Henrik Carlström

Engineering Executive · Fractional CTO · Head of Engineering · Ex-Google

Henrik is an engineering executive who helps founders, CEOs, CTOs, and scale-ups regain control of engineering delivery, technical direction, architecture risk, and safe AI adoption. His experience spans Google-scale backend systems, enterprise fintech architecture, Web3/RWA platforms, cloud infrastructure, and Head of Engineering roles in high-growth startup environments.

Henrik Carlström

Where Henrik creates value

  • Turns ambiguous delivery, architecture, AI adoption, and organisational problems into clear operating plans.
  • Connects architecture decisions with product, commercial, and customer realities.
  • Helps teams move from capable-but-fragmented to accountable, delivery-focused, and easier for leadership to steer.
  • Brings depth across distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, fintech, Web3, backend platforms, and engineering productivity.
  • Understands both hands-on technical detail and executive-level trade-offs.

Selected experience

  • Head of Engineering
    Nudge.xyz

    Led engineering strategy, architecture, hiring, and delivery for a crypto-native growth platform. Built and scaled a multidisciplinary team across frontend, backend, and smart contracts. Delivered campaign tooling, analytics, loyalty infrastructure, and smart contract integrations through a high-growth phase.

  • Senior Software Engineer
    Google

    Worked on large-scale Shopping backend systems, including ML-based price extraction and global crawling infrastructure processing over 1B pages per day. Improved a core price extraction model by 20% and designed onboarding improvements with potential company-wide ramp-up cost impact.

  • Solutions Architect
    R3

    Advised banks, fintechs, and enterprise clients on distributed ledger architecture, cloud deployment, performance, security, and production readiness. Built cloud-native deployment patterns for Corda Enterprise across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

  • Chief Architect
    Smartcart

    Led architecture and implementation of an intelligent shopping platform spanning mobile applications, indoor navigation, e-payment, real-time backend systems, analytics, and cloud infrastructure. Helped secure over €1M in Tekes / Business Finland funding.

Leadership themes

  • Engineering operating model and delivery execution
  • Architecture and platform strategy
  • Hiring, talent bar, and mentoring
  • Product and engineering alignment
  • AI engineering operating model and workflow redesign
  • Technical due diligence and investor readiness

Senior engineering leadership and Hcorp engagements

Henrik is open to selected CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, Director of Engineering, Interim CTO, Interim Head of Engineering, and Fractional CTO opportunities across Europe or remote-first teams. The strongest fit is AI, fintech, Web3 / blockchain, infrastructure, developer platforms, complex B2B products, and engineering organisations moving through scale, transition, or execution pressure.

Engagement fit