See NuCypher and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with Michael Egorov, NuCypher‘s CTO & Co-Founder:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?

Before starting NuCypher, I worked on infrastructure tools at LinkedIn, where we faced some of the thorniest scaling challenges in the world. But my background is as a scientist and physicist. I was a bronze medalist in the 2003 International Physics Olympiad and graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. I later worked as a post-doc on ultra-cold atoms in an area closely related to quantum computing.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

I find the technical details of our proxy re-encryption technology particularly fascinating. In brief, proxy re-encryption allows you to transform data encrypted under one set of keys into being encrypted under a second, different set of keys. This is a direct re-encryption, with no intermediate decryption step. This allows us to do some really neat tricks around key rotation and access delegation for the platforms we support.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

Simple is good, so I’m going to choose key rotation. Currently, key rotation in Hadoop has to be done manually, which means shutting down encryption zones, sending data to the key management service, decrypting it, encrypting it with the new key, and sending it back to the storage layer. Many of our customers are dealing with petabytes of data and this process can literally take a half or even a full day. A full day of downtime! With NuCypher, we can perform key rotation in a few seconds.

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum,BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service,Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups,Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

See CardLinx and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with Silvio Tavares, CardLinx Association‘s CEO & President:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?

An electrical and computer engineer by training, my first job was at AT&T Bell Labs where I worked on one of the earliest methods for web-based payments. Since then, I have authored over fifteen granted or pending patents in the fields of digital commerce, electronic payments and payments analytics. My work in the business side of payments informed the direction of the technologies I pursued. These leadership positions included my time at ABN AMRO Investment Bank in London, where I was Director and Head of Financial Technology Investment.

More recently, I was Global Head of Information Products, SVP at Visa, leading a business unit generating several hundred million dollars in annual sales and successfully launching key new products in the areas of payment fraud detection, digital marketing and merchant loyalty. I joined Visa from First Data, the leading payments processor, where I was Global Head of Information and Analytics, SVP. At First Data I created and launched SpendTrend™, First Data’s U.S. macro-economic spending indicator based on credit card transaction data.

My work at the intersection of payments and technology culminated in the founding of the CardLinx Association, where I am President and CEO. Working with our founding members including Mastercard, Discover, First Data, Facebook and Microsoft, we’ve become the leading voice for the card-linking and online-to-offline industries.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

Consumer spending makes up 70% of the US economy. 90% of that spending occurs in stores not online. Card-linking enables companies to link a consumer’s online data with their in-store shopping. We are excited to announce to the fintech industry the first open source card-linking software.

The underlying technology was developed by Microsoft and they have provided the codebase for its Earn card-linking platform on the CardLinx website. It is free and publicly available. The software demonstrates API access to the leading payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover) and is available for banks, digital publishers, messaging platforms and other tech companies to build on the code and bring their card-linking and loyalty programs more quickly to market.

Just as other platforms experienced explosive growth after APIs were made available, like Apple’s App Store and Facebook’s messaging API, an open source card-linking code is the next logical step in the development of card-linking and the overall growth of the online-to-offline industry.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

We released the open source code at the beginning of January. At this time there are a number of companies using it as a foundation for their own card-linking and loyalty programs. I will be excited to share the names of the companies at my demo on March 21 at FinDEVr New York!

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum, BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Cooper Press, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups, Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

See NuCypher and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with MacLane Wilkison, NuCypher‘s CEO & Co-Founder:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?

I’m a software engineer at heart but started my career at Morgan Stanley where I advised technology, media, and telecommunications companies on M&A and equity/debt financings. I spent a lot of time covering internet infrastructure
during the early innings of cloud infrastructure. I also saw first-hand the security and compliance obstacles faced by large enterprises in adopting these new technologies. At NuCypher, a lot of the problems we’re solving have to do with removing these roadblocks to cloud and big data adoption.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

We embed access policies directly into encryption so that security follows the data wherever it goes. This allows us to deliver the full security of encryption while avoiding the typical functionality and performance tradeoffs.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

I’m particularly excited about the use cases we’re seeing around secure and auditable cross-organizational sharing of encrypted data. With NuCypher, it’s possible to delegate and revoke access to your data to third-parties in a cryptographically secure way. We have several customers building shared industry data lakes with multiple participants contributing data — something which historically has required a trusted third party to manage.

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum,BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service,Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups,Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

See Barclaycard and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with Premanand Chandrasekaran, Barclaycard‘s Vice President:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?

I started my career in India in 1997, working as a software engineer with CMC – (a Tata Enterprise). From there, I moved to Citibank for a year. In 2002, I started at ThoughtWorks and served in a variety of deep technology-facing roles — developer, technical lead, architect, consultant, and technical principal. The global nature of ThoughtWorks’ business meant interacting with a varied set of clients in multiple geographies in diverse domains. Being in the midst of some of the luminaries of the agile world, like Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith, promoted a strong culture of software excellence and rapid iteration.

I began work at Barclaycard close to three years ago, first as a consultant and then as a full-time colleague, helping with the conception, architecture and implementation of our next generation platform, aimed to accelerate our ambitious growth plans. My experience working in deep technical roles while adopting iterative delivery methods coupled with working on large distributed programs allowed me to gain valuable insights on how to succeed with challenging software programs.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

In today’s fintech environment, the ability to very rapidly iterate over business ideas in production while continuing to serve existing customers reliably is paramount. Enablers such as the cloud and a plethora of high quality online remote collaboration tools have meant that rapid innovation at scale is no longer just for large corporations. At Barclaycard, our singular focus is on automation of every aspect of software delivery — including configuration changes, new features, bug fixes and experiments alike. This enables software teams to move at the speed of light, in a sustainable way.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

I’m currently creating the backbone for our next generation set of services and applications. Employing techniques such as domain-driven design (DDD) and architectural patterns such as event-driven architecture (EDA) and command query responsibility segregation (CQRS) allows us to build a highly cohesive, yet loosely coupled set of services. We went live with the second phase of the platform late last year. Now we’re working on applying the same solution at a global level. These are indeed very exciting times.

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum, BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups, Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

Slip off your coat. Unwind your scarf. Drop your gloves. And flip your cap.

Winter is winding down and New York is warming up. With temperatures rising above 60 degrees, what better way to celebrate spring than with FinDEVr New York this March?

If you’re working on the tech side of financial services, you’ll find both friends and influential connections in the room next month. While there are too many technologists and media attending FinDEVr New York to list them all, here’s an idea of who has already registered.

This Friday is the final early-bird ticket deadline before the event, so get your ticket here.

• VP Information Technology — Alliant Credit Union
• Software Solutions Architect — Alliant Credit Union
• Ops Manager — AlphaPoint
• SVP Product & Strategy — AlphaPoint
• IP App Developer Engineer — Amazon
• Software Developer Manager — Amazon
• Global Head of Architecture & Technical Solutions — Arvato Financial Solutions/Bertelsmann
• VP Software Development — Billtrust
• Sr. Director, Software Engineering — Capital One
• VP Product Development — Deluxe
• Director, UX Design Engineering — Deluxe
• Executive Director, Engineering — Deluxe
• VP Development — DHI Computing Service
• Sr. Programmer — Edward Jones
• Solutions Engineer — Envestnet Yodlee
• CTO — Fintech Solutions
• Head of Architecture — Kanetix
• Head of Emerging Technology — Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services
• Developer — Mantigma
• CTO — Matrix Applications
• Sr. Technology Manager — Mizuho Bank
• Managing IT Director — Mizuho Securities
• Director of Software Engineering — Paragon Technology Solutions
• Software Developer — Pied Piper
• VP Product Innovation — PNC Bank
• CTO — Prodigy Finance
• Development Lead — Prudential
• IT Director — Prudential
• IT Consultant — PwC
• Head of Product Development — QIWI Bank
• Product Development — Regalii
• Director of Application Development — Swift Capital
• Technology Team Lead — Swift Capital
• Management Board, IT — TeamBank
• Sr. Technology Advisor — Tendor Armor
• CTO — Thinking Capital
• CTO — Third Party Trade Group
• Sr. Software Engineer — Thomson Reuters
• CTO — Trade IT
• Product Manager — USAA
• Director of Emerging Tech — Zions Bancorporation

Join us this spring and save 10% with the promo code “FinDEVrBlog” at newyork2017.findevr.com. And save an additional $100 when you register before this Friday, February 24.

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum,BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, CooperPress, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups,Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

See Softjourn and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with Yuriy Kropelnytsky, Softjourn‘s Project Manager:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?
I started my career in telecoms, setting up and adjusting billing systems: first as a developer, then as a manager. Ten years ago, I switched to IT. Now I’m a project manager at Softjourn, working in financial services, card-processing and blockchain cryptocurrency. I learned how to run the tech side of Softjourn by developing different complex software systems and focusing on the cutting edge of fintech. That’s why we decided to test Blockchain to see how DLT and smart contracts work. As a result, we set up an in-house employee loyalty system based on cryptocurrency using smart contracts.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

Softjourn’s combination of hardware, blockchain cryptocurrency and smart contracts as an approach to crowdfunding local social projects.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

My favorite implementation of this technology was going from a simple in-house loyalty program for employees to funding local community projects. The same SJ coins employees can use to get coffee from a vending machine can be used to support orphanages and animal shelters or to raise funds for families of sick children or those who have lost a breadwinner at the front. Through our blockchain-based voting system, employees can vote on which projects they want the company to support through the Softjourn Foundation, which was set up to support community causes. We have also developed different currencies and different colors to identify different projects.

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum, BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups, Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

See Riverbed (+Teneo) and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with George Karamanoglou, Riverbed‘s Director of Advanced Business Solutions:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?
I have over twenty years’ experience with leading suppliers and consumers of advanced application operations technology. I’ve held various strategic technical and management roles with a focus on application infrastructure performance and developed a keen understanding of market needs, with substantial experience introducing and discussing emerging disruptive technology to large complex organizations.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

Riverbed solutions are focused on identifying and managing application performance constraints across infrastructure domains. By delivering better visibility, performance, and control of critical application infrastructure Riverbed can help you bring the promise of digital transformation to life.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

Implementing Riverbed solutions for the best application performance management and monitoring to gain real-time visibility into the end-user experience, infrastructure and applications. As a result, we enable the ability to diagnose application performance problems down to the offending code, service function, network, or system resource in development and production environments.

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum, BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups, Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

See Modelshop and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with Tom Tobin, Modelshop‘s Founder:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?
I started as a rocket scientist. No, literally. I worked for General Dynamics in the late ’80s and wrote flight control software for the Atlas II satellite launch platform. The launches were exciting, but the coding really wasn’t. It took weeks to write 100 lines of code, with hundreds of people double checking your work.

I got out of avionics code and took a role building golf ball flight trackers using machine vision for Callaway golf. Definitely more exciting, but I really wanted to be part of a software company that was solving big problems.

I joined a small company in San Diego called HNC Software (now FICO). They were solving the credit card fraud problem using Neural Networks. Fast forward 25 years and I’m still creating solutions in financial services using data and analytics to solve tough problems such as credit pricing decisions, fraud detection and portfolio optimization. Modelshop is the culmination of what I’ve learned delivering these solutions to some of the largest (and smallest) financial institutions out there, and it has the potential to change how decisions are made in our industry.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

At its core, Modelshop is an incredibly flexible ontology engine. It can morph the way organizations leverage information to transparently move between data, logic, policy, analytics and back to data. What’s interesting is that spreadsheets also do a pretty good job of this and can be powerful in the hands of capable business analysts. Our goal with Modelshop was not only to replicate that ease of working with information to produce immediate answers for businesses, but also to deliver that on a more scalable, shareable, real-time and analytically robust platform. Technology aside, our vision is to enable businesses to deliver unique analytic applications and services on a larger scale than with traditional coding. We believe we have successfully delivered a platform that accomplishes that vision.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

Blinker.com is an early stage company based in Denver that connects private party auto buyers and sellers and facilitates the purchase transaction, including financing. They have created an incredible user experience and all of the analytic decisioning behind the scenes is powered by Modelshop. I love the product they have built, and I’m proud of the role we’ve played in delivering their solution in an incredibly short time frame.

FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum, BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups, Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.