKinsey. My first job was migrating 20,000 customers to a new payment processor and unlocking a 20-point margin uplift. That turned into building the entire payments platform from scratch. We went from five European markets to fifteen in eleven months.

As the platform matured, the scope grew. I took on data, developer experience, infrastructure, security, eventually leading 100+ people through a period where we tripled engineering throughput without adding headcount. The unlock was removing friction and treating platform teams as product teams with real users and real outcomes.

Today I lead ~70 people across platform engineering, data, AI infrastructure, and regulated entities. The recent win I'm proudest of: a 70% reduction in card scheme costs through direct negotiation in a duopoly market where you have almost no leverage.

Before Pleo: McKinsey, advising Tier 1 European banks on payments and regulatory strategy. Before that: a PhD in physics at the University of Copenhagen, building atomic clocks beyond the quantum limit.

Full experience →

About

I lead platform, data, AI infrastructure, and our regulated entities at Pleo — about 70 people. I joined in 2019 to migrate the payments stack and ended up building the platform that runs the company.

Most of what I've owned at Pleo started as something nobody else wanted to own — a payment-processor migration, a regulatory deadline, a market launch with weeks of runway. The pattern: go in, ship the unsexy thing, leave a team that doesn't need me anymore. Before Pleo: McKinsey advising Tier 1 European banks, and a PhD in physics building atomic clocks.

Where I'm strongest

European payments, end-to-end

Built Pleo's payments platform from scratch, scaled it from 5 to 15 markets in 11 months, and took 70% out of card scheme costs in a duopoly through direct negotiation. The work no one wants to own and that determines whether the company can scale at all.

Traditional companies going AI-first

I'm in the middle of this transition right now: rearchitecting data pipelines, compliance automation, and internal tooling at a company that started as a card programme. Not the chatbot layer — the work that decides whether AI becomes the default way an organisation operates or stays a side project. Most of it isn't sexy.

Platform organisations crossing 50 → 200 engineers

Tripled engineering throughput on flat headcount in the last cycle. The unlock was treating platform teams as product teams with real users and real outcomes — and being willing to sit in the org-politics rooms nobody else wanted to be in. This is the threshold where org structure starts driving the product roadmap, and where most companies break.

Building product organisations through growth-stage

Joined Pleo at 100 people; helped take it past 850. Six years inside the product engine of a Series C fintech, plus five years at McKinsey before that advising European banks on payments and digital transformation. Product at growth-stage isn't the discovery loop — it's pricing, packaging, regulatory readiness, market launches with weeks of runway, and saying no to the things that don't compound. The companies that get this right keep momentum past Series B; the ones that don't, stall.

"Stefan is one of the strongest colleagues I have ever worked with. He navigates gnarly migrations, is an excellent org designer, and is a leader everyone wants to follow — because he genuinely cares for every individual on his team."

VP Engineering, Pleo