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Fintech start-up MarketInvoice has appointed Rija Javed as its chief technology officer (CTO) as the company looks to invest heavily into its technology. Rija Javed joins from Wealthfront, a leading Silicon Valley based start-up.
She becomes one of the first female CTOs at a fintech in the UK, breaking another glass ceiling for women in finance. In the role, Rija will be responsible for the Engineering, Data Science, Product and Design teams.
Anil Stocker, CEO and co-founder at MarketInvoice commented: “Having Rija on board underlines our focus on hiring the best talent and building innovative technology to deliver business finance solutions – it’s the foundation we’ll use to help thousands of business access funding quickly and easily.”
“As we scale our technology and team, Rija’s experience and insights from Silicon Valley will be instrumental. We have ambitious growth plans for the years ahead and Rija will play a significant role in making it happen.”
Rija began her engineering career in Canada with roles at IBM and Research in Motion before moving to Silicon Valley in 2012. After working at gaming company Zynga she joined automated financial adviser Wealthfront Inc. in 2013. Within her first few months, she built Wealthfront’s first mobile app before moving onto its investment products platform. Over a period of four years, she helped scale the business as well as lead their biggest initiative to build a new brokerage and banking platform. This allowed them to expand into financial services and improve client experience.
Javed added: “Moving to London was a big step but I’m excited by the opportunity offered by London’s growing tech scene and in particular by MarketInvoice. My main reason for joining MarketInvoice was the challenge and growth it offers as well as its great people and culture.”
“Technology empowers and MarketInvoice is certainly empowering business to grow, create jobs and support local economies and communities.”
“I look forward to contributing my experiences and helping make the business and its people successful. Given the exciting roadmap ahead, our immediate focus is to scale up and continue improving our clients’ experience by investing in our team and technology. Thus, as people are the most important aspect of any venture, we’re looking to expand our team, especially in engineering.”
To date, MarketInvoice has funded business loans and over 90,000 invoices worth more than £2.5b since launching in 2011. They have provided business finance solutions to thousands of businesses across the UK who employ more than 19,000 people. The company currently employs 80 people and is looking to hire across the business to invest in high quality talent and technology.
On becoming one of the first female CTOs in the UK, Rija remarked: “I’m very excited to help bring more diversity to the UK tech scene. Diversity for me isn’t just about gender, although we certainly need more women in tech, but ensuring we have diversity in all areas like race, culture, religious/spiritual beliefs, and socio-economic background.”
“There tend to be many misconceptions about what it’s like being a software engineer. It’s more than just coding. Being an engineer involves problem solving, critical thinking, making decisions and collaboration with people across the board. Bringing more diversity to that role will not only enhance the engineering group but also the overall business. I want to dispel the notion that being an engineer means you sit alone in front of a computer screen coding away.”
