Giftbee Appoints Sergey Meshkov as CTO to Drive Platform Scale

Giftbee, one of Australia’s fastest-rising challengers in the digital gifting and rewards market, has appointed Sergey Meshkov as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO), marking a major strategic milestone as the company prepares for its next phase of scale, product expansion and platform modernisation. The appointment, effective November 2025, signals Giftbee’s ambition to build not just a popular consumer product, but a globally competitive fintech infrastructure for gifting, engagement and rewards.

Meshkov joins Giftbee with more than 20 years of engineering experience, including nearly a decade at Atlassian, where he worked across platform architecture, reliability engineering, system evolution and large-scale product development. His rare combination of startup agility and enterprise-grade engineering discipline positions him as a transformative addition to Giftbee’s growing executive team.

A CTO Appointment That Signals a New Chapter for Giftbee

Giftbee is coming off a year of rapid momentum, from strong early adoption to a $1 million seed round led by Antler and significant national attention as one of Australia’s most innovative fintech-meets-consumer platforms. Now, with increasing demand from consumers and businesses seeking smarter, more flexible digital gifting solutions, the company is entering a phase where technical foundations must evolve to support mass-market scale.

Meshkov’s appointment reflects that inflection point.

Based in Sydney, he will lead all engineering functions across architecture, security, DevOps, platform reliability, infrastructure and technology operations. His mandate is twofold: strengthen the core platform’s resilience and unlock the next generation of feature innovation that positions Giftbee as a category-defining global player.

A Techie With Rare Depth: From High-Scale Systems to Greenfield Innovation

Across his two-decade career, Sergey Meshkov has helped architect and deliver systems that operate at global scale, supporting millions of users and complex enterprise workloads. During his nearly 10 years at Atlassian, he contributed to technical strategy and systems evolution, platform-level engineering at high concurrency, architectural decision-making for next-gen products and resilience for globally distributed systems with reliability.

Meshkov’s engineering philosophy blends rigorous fundamentals, deep curiosity and pragmatic execution, a combination particularly aligned with scaling a young fintech into an international platform capable of handling high volumes, financial transactions and real-time user interactions.

As the digital gifting and rewards sector modernises, Meshkov’s ability to move between big-picture platform architecture and hands-on technical solutions gives Giftbee a competitive advantage.

Driving Engineering Excellence, Platform Reliability and Customer-Centric Innovation

Giftbee CEO Mark Singer describes the appointment as catalytic for the company’s next chapter.

“Sergey brings a rare combination of deep technical capability and large-scale platform experience. His background across architecture, high-scale systems, and greenfield product development gives us the confidence that we can move faster while exploring new ideas that push our industry forward.”

Singer stresses that the gifting and rewards industry has lagged behind the broader fintech landscape, relying on outdated infrastructure and limited customer-centric innovation. Giftbee’s ambition is to change that.

“The gifting and rewards space is ready for reinvention. Sergey’s track record shows he can help us deliver technology that is not only robust, but meaningfully better for customers.”

Sergey Meshkov echoed the sentiment in his first statement as CTO:

“Giftbee has an ambitious vision and a meaningful opportunity to build a best-in-class, customer-centric gifting platform. I’m excited to contribute my experience across high-scale systems, greenfield development, and technical leadership to shape the next stage of the product and platform.”

Why a CTO of This Calibre Matters? And Most Importantly Why Now ?

Giftbee is emerging at a critical moment in the digital gifting economy. With more than $1 billion in unused gift card value in Australia alone, the sector is ripe for disruption. Giftbee’s approach which is converting forgotten balances, merging credit, enabling flexible redemption and providing enterprise gifting tools has already resonated with early users. But future growth hinges on infrastructure. Giftbee’s product vision includes:

• real-time redemption and balance merging
• multi-brand wallet support
• enterprise-grade analytics and rewards distribution
• automated digital workflows
• scalable integration with retailers and partners
• high-volume, secure financial transactions

Delivering these features reliably for millions of users requires a platform designed with the rigour of fintech and the usability of consumer apps. Meshkov’s background in complex distributed systems, zero-downtime architectures and reliability engineering makes him uniquely suited to build that foundation.

The Bigger Picture: Giftbee Is Quietly Becoming a Fintech Infrastructure Company

While many consumers see Giftbee as a modern, user-friendly gifting app, its long-term trajectory is clearly toward fintech infrastructure:

• cross-brand digital value exchange
• corporate bulk gifting automation
• smart wallets
• digital gift tokenisation
• real-time balance optimisation
• sustainable gifting ecosystems

This expansion requires serious engineering leadership, the kind that can architect systems comparable to neobanks, loyalty platforms or digital commerce engines. Meshkov’s arrival signals that Giftbee is evolving from a promising startup into a technology-first business with the ambition to scale globally.

Giftbee’s decision to bring in Sergey Meshkov as CTO is more of a strategic statement than being just a hiring announcement. The company is signaling that it intends to become more than a gifting platform and instead evolve into a foundational layer for personalized digital value exchange.

Meshkov’s experience at Atlassian, where engineering excellence and product reliability are non-negotiable, gives Giftbee a rare opportunity to leapfrog its competition in infrastructure and user experience.

While the road ahead requires balancing enterprise-grade reliability with rapid product expansion, Giftbee is assembling the right leadership for long-term scale. If the company executes well, it could become a central player in a sector that has historically lacked innovation and potentially rewrite how consumers and businesses think about digital value.

About Giftbee

Giftbee is a next-generation digital gifting and rewards platform reinventing how people store, redeem, and exchange value across brands. The Melbourne-based startup enables consumers to merge balances, manage unused credits, and enjoy seamless, personalised digital gifting experiences. For businesses, Giftbee provides scalable digital rewards, automated gifting tools, and modern engagement workflows. Backed by $1 million in seed funding led by Antler, the company is building a smarter, more flexible infrastructure for the future of gifting.