Meet Tim Whelan, Ravelin’s VP of Engineering

Tim Whelan is our VP of Engineering here at Ravelin. With a background in software programming and payments management, Tim is passionate about building teams and ensuring businesses are managed and working as efficiently as possible - read more about this here.

In this blog we’ll dive deeper into what makes Tim tick, learning to love compliance and what his day to day looks like at Ravelin.

Could you introduce yourself and your role at Ravelin?

My role at Ravelin is VP of Engineering, and I’m responsible for all of the technology and teams at Ravelin. This includes the day to day engineering, infrastructure, security of the business and of course ensuring our teams are working as efficiently as possible.

My primary role is to manage, develop and grow the tech team - taking care of hiring, onboarding, mentoring, coaching, career development, and performance management. I make sure the tech teams are working towards becoming a streamlined high functioning team in the business.

My background is primarily in software engineering. Most recently I worked for a fast growing media company in Malaysia looking after the business’ payments technology. I learned a lot on engineering management and knew I wanted to stay in the same field when I moved back to the UK.

What does your day to day look like at Ravelin?

It’s a mixture of communication, education and mentorship. I’m constantly learning about new technologies and understanding how we can improve our tech stack to be as agile and secure as possible. We have daily and weekly catch-ups with our engineering teams to discuss product updates and changes and how it will affect the business.

We’re constantly looking to improve our systems and offer our clients the best technology and customer service we can.

What are some of the internal and external challenges you face?

Though not a challenge, security is a topic we’re very big on (obviously!). Looking after information security at Ravelin and making sure our platform is kept as secure as possible is my number one goal. We’re constantly testing our codes and systems, performing security reviews, and ingesting a lot of security implications. The challenge is finding out about the things that you don’t know that you don’t know.

I’d say externally, finding good people in engineering can be difficult. London is a such an incredible tech hub, so we’re constantly on the look-out for the best talent to join the team at Ravelin.

What’s one new field of work that you’ve found interesting since working at Ravelin?

Funnily enough I never really enjoyed the regulatory or compliance side of a business before. But something I really enjoy at Ravelin is learning about it - PSD2, GDPR, new compliance rules and so on. There’s so many new regulationatory changes coming in and a lot of them will enhance our business. Due to the nature of our business model we have a myriad of different certifications such as PCI compliance, and learning about them and how it’ll affect our technology and workflow has been quite enjoyable.

What stands out the most about working here?

Without a doubt it’s the team at Ravelin. I’m working with some of the most talented and brightest people I’ve ever worked with. This is the reason Ravelin will succeed - we have a great team of people in all areas of the business, and the people will take the company to new heights and continue to innovate and help keep businesses secure and protected.

Thoughts on opening our second office in New York?

It’s definitely a step in the right direction.