Jack Wall

Entrepreneur, Investor & Engineering Leader

Techstars, Wayra & Springboard Alumni

Presentations and Talks

Here you can find a list of talks and presentations that I've done recently. If you'd like to get in touch about speaking at your event, please email me.

Breaking through the "Manager Ceiling"

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Open Office Hours

Book a 30-minute to 1-hour call to discuss any topics where I might be able to help

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OakNorth Bank

As the Director of Engineering for Business Banking, reporting to the CTO, I was brought in to stabilise and rebuild the engineering organisation after a period of significant attrition. Once the teams were re-established, I helped scale the function across London, India and remote Europe through both hiring as well as the acquisition of a European AI-First FinTech, while also supporting OakNorth’s next phase of international growth, including US expansion plans linked to the acquisition of Community Unity Bank (CUB).

Highlights

Business Banking: OakNorth is a digital bank built to support scaling businesses with business current accounts, savings, cards, payments and dedicated support, all wrapped into a modern banking experience.
Engineering Leadership: Led Engineering for OakNorth’s Business Banking domain, spanning accounts, payments, cards, approvals and core customer journeys across the platform.
Platform Design: The Business Banking platform is designed for complex, fast-growing companies, with multi-company accounts, tailored permissions and payment approval workflows that support real operational needs.
Customer Experience: Customers can manage multiple companies, users and accounts from a single login, helping ambitious businesses stay in control as they grow and making day-to-day banking more efficient.
Responsibilities: Responsible for engineering leadership across delivery, architecture and operational excellence within the Business Banking domain, combining organisational leadership with technical direction.
Focus: Focused on building secure, scalable digital banking experiences across accounts, payments, approvals, cards and finance integrations, supporting the needs of growing businesses.

Kroo Bank

I joined as Head of Engineering, reporting to the CTO, to help scale engineering through a major period of growth. I led the expansion from 4 squads to 10, strengthened the leadership structure, and helped improve the organisation’s platform capabilities, delivery effectiveness and engineering quality.

Highlights

Innovative Banking with Purpose: Kroo Bank is positioned as a "bank with a conscience" that aims to redefine banking by aligning people, planet, and profit for lasting positive impact.
Cultural and Environmental Focus: The bank's mission to be built for today's climate and culture emphasizes ethical banking, sustainability, and social responsibility.
Modern Financial Services: Kroo leverages technology and forward-thinking practices to create banking solutions that are both customer-centric and socially beneficial.
Team and Squad Expansion: Scaled the Engineering function from 4 to 10 squads, leading a dynamic team of 11 Tech Leads and 40–50 engineers.
Specialist Platform Development: Launched three specialist Platform Squads to drive focused investment into core technology foundations and accelerate growth.
Career and Performance Framework: Built a comprehensive career framework, including a levelling ladder, skills matrix, and promotion processes to recognize and reward high performers.

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ONSI

I joined as Head of Engineering to help build and scale the technology platform behind Collective Benefits, now Onsi. I led engineering across product delivery, platform architecture, regulatory and technical compliance, and team growth as the business expanded its offering for independent workers.

Highlights

Revolutionizing Employee Rewards: Collective Benefits (ONSI) offers a rewards card that incentivizes workers through savings, insurance, and pay—enabling flexible workforces to thrive.
Empowering Flexible Work: The platform is tailored to support some of the world's largest businesses by ensuring that flexible workers are not only supported but empowered to excel.
Focus on Scalability and Innovation: ONSI is committed to building a high-performance, scalable technology platform using modern architectures like microservices and serverless computing.
Greenfield Platform Development: Led the design and development of a scalable technology platform built on microservices and serverless architecture to ensure high availability.
Technical Leadership & Direction: Provided strategic leadership to the engineering team, ensuring efficient performance and alignment with business objectives.
Ground-Up Business Contribution: Played a pivotal role in building the business and platform from inception, making critical technical decisions that shaped the company's growth.

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Lenny

I joined as VP of Engineering, reporting to the CEO and Founder, to help recruit, lead and scale the engineering team. I oversaw engineering delivery and technical roadmap execution while building stronger foundations across team structure, hiring, architecture and operational efficiency.

Highlights

JLR-backed insurtech startup: Lenny was a Jaguar Land Rover-backed insurtech venture focused on transforming short-term car insurance through a digital-first customer experience.
Comprehensive insurance policies: Windscreen cover, personal belongings cover, courtesy car for the owner and emergency medical treatment. So if anything goes wrong you know you're covered.
Instant cover: You can get on the road in no time with a super simple sign-up process and an instant short-term car insurance quote. Designed to make temporary cover fast and hassle-free, Lenny helped drivers get insured in minutes without the complexity of a traditional annual policy.
Owner peace of mind: Rest assured when you borrow a car from a friend or family member, the owner's no-claims bonus is totally unaffected by any claim. Lenny policies are underwritten by a Standard & Poor's A+ stable rated insurer with 1.5 million policyholders in the UK alone.
Cover ahead of time: Need short term insurance but not right now? No sweat, Lenny allows you to book your temp car cover up to 28 days in advance. Getting pre-approved means when the time comes, you can jump in the driver seat and go!
Total flexibility: Hourly car insurance, daily car insurance, weekly car insurance, you're in the driver seat. And if you fancy turning a weekend into a long one our pay as you go insurance means you can extend on the fly in just a few taps.

CompareTheMarket

I joined as an Android Engineer and progressed into Tech Lead and Application Architect for Mobile. I helped grow the mobile engineering function from a single small team of 2 into a multi-team, multi-country department of around 25 engineers, while leading architecture, delivery, people development and technical strategy.

Highlights

Scale: Supported mobile products used by over 6 million users, with more than 2 million monthly active users across Android and iOS, giving the platform significant reach and engagement at scale.
Team Leadership: Led and grew the Mobile function to more than 20 engineers across two countries, the UK and Belarus, building the team’s capability, structure and delivery capacity over time.
Marketing Impact: The mobile app was supported by regular marketing campaigns, including dozens of adverts shown across TV and cinema in the UK, helping drive broad consumer awareness and adoption.
Product Releases: Delivered native mobile apps for both Android and iOS across phones and tablets, ensuring a consistent, high-quality experience across the major mobile platforms and form factors.
Product Portfolio: Helped grow the mobile app into a broader product platform spanning Customer Rewards, Insurance Comparison, Bills & Savings and Open Banking, expanding its value to users beyond a single core offering.
Responsibilities: Held responsibility across People, Technology, Architecture and Strategy for Mobile, combining organisational leadership with technical direction and long-term platform thinking.

Upshot

I was the Founding Android Engineer who helped launch Upshot, a real-time photo and video sharing app built for events and nights out. I worked on the core Android product and helped shape a lightweight, social experience centred around instant media capture, upload and group sharing.

Highlights

Automatic Background Upload: Automatically detected and uploaded new photos and videos taken through any camera app, making it effortless for users to capture and share moments without changing their normal behaviour.
App Store Features: Featured multiple times by both Apple and Google, alongside category-defining apps such as Instagram and Snapchat. These placements highlighted the product’s growing relevance within the social and photo-sharing space.
Time-based Activation: Enabled time-based activation so users could automatically capture specific events, evenings and nights out without needing to remember to open the app manually. This feature helped maintain engagement by making it easy to capture and share moments without additional effort.
User Engagement: Drove strong user engagement, with hundreds of thousands of photos shared, liked and remixed across the platform. The product encouraged active participation and repeat usage by making content creation and interaction feel social, lightweight and fun.
Content Management: Included automatic content deletion after a preset period, helping keep the experience fresh and time-relevant. This lightweight approach to content management also reduced clutter and reinforced the product’s more spontaneous, in-the-moment nature
Press Coverage: Featured by TechCrunch, helping raise visibility and validate the product as an innovative entrant in the consumer social space. This coverage supported broader awareness with users, partners and the wider startup ecosystem.

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Togethera

I was the Founding Android Engineer who was brought in to build and launch the Togethera Android app and evolve the product into a private, family-focused sharing experience. Togethera went on to receive significant featuring from both Apple and Google in over 100 countries, including Editor’s Choice recognition.

Highlights

Content Sharing: bled users to share photos, videos, emoji reactions and comments through a simple, social experience designed to make interaction feel fast, lightweight and engaging.
Multi-group Sharing: Allowed users to share content across multiple groups in a single tap, reducing friction and making it easier to distribute moments to the right audiences quickly.
Offline Support: Delivered full offline support, including content creation, so users could continue capturing and interacting with the app even when they had little or no connectivity.
Image Quality: Supported both low-resolution and full high-resolution uploads, balancing speed and performance with the ability to preserve high-quality original content when needed.
Premium Features: Introduced a premium membership with enhanced functionality, creating additional value for power users while supporting the product’s monetisation strategy.
Real-time Updates: Built real-time in-app updates so users could instantly see new content, reactions and activity, helping the experience feel live, responsive and highly interactive.
Press Coverage: Featured by TechCrunch, Wired, Gizmodo and other leading publications, helping to build credibility, increase awareness and validate the product in a competitive consumer market.
App Store Features: Featured by Apple and Google in over 100 countries, demonstrating strong product quality, broad international appeal and recognition from the two major app ecosystems.

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