A Career Retrospective Limited Series

THE AKASH
SAHA STORY

One engineer. Three industries. Two acquisitions. Zero micromanagement required.

  98% Match 2008–2026 EM 6 Episodes

A quant-fund engineer walks into a fintech startup. Then another. Then an acquisition. Then another. What follows is a decade-and-a-half arc of shipping impossible things on impossible timelines — and a finale that's still unwritten. Based on a true career.

Starring: Akash Saha as Engineering Lead  ·  Also featuring: Winton, The Music Fund, HIFI, Block  ·  Executive Producer: Jack Dorsey (cameo, Episode 5)

S1
Akash Saha
Akash Saha
as Engineering Lead
Season 1: Origins
6 Episodes
1
Pilot: The Reference Database2008–2017 · 9 yr

A computer science master's graduate joins a $30B quant hedge fund and quickly becomes one of the most trusted engineers in the company, servicing the data needs of research and trading. Single-handedly rebuilds the Bloomberg Equities Loader — one of the firm's most business-critical systems — shipping it with 218 unit tests, a seven-week parallel run, and a rollback plan nobody ended up needing. Starts leading data engineering teams with several promotions along the way to VP, writes the technical assessments used to evaluate new hires, runs interview loops and mentors junior and senior engineers. Leads the redesign of the firm's core trading pipeline into a single access-controlled service layer spanning ~35 subsystems, so research and trading stop depending on legacy tables directly. Learns that good infrastructure is invisible; bad infrastructure is a 3am phone call — so he stops leaving it to chance.

Winton Visit Winton
2
The San Francisco Spin-off2017–2019 · 2 yr

Relocates to Winton's new US branch in San Francisco focussing on new business ventures, data science and big data and leads the Data Marketing function as SVP, producing world-class interactive data visualisations of novel datasets — showcased live on touchscreens across every Winton office globally. Builds The Music Fund MVP with data scientists and designers — an internal bet that gets big enough to spin off as its own company. Nobody expected the side project to become the plot.

Winton US Watch the visualisations
3
MVP to Market2019–2021 · 2 yr

As VP of Engineering, ships The Music Fund from zero to a market-ready platform backed by Techstars Music and Warner Music. Onboards 5,000+ artists leading the full stack product development of the TMF web app — a fully automated platform delivering instant royalty advances to artists in exchange for a percentage of their future streaming income — encompassing artist onboarding, royalty data extraction from music distributor portals, offer presentation, customer verification, and payment services. Learns fundraising is just another kind of live demo.

The Music Fund Techstars Demo Day TMF Product Video
4
The Acquisition2021–2023 · 2 yr

The Music Fund is acquired by HIFI, a financial rights organization for artists. As Principal Full-Stack Engineer, integrates TMF's technology into the HIFI platform and leads full stack product development of the royalty data pipeline — automating ingestion and normalization of royalty data from music distributor portals, and building the artist mobile app and enterprise web app that let artists and managers see every stream, every dollar, in one place. Co-develops Cash Flow, an artist micropayment product that becomes the cornerstone of HIFI's own acquisition. Twist ending.

HIFI Visit HIFI ClickHouse Migration
5
Zero to Four Weeks2023–2026 · Ongoing

HIFI is acquired by Block. Quickly becomes the de facto Engineering Lead for Tidal's Monetization — leading Spotlight, Contributions, a 10-country expansion, and Paygating Tracks, shipped from zero to MVP in under 4 weeks. Ships Headliners — a $1M contest paying out $100K each to 10 independent artists — in under two weeks. Personally onboards every new engineer who joins the team, runs structured 1:1s, delivers coaching and career-development feedback, and prioritizes the roadmap in the room with product and business — not after. Presents to Jack Dorsey and the company regularly. Coins "Jimmy C," an AI intern with better uptime than most humans.

Block Spotlight Expands to 10 Countries Paygating Tracks Launch
  Behind the Scenes
Akash Saha presenting the Spotlight and Contributions demo live at Block's London onsite, with CEO Jack Dorsey and the team in the room

Live at the London onsite: presenting the Spotlight & Contributions demo to Block CEO Jack Dorsey (standing extreme right) and the entire Tidal Org — the launch moment that made the cross-BU milestone between Cash App and Tidal real.

6
Season Finale: Open to Season 2TBD · Coming Soon

An Engineering Manager wraps Season 1 and starts scouting what's next. Ideas ship faster. Context replaces control. The credits roll — and Season 2 starts filming.

Unreleased

Trailer: By the Numbers

4 wks
Zero → MVP, Tidal Paygating Tracks
10
Countries, Tidal Spotlight Expansion
30K+
Artists — Tidal Upload
5,000+
Artists Onboarded, The Music Fund
3x Faster
Winton Reference Data Pipeline (30 min → 9 min)
$30B
AUM Platform, Winton

More Like This

Product Engineering Data Engineering People Leadership Distributed Systems Research Infrastructure Cross-functional Alignment Zero-to-One Products Consumer Platforms at Scale AI-Forward Engineering Recruiting & Hiring Incident Response & Process Design Fintech Coaching & Feedback

About This Title

CreatorAkash Saha
GenreEngineering Leadership, Data-Driven Drama, Startup-to-Scale
This show isDirect, allergic to micromanagement, obsessed with shipping
Based onA true career spanning hedge funds, fintech startups, and Block
LanguagesAvailable in JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, SQL

Critics Say

He just "gets it" — he understands prioritization, acts with urgency when goals demand it, and is great at rallying other engineers behind a vision.

His combination of technical insight, project management acumen, and collaborative leadership makes him a valuable asset to any cross-functional initiative.

He has helped Engineering see legal as a partner and teammate, which is not always easy. He has successfully led and motivated the cross-functional Tidal team through some difficult projects this year!

He's collaborative, thoughtful about tradeoffs, and genuinely cares about shipping work that matters. His ability to move fast (e.g. getting Headliners from idea to launch in a week) while keeping the team aligned is impressive.

Your superpower is aligning the product and platform engineering orgs at Tidal and bringing them together — simply outstanding.

He leads by example. He is pragmatic when aligning on solutions and takes a structured, organized approach to collaboration. Instead of letting discussions drag on in Slack, he books short cross-functional meetings when needed.

He brings a lot of structure, clarity and confidence to the team, unblocks work quickly, stays very results-oriented, and always looks for solutions even in moments of uncertainty. His flexibility across time zones made collaboration incredibly smooth. As an engineer, I felt fully supported and enabled working under his leadership.

Best DRI by far I had in all the time here at Block! He's been amazing, made everyone feel welcome and I thoroughly enjoyed working on the project under his leadership. I'm not trying to be nice, this is my honest feeling!

Nothing short of a superstar throughout the whole London onsite — we achieved what most thought was impossible, largely due to his hard work.

A phenomenal job keeping a lot of different plates spinning. The results speak for themselves — the feature is live and artists are already making money.

What stands out isn't just his technical leadership — it's how he leads with empathy, which makes working with him a genuine joy.

The platform was seamless — I went through the whole process online and got funded within minutes without ever speaking to a single person. Great tech.

The touchscreen data visualizations in the SF office were the highlight of the event — I'd never seen data presented through such a compelling lens.

He consistently makes the right calls for his team — the kind of judgment that makes a true leader.

You are hands down the best manager I've ever had!

The diligent and comprehensive way the Bloomberg Loader was developed and rolled out is an example to us all.

Season Finale — A Note to the Casting Team

Every good series ends on a cliffhanger — he's looking for a new opportunity.

Season 1 covered a decade and a half of building things from zero — trading infrastructure at a $30B hedge fund, two fintech startups, and Blocks's most strategically important product for Tidal, shipped in under four weeks flat.

Season 2 is still unwritten: a cross functional partner, leading with context instead of control, and building the kind of team that makes "allergic to micromanagement" a compliment, not a complaint.

Get in touch to write season 2 together. — Akash Saha
akash.sahalison@gmail.com +1 929 241 5509 linkedin.com/in/akashsaha16 Livingston, NJ (NYC Metro)