Will Drazin

Backend Engineer

After finishing my PhD I chose to pursue a career outside of academia, but I didn’t want to lose the technical rigour that I so enjoyed during the past few years of research. Having written scientific software, I come from a background where the quality of engineering is instrumental in producing meaningful research.

One of the main reasons that I chose to work at Thought Machine was its reputation for engineering excellence. We are an engineering driven company, and we take great pride in the quality of our work. As a Technical Analyst I have the opportunity to interact with clients on a daily basis, working with them to understand their business needs and collaborate with our engineers to conduct solution design work. As a technical generalist, the thing I most enjoy about the role is the amount of variety: one moment I’ll be presenting a technical overview of Vault to a new member of our client team, the next I’ll be pouring over the codebase with an engineer as we work to whiteboard a technical solution to a client requirement.

Outside of work I’m usually busy pursuing one of numerous (probably too numerous) hobbies. We’ve recently started a Thought Machine Cycling Club and have been on several successful outings, including to Brighton and Cambridge, with further trips planned in the future. When I’m not on the saddle I’m usually found at the piano or cooking some delicious pasta!

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Will Drazin

Backend Engineer

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Jamica Ortiz

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Engineering Manager

A little while back, I was looking for a fresh start in an industry I’ve never worked in before. Thought Machine had this really interesting hiring process where you get to meet people from the team before committing to the hiring process – and for me that was a great way to get to know a company’s culture beforehand. I got to ask many questions about how they work and what things they are working on, and from there I felt like I shared many values with Thought Machine’s working culture.

I love how we cultivate a safe space to express our ideas and set each other up for success. My team also works with really challenging areas of software development, specifically on application infrastructure and reliability, which are key components for smoothly running a core banking system in the cloud.

It is great being able to work with multiple programming languages and working with both the application and infrastructure layers. There are many people with different specialisations to learn from. I especially find it exciting to work with new technology for cloud applications and learn how to work with them in production.

Outside of work I strangely find Botanical Painting and Calligraphy to be very similar activities to coding in the sense that they both require focus to create nice things, so I am really into those outside of technology.

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Jamica Ortiz

Engineering Manager

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Jag Sheemar

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QA Lead

I joined Thought Machine in 2017 looking for a new challenge in an industry that was yet to be disrupted and at a company where I would be able to work on multiple projects as I love multitasking. Having worked with Thought Machine’s CTO Will Montgomery for 4 years at Google on the Adsense project, I was immediately confident in the future of the company. I jumped at the opportunity to bring my skills to Thought Machine to create a QA process and test strategy for both product side and client side, as well as write and maintain BDD automation tests to ensure our releases were quicker and more efficient.

One of the most important differentiators for me is that Thought Machine is the only company where I worked where QA and developers work together and exchange knowledge with one and another, which is great if you want to progress at Thought Machine, everyone is open to sharing, learning and debating new ideas and tools to continue improving the product.

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Jag Sheemar

QA Lead

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Alice Cao

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Backend Engineer

After graduating from university with a degree in Physics, I knew that I wanted my first job to be difficult, intellectually stimulating and fun. I first found out about Thought Machine when one of our in-house recruiters reached out to me via LinkedIn and invited me to a hiring event to meet the Engineers and CEO. Having been through a number of recruitment processes, I was impressed by the attitude to hiring at Thought Machine and came away from the event with the impression that this was an exciting company in an exciting industry, which really cared about its culture and employees.

I am one of five Back End Engineers working in the Kernel Users & Accounts team. The majority of code that we write and the features that we add are directly used by clients. I enjoy how closely we work together and being able to learn from Engineers who have much more experience than I do. I also like the fact that we can have fun while doing our job and have even started to build our own team traditions and long-running jokes.

The tech stack at Thought Machine is cutting edge. Coupled with the fact that we are going through a phase of rapid expansion, this makes the work environment very fast paced. In the five months that I have been here so far, the team has doubled in size and the tools I use on a daily basis for development are continuously evolving. There are many socials and events that go on outside of work, and you are given many opportunities to make your own mark on the company. In my time here so far, I have been able to start a sports club, given a talk at a tech conference and visited my alma mata, Imperial College, as part of the sponsors’ delegation for ICHack, the university's biggest annual hackathon.

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Alice Cao

Backend Engineer

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Zoé Fabian

Zoé is a Managing Director at Eurazeo Growth and is based in Berlin. Before joining Eurazeo Growth, Zoé invested globally in technology-driven companies at pre-IPO stage. Prior to that, Zoé was a Senior Investment Manager at Axel Springer, Europe's largest digital publishing house, where she led several growth investments in a joint venture with General Atlantic, focusing on marketplaces, as well as in adtech and traveltech, including Yad2 and @Leisure. Zoé started her career at Blackstone, first out of Paris and then based in New York City, advising on M&A, restructuring and IPOs with a focus on Energy and Consumer.

She is currently serving on the boards of Adjust and Sophia Genetics.

Zoé graduated with a MSc in International Management from ESCP Europe and a degree in Economics from Freie Universität Berlin.

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Zoé Fabian

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Andy Phillipps

Andy is an experienced entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Active Hotels which he sold to Priceline.com and became CEO of their non-US business. He then co-led the acquisition of Bookings BV and subsequent merger with Active Hotels to form what is now Booking.com (market cap over $50bn). He was Chairman of Toptable (now part of Priceline) and co-founder of Reevoo. He is an active business angel, regularly teaches at LBS and INSEAD and is a board director or adviser to a number of tech ventures.

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Andy Phillipps

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Andy Maguire

Chair

Andy Maguire is a recognised banking industry expert with a track record of developing and implementing sustainable transformation and growth strategies. Maguire holds a thirty-year track record as a successful COO, partner to CEOs and Executive Committees, who is equally comfortable in high performing businesses, growth or turnaround situations.

Prior to joining Thought Machine, Maguire was the Group Chief Operations Officer of HSBC (2014 - 2020) having previously been a Partner and Senior Partner at the Boston Consulting Group for 17 years.

As Group Chief Operations Officer of HSBC, Maguire was responsible for the overall operation of the bank’s Wealth and Private Banking, Commercial Banking, and Global Banking and Markets divisions in the UK, Europe, US, Canada, Latin America, Middle East and Asia. He was responsible for the bank’s operational excellence, and led its technology transformation efforts including migration projects to the cloud.

Leading the bank’s efforts on cost management, digitisation and operational resilience, Maguire transitioned the bank away from yesterday's technology, paving the way for forward-thinking HSBC projects including Mobile X, HSBCnet, Payme and Kinetic. These initiatives, among others, have transformed the bank’s cybersecurity, IT service levels and operational process performance.

Prior to his roles at HSBC and BCG, Maguire was a Principal at Gemini Consulting and AT Kearney. Maguire holds a Double Honours degree in Computer Engineering and Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin.

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Andy Maguire

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Peter Hayes

Peter Hayes is a career Banker who retired from Lloyds Banking Group in 2018 having joined in 2010 from RBS. During the last 27 years in banking he was focused entirely on the major change programmes undertaken in both banks. As Director Group Change Management at Lloyds, he was responsible for the Group’s full change portfolio.

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Peter Hayes

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Anna Ivanova

Meet some more of my leadership colleagues...

Meet some more of my colleagues...

Meet some more of my board colleagues...