CIO Classified · 2026-01-06 · 52 min
When you’re managing $60 trillion in assets across dozens of products and 30 global jurisdictions, technical debt isn’t just an inconvenience - it’s an existential risk. Jason Adams, Interim CTO of Charles River, a State Street Company, leads 800 engineers building mission-critical trading platforms for the world’s largest asset managers. Joined by Sid Pardeshi, Co-Founder and CTO of Blitzy, he explains how State Street is using an AI-augmented SDLC to modernize decades-old systems, refactor legacy code, and dramatically increase developer productivity - without compromising the rigor required in financial services. Jason frames the strategy around three pillars: AI for engineering (copilots and polyglot support), AI for operations (APM, observability, and proactive monitoring), and AI embedded in products (LLM-powered explainers). Using Blitzy’s agentic approach - iterative context building, dependency mapping, and targeted code generation - State Street compressed months of work into weeks while maintaining strict quality gates. About the Guests: Jason Adams Jason Adams is the Interim CTO of Charles River , a State Street Company.
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