IT Life: Jamie Hutton, Quantexa

What is your role and who do you work for?

I’m chief technology officer at Quantexa. We’re a big data scale-up fighting financial crime and preventing terrorism across the globe.

How long have you been in technology?

I have 11 years’ experience assisting major banks and insurers in detecting financial crime. Throughout my career, I’ve worked to resolve fraudulent activity on a global scale, investigating ‘crash-for-cash’ scams for the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) and preventing criminal activity and money laundering within Tier 1 banks.

What is your most interesting project to date?

On one particular project, we worked with a Tier 1 bank to bring together data from over 50 countries including all customer accounts and transactions, proving that the Quantexa technology was able to scale to previously impossible data volumes. The system we integrated gave the bank a view they never thought attainable and now cannot live without.

What is your biggest challenge at the moment?

We didn’t anticipate the huge level of demand for the Quantexa technology we currently have within such a short space of time. As such, the business has experienced rapid global expansion and has had to scale incredibly fast, increasing from six to 106 staff in just over two years. It is essential for us to keep up with this demand all while maintaining the highest quality of staff.

What technology were you working with ten years ago?

At university, I completed a computer engineering degree where we learnt the fundamentals of computer science in Java and C. My first job out of university was in the product division of Detica NetReveal where I put my Java background to use and also performed data analytics in the SAS programming language.

What is your favourite technology of all time?

It has to be the internet. It’s tied into everything that everyone does and is impossible to imagine a world without it.

What smartphone do you use?

iPhone XS Max.

What three apps could you not live without?

The number one is Google Chrome. Secondly, Notepad ++ as I always have it open whenever my machine is running. Finally, Serato DJ as I love to DJ in my spare time.

What new technology are you most excited for a) your business and b) yourself?

Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed some huge technological advances in artificial intelligence. AI is now capable of surpassing the decision-making skills of humans in many situations, meaning it can now make decisions faster, more strategically and all for less money. In terms of technology for business purposes, I’m excited to see how AI progresses further and witness how other organisations begin to adopt it too.

Personally, I’m interested in how AI technology can end up being embedded into consumer devices. The best example of this is a drone which can sense its environment, automatically follow a subject and dodge obstacles. I’m looking forward to seeing what else drones will be able to do in the near future.

If you weren’t doing the job you do now, what would you be doing?

International DJ, of course.