Business fintech start-up MarketInvoice has appointed Rija Javed to the role of chief technology officer, which it believes makes her the first female CTO in the UK fintech sector.
Rija Javed joins from Wealthfront, a Silicon Valley based start-up, where she built its first mobile app before moving onto its investment products platform. She then led their biggest initiative to build a new brokerage and banking platform, allowing them to expand into financial services and improve client experience.
MarketInvoice has funded business loans and over 90,000 invoices worth more than £2.5b since launching in 2011. The company currently employs 80 people and is looking to hire across the business to invest in high quality talent and technology.
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 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.
"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.
“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.”
