About

Shaun Barlow

I wrote my first lines of code on a BBC Micro. That early question — what else can we make this thing do? — has shaped everything since.

I’m an Engineering Manager at Crisscross.money, leading the team that builds payment integrations across Africa. My background runs the full length of the stack — from embedded systems and electronics through to cloud infrastructure and distributed fintech platforms. That range isn’t accidental; it’s what lets me work effectively across the technical decisions that matter, without losing sight of the people and processes that make them happen.

On Leadership

I’ve shifted my primary focus to people leadership over the last few years: building teams, creating the conditions for engineers to do their best work, and developing the individuals in them. I stay technically sharp by choice — not to be in the way, but because context matters when you’re leading engineers solving hard problems.

On Process

Process and tooling are a consistent thread in how I work. I’m drawn to the question of how we work as much as what we build — finding the friction, removing it, and making the team faster without adding complexity.

On Where I Come From

At heart I’m a roboticist who ended up in fintech. I studied Electronic Engineering at the University of Pretoria, spent a decade building embedded communications systems and tactical software at Rapid Mobile, then crossed over into payments infrastructure at Takealot, Stitch, Kastelo, and now Crisscross.

The IoT space still has its hooks in me — systems that span hardware, firmware, and cloud infrastructure are exactly the kind of problem I find genuinely interesting.

Get in Touch

Building at the intersection of payments, emerging markets, or distributed systems? Find me on LinkedIn or GitHub.