Speakers

Harry Jell is the CTO and co-founder of Yonder, a next-generation lifestyle credit and debit card designed for modern city living. He started the company in 2020 alongside former ClearScore colleagues Tim Chong and Theso Jivajirajah. Previously, he led international engineering at ClearScore, supporting launches in South Africa, India and Australia.

Abiodun is CTO at Metrifox, where she leads high-performing teams to build impactful software. With a background in software engineering, she specializes in streamlining workflows, reducing technical debt, and building reusable abstractions. Her work focuses on enabling developer productivity through automation, standardization, and best practices. Abiodun is passionate about helping engineers grow and fostering a culture of excellence. She actively shares her knowledge through articles, blog posts, and speaking at conferences and meetups.

Jennie is VP Engineering at Funding Circle, the UK-listed SME lending platform, where she leads all aspects of product engineering. With broad experience spanning engineering strategy, platform architecture, and cross-functional product delivery, she is currently driving Funding Circle’s shift towards an AI-native product development life cycle. Jennie specialises in translating emerging technology into practical, scalable capability at the intersection of financial services and modern software delivery. She is passionate about building high-performing engineering organisations that are equipped to thrive in an AI-first world.

Steve Martin is Vice President of Product Engineering at Monzo, one of the UK’s largest digital banks with more than 15 million customers. Before Monzo, he was an Engineering Director at Apple responsible for Siri’s conversational platform, speech, and natural language understanding. At Google, Steve’s teams built YouTube Music, YouTube for Artists, and Google Play Games. His extensive engineering leadership background also includes leading teams at Amazon.com and Riot Games. Steve holds a MS in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, and a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Washington.

Holly is a Head of Engineering at Lloyds Banking Group, working across large, regulated platforms.She focuses on helping teams figure out what’s actually worth building, often stepping in early to challenge the why when teams are under pressure to move. She enjoys working closely with Product to bring Product and Engineering together and align around a clear outcome.Holly cares about building sustainable, high performing teams, helping engineers grow, and creating environments where people can do their best work. She regularly shares her experiences through talks and enjoys connecting with others working through similar challenges.

Justin Reock is the Deputy CTO of DX (getdx.com), and is an engineer, speaker, writer, and software practice evangelist with over 20 years of experience working in various software roles. He is an outspoken thought leader, delivering enterprise solutions, technical leadership, various publications and community education on developer experience and productivity.

Kamil Dziubiński is the Chief Technology Officer at Xapo Bank, where he leads a globally distributed team of engineers and analysts building a Bitcoin‑first digital bank. With almost two decades of experience in software engineering and leadership, he has modernised Xapo’s legacy systems into a near‑real‑time data platform, brought AI into everyday use, and built a culture of world‑class reliability through rigorous observability and SRE practices. Before joining Xapo, he led engineering at Azimo, building a world‑class remittance platform while championing domain‑driven design, microservices, and data architecture. Kamil is passionate about growing high‑performing remote teams, driving innovation at the intersection of finance and blockchain, and creating reliable systems that scale.

I am a senior Data and AI leader with 15+ years of experience building data foundations that directly enable commercial outcomes across Fintech, Insurance and Financial Services. I have led engineering teams through periods of significant business growth, from scaling data platforms to support expanding product portfolios, to building the data infrastructure that improves underwriting accuracy, portfolio monitoring and operational efficiency. Currently leading a team of AI data platform and analytics engineers, with a focus over the last year on building AI-native data capabilities, moving from traditional data engineering to semantic architectures, agentic workflows and robust AI evaluation practices.

Swapna Alladi is a Head of Platforms with extensive experience leading large-scale digital transformation and platform engineering initiatives. She specialises in shaping modern platform strategies, implementing best-in-class Azure DevOps and cloud practices, and enabling high-performing engineering teams across organisations.A recognised thought leader and accomplished public speaker, Swapna regularly presents at internal and external events on platform engineering, DevOps, Azure, and diversity in technology. Her impact in the industry has earned her the *“Engineer of the Year”* award at the WIT Excellence Awards.A passionate advocate for women in STEM, Swapna serves as a Google Women Techmakers Ambassador, UN Women UK Delegate, and STEM Ambassador, where she actively works to inspire and empower women pursuing careers in technology.

Carl Sverre has built his career on the problem defining fintech engineering: building at the speed AI allows without losing your grip on quality, reliability, and trust at scale. At Antithesis he leads AI strategy and speaks widely on how teams keep software dependable as AI writes more of the code. That view was earned over nearly a decade at SingleStore, where he rose from engineer to the Office of the CEO before running its incubation lab and founding his own company. Today he helps leaders turn AI’s speed into a lasting advantage their customers and regulators can rely on.

Nkechi is a multidisciplinary technologist building at the intersection of product, strategy, and engineering. She’s a founding product engineer at Vouchsafe, where she builds trust and anti-fraud infrastructure that expands access to financial services. She’s also the host of Conversations with Technologists, where technologists gather to talk about what they’re building and learning, and Build Sessions, one-day hackathons where builders take ideas into working products.Before tech, she spent her early career as an investment banker covering financial services and fintech companies.

Hywel is the CTO-turned-Founder at Skiller Whale. He wrote his first program in C aged 9. After graduating with an MEng from Cambridge, he dropped out of his PhD programme to co-found his first start-up. Today, Hywel is Skiller Whale’s Co-Founder, he runs a dinner club for CTOs, a podcast for tech leaders called ‘Primarily Context-Based’, and is designing and building his own 8-bit computer for playing Pong. In his 15+ tech leadership career, he’s been building and scaling start-ups. With Skiller Whale, he is drawing on that experience to solve the biggest problem he faced as a CTO: learning for engineering teams.

I am a British-born, Ghanaian heritage husband and father of two, an expert facilitator and former investor. I am one of the world’s leading voices on intentional life design and human-centred leadership, inspiring others to lead with love & light. I’m not here to lecture or hit you with a wall of theory. I’m here to create spaces where people feel safe enough to be themselves and brave enough to grow.Over the years, I’ve worked as an expert facilitator with leaders at Google, Nando’s, Tesco, RedBull, Uber, and more, facilitating moments of connection. Whether it’s a leadership offsite after a big restructure, a team’s first meeting with a new CEO, or a team under performance pressure, my goal is the same: To help you talk about what really matters in a way that strengthens your people and your performance.

Valerie Kontor is the Founder of Black in Fintech, a network of founders, operators, and investors championing inclusion and innovation for underrepresented communities. She serves as Senior Credit Product Specialist at RBC Wealth Management, shaping the bank’s credit proposition and AI initiatives in a fast-moving regulatory and technology landscape. Her background spans product management at scale-up fintech Funding Circle and advisory roles with early-stage startups, giving her a grounded view of building and adapting under pressure. A recognised voice across global tech ecosystems, she holds ambassador roles with Fintech Meetup and MACH Alliance, driving collaboration rooted in inclusive innovation.