Throughout my career, I have been tasked with managing platforms where "downtime" translates to millions of dollars in blocked funds. I faced two distinct scaling challenges at opposite ends of the spectrum:
The prepaid card network required a system capable of handling intense bursts of traffic, demanding a throughput of ~2,700 Transactions Per Second (TPS) without latency.
Stax was launching Stax Processing on a newly acquired money-movement platform that had to fit the Stax architecture and serve its merchants and ISV partners at scale. PE sponsors and the executive team needed a clear fix-or-replace answer, fast. I was hired in three days to run it.
My approach evolved from technical execution to strategic orchestration:
I led the development of a high-capacity processing engine designed specifically for speed. By fostering effective cross-functional teamwork, we built a system that met demanding performance requirements, successfully stabilizing the network at peak 2,700 TPS loads.
Directive was build-or-buy. I pursued both paths in parallel, working with the engineers who knew the platform best, the PE stakeholders setting the timeline, and every layer of the internal team. Running both tracks also bought the time to learn the entire Stax stack soup-to-nuts, which is what made the final recommendation defensible.
After 2–3 months of iterative diagnostic cycles, the architecture read said the existing platform could be made to work. Delivered fix, not replace, avoiding the time and cost of a new-platform build.
The combination mattered. It let me model the problem in the codebase and defend the call in the boardroom the same day, which is how hard platform calls actually get made.
Once the platform was stable, I shifted to the business side of the product, aligning upstream systems contributing to the money flows, and initiating external NACHA ACH audits for the new Stax Platform and company-wide compliance.
Once ACH was stable, reconciliation was the next honest question: across card brands, sponsor banks, and the Stax platforms themselves. "Where is the money, and how accurately can we know?" is the question every PE investor and acquirer asks before writing a check. Started the same rebuild pattern run at Payrix four years prior. Same story, different company.
Performance (Blackhawk): Delivered an engine capable of sustaining ~2,700 TPS, proving the ability to build high-performance technical assets.
Stabilization (Stax): Fix-over-replace avoided the time and cost of a new-platform build; platform carrying $500M+ monthly TPV and $20M daily consumer ACH ended up on a foundation the business could actually grow from.
Contract end: Stax wasn't able to convert the role to full-time within budget. The platform was left stable, with reconciliation work underway.
Scale isn't just about adding servers; it's about architectural discipline, and the discipline to recognize when a platform is worth saving versus replacing. "Fix or replace" is only a binary if you haven't done the architecture read. Whether building the engine for 2,700 TPS or running the build-or-buy call under PE pressure, the goal is the same: boring, reliable, profitable execution.