Behind the scenes at Moneybox: Meet Ed
This month we go behind the scenes and dive into the tech world of the Moneybox app. We chat to Ed, Head of Cloud Apps, to learn how his team are using exciting new technology to power the Moneybox mobile apps.
You head up the Cloud Apps Team at Moneybox, what exactly does the team do?
The Cloud Apps Team build and run the ‘back-end’ systems that power the Moneybox mobile apps. Our systems securely supply the apps with account data and process instructions from our users. These systems all run on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform — hence Cloud Apps.
Our time is split between building new features from our product roadmap and delivering the live service. At Moneybox we follow a continuous delivery model where the dev teams are fully responsible for delivering the end-to-end service and we deploy changes several times a day.
What exciting projects are the team currently working on?
It’s tough because there’s so many good projects going on I need to be careful not to let any of our secret plans slip! From a technical perspective, the most exciting thing currently is our project to implement the Open Banking standards. Open Banking allows us to securely connect to our users’ bank accounts with their consent and deliver the next generation of our savings ‘round-ups’ feature.
We’re using exciting new technology, processing huge volumes of data, and it will make a real difference to our users’ experience of a key Moneybox feature. As part of this work we’re adopting Azure Functions (‘serverless’) and Terraform (‘infrastructure as code’) as core technologies and it’s been a great experience learning to make the most of them.
What is the biggest challenge you’re encountering at the moment?
Moneybox is growing rapidly and our team is no exception. That means we have more users, more accounts, more money invested, more features, more code, more data, and more team-members than ever before. Handling all that growth without compromising on our service or product quality is a real challenge for us all but it’s a great problem to have.
What do you enjoy the most about your job at Moneybox?
I joined Moneybox because I believed in the product and team and was excited about the ‘big-picture’ technology challenges ahead of us. In practice though, it’s been the day-to-day delivery that I’ve enjoyed the most. The Moneybox team have a real focus on action — moving quickly and making a difference. It’s really satisfying working on something one day and seeing it in customer’s hands the next.
Since you joined, your team has grown from four to nine people and I hear the team will continue to grow!? So, what do you look for when you’re hiring?
It’s true — we’ve still got some great roles open on the team. I’m looking for three things in new team-members:
- Team-working: How you would contribute to our work as a team outside of just writing code. For example, working well with our product teams, supporting other team members, thinking about the customer experience end-to-end, and so-on.
- Motivation and ownership: Demonstrating enthusiasm and interest in your work and taking ownership to see things through to completion. For example: delivering a new feature, architecting a module, improving our ways of working.
- Technical skills and understanding: It’s also important to have the appropriate level of technical skills for the role. That’s not to say we’re only looking for experts in everything we do though. Moneybox is a learning organisation and we are very supportive of team-members acquiring new skills and knowledge.
Originally published at https://www.moneyboxapp.com on October 31, 2019.
