Simon Tarry, Head of Engineering at Funding Circle
Our long-standing partner Funding Circle is a leading global provider for small business loans. They are developing a machine learning and technology platform that is transforming the borrower experience and is laying the foundation of new, exciting products that will give more opportunities for SMEs. We hired the first people for their team in Sofia back in 2014, and it hasn’t stopped growing ever since. To find out more about the team and some of the exciting projects they are working on, we talked to Simon Tarry, Head of Engineering at Funding Circle. Read on what he shared:
Tell us a bit about yourself. What was your previous educational and professional background?
I graduated from Nottingham University with a degree in Computer Science and Management Studies, then joined IBM as a software engineer doing Java, C++/C and some lower-level programming. I was there for 10 years, then left to start my management career, first in the insurance industry, before joining Ticketmaster. There I became Director of Technology Strategy and worked on high-scale B2C e-commerce, with millions of fans trying to buy tickets at the same time. I joined Funding Circle in January 2021 and am Head of Engineering for the US business.
Tell us more about the projects Funding Circle is currently working on? Which are the most challenging ones?
We’re constantly trying to disrupt the banking industry with technology, which means we get to work on some really exciting projects. One of these is Lending as a Service. It allows us to partner with bigger companies who want to use our technology to provide funding for their customers. We are developing APIs and a co-branded experience to enable larger US companies to access the power of Funding Circle’s unique tech platform.
You are closely engaged with the office in Bulgaria – what are your impressions from your work with the Sofia team, and how would you describe the people in it?
The Sofia team is great. The people have fantastic working culture where they support each other in learning technologies they may not be familiar with, such as Clojure, Kafka, Ruby/Rails, Kubernetes and AWS. They also pair regularly on solving different problems. We encourage innovation and give the team a tech week every 5 weeks to work on things they think are important - like refactoring, optimising the platform or simplifying the architecture. The team have a strong work ethic but also like to have fun. They meet up in the office on a regular basis and often will go out together for a drink or a meal.
What about your work with Questers?
Working with Questers is awesome. They find and source talented and motivated engineers and provide office and HR resources to help our people have a great onboarding experience and feel at home. Communication is quick and effective, and we have a really smooth and fast process for interviewing. Questers also provides lots of social events for people to get together and get to know each other better.
Would you be able to shed some light on Funding Circle’s future plans for the Bulgarian operations and why it is a great place for people to advance with their careers?
Funding Circle has been operating in Bulgaria now for a number of years, and the team is both stable and growing. We will continue to invest in Bulgaria because the people are highly skilled in software engineering, have a great attitude towards work and are very creative.
Careers are very important at Funding Circle, and we have a comprehensive framework for helping people progress. Everyone has a career goal, and we work together with each engineer to help them achieve their goals.
Would you like to advance your career with the Funding Circle team? Check out these opportunities and make sure to apply.