Helping boards and executive teams navigate technology strategy, platform modernisation, and AI adoption in financial services.
Technology executive with more than thirty years of leadership across financial technology platforms in regulated European markets. I have led large-scale modernisation programmes, rationalised complex product estates and built secure cloud-native data platforms that support growth, resilience and improved client outcomes.
My experience spans B2B SaaS, wealth and trading platforms, digital asset infrastructure and institutional risk systems. I have built and led geographically distributed engineering and operations teams of more than 200 professionals, introducing disciplined governance, financial control and product operating models aligned to commercial performance.
Authored Deutsche Bank's first online trading system (dbconvertibles.com) — won the Euromoney award four consecutive years.
Architected an AWS Lambda-based risk engine reducing processing time from 20 hours to 20 minutes for millions of calculations.
Launched an AI strategy embedding LLMs into engineering, operations and client-facing products — achieving 20–30% productivity gains.
Delivered architectural simplification resulting in a 10× increase in user capacity and order throughput across global markets.
Press mentions and selected posts on technology leadership, architecture and engineering culture.
Why pick the lock when you can talk your way past the guard?Read on Unite.AI
Critical open-source software is still treated as a free resource rather than shared infrastructure.Read on Fintechnews
The corporate world needs to stop expecting critical infrastructure to be maintained by someone giving up their weekends.Read on TechRadar
Open-source infrastructure is not a charity case. It is load-bearing technology that underpins modern businesses, financial markets, and critical services worldwide.Read on FinTech Global
Most business continuity plans assume the very systems they depend on will still be working. The moment that breaks is exactly when you need them most.
Read on Finance MagnatesNotes from Google Cloud Summit London: a “cloud” event that turned out to be almost entirely about agentic AI, and why the organisations winning with it reimagine processes from scratch rather than wrap agents around workflows that shouldn’t exist.
Read on LinkedInProviding strategic technology leadership to financial institutions, fintechs and investment firms at critical inflection points.
Transforming fragmented legacy estates into scalable, cloud-portable platforms. Strategic roadmap definition, architectural simplification and technology governance.
Non-executive technology counsel for boards navigating platform transformation, regulatory change or digital-asset strategy.
Transitioning technology divisions to modern Product Operating Models with accountable squads, delivery governance and outcome-based oversight.
Enterprise AI strategy definition and implementation. Embedding LLMs into engineering workflows, operations and client-facing products.
Strengthening infrastructure to meet DORA, MiFID II, CySEC and global regulatory standards. 99.99% uptime targeting, observability and incident management.
Financial governance frameworks including annual planning, budget review, CapEx/OpEx classification, IFRS alignment and board-ready reporting.
Three decades of technology leadership across global banks, hedge funds, digital-asset businesses and regulated fintech, from London trading floors to FINMA and VQF supervised platforms in Switzerland.
Director of SCB, a Zug-based Swiss digital-asset business regulated under the VQF/FINMA framework, providing a fiat-to-crypto on and off-ramp across CHF, EUR and USD into USDC and USDT. My remit is technology and governance oversight: overseeing the platform behind a regulated stablecoin on/off-ramp, and working with the business on VQF, FINMA and wider regulatory and AML obligations. It is the seat where I apply 30 years of platform and regulatory experience as a director exercising oversight rather than an executive running delivery.
CTO of a global multi-asset brokerage, accountable for the platform behind every trade placed by high-net-worth, institutional and white-label clients across 60+ regulated markets, including partner firms launching their own branded trading offering on our infrastructure. Lead a 230-person division spanning architecture, engineering, product, cybersecurity, data platforms and IT operations within a 700+ person organisation, and have taken the technology function through a full transformation: core trading, market data and risk architecture redesigned to carry 5-10x the throughput and capacity; quarterly delivery predictability lifted from roughly 60% to 90% through structured planning, portfolio governance and capacity forecasting; AI embedded across the SDLC, testing and operations for 20-30% productivity gains with the governance to use it safely under regulation; and incident management, observability and business continuity rebuilt against DORA, MiFID II and multi-jurisdiction expectations, targeting 99.99% uptime. Restructured engineering and IT leadership, moving the organisation from feature-led delivery to a product operating model with genuine end-to-end ownership.
Sicura matches startups to investors and opens access to startup investments through a syndicate of investors. I advise on the technology side of those decisions, assessing the platforms, engineering teams and architecture behind prospective companies so that investors understand where the technical risk sits, and act as a general business advisor to the firm.
Appointed to strengthen governance, delivery discipline and platform resilience across trading, custody and tokenisation businesses operating under Deutsche Börse Group ownership and FINMA oversight. Led the full replacement of the trade-execution platform from strategy and vendor selection through delivery, modernised the SDLC, CI/CD, architectural standards and automation, established cross-functional engineering guilds for databases, messaging and GCP, and oversaw development of the HSM-integrated signing devices underpinning institutional digital-asset custody.
Co-founded a digital asset prime brokerage serving high-frequency trading funds, asset managers and family offices. Full accountability for technology strategy, platform architecture, security and engineering leadership from inception through institutional onboarding: designed the low-latency, high-throughput trading architecture, built the governance and risk frameworks for a planned FINMA licence, scaled a 35-engineer organisation with the talent pipeline behind it, and worked directly with clients and investors on strategy and product.
CTO of a USD 3.5bn global hedge fund covering equity volatility, fixed income, distressed and systematic strategies. Recruited as the first employee to design and build the complete trading, data and analytics estate, delivering the portfolio and risk tools used across every front-office team and a serverless AWS risk-calculation engine that cut processing from 20 hours to 20 minutes. Owned technology governance, investor due diligence and board reporting.
Founded altoex as an independent venture for consulting and product work in capital markets technology. Early engagements included designing the first REST API for the Imagine Trading System and delivering one of the industry's earliest iPad applications for portfolio and risk visibility. It is now home to SynthTrader, a visual algorithmic trading platform I am building myself. The idea borrows from modular synthesisers: patch modules together with cables and probe the live signal on any connection, like putting an oscilloscope on a circuit. Price flows in, indicators and logic shape it, execution comes out, with no code required. Pre-launch, with a desktop app and cloud execution to follow, and I am still writing the code and making the architecture calls hands-on.
Directed the technology build-out for a multi-billion dollar hedge fund spin-out from Deutsche Bank. Led separation and migration of proprietary trading models, systems and data from a global bank to independent infrastructure.
Technology lead for an internal hedge fund incubator preparing for independence. Built distributed pricing and risk systems supporting multi-asset trading strategies.
Led development of dbconvertibles.com, Deutsche Bank's first online convertible bond trading and analytics platform. Won the Euromoney award four consecutive years.
A visual algorithmic trading platform built on the modular synthesis paradigm. Traders build strategies by dragging modules onto a canvas and connecting them with colour-coded cables — no programming required. Market data flows through the signal chain in real time, transforming into indicators, decisions, and trade signals at each stage.
Interested in how I can help your organisation with technology strategy, platform transformation, or board advisory?