Dean Clark's journey in technology began unexpectedly in the mid to late '90s. Initially studying pharmacy at university, he quickly realised it wasn't his passion.
While still a student, he found himself working part-time for an IT recruitment consultancy, fixing their back-office systems.
This experience led to a pivotal opportunity to train as a SQL server DBA with a Microsoft MVP. Dean jumped at the chance, marking the beginning of his technology career. “I then spent a while training with him before eventually ending up working as a SQL DBA at an investment bank. This was all before the turn of the century,” he explains.
In his early career, Dean moved from the investment bank to a large publishing company, working with another Microsoft MVP. “I got quite a bit of very good tutelage in my early career,” he notes.
The dot-com boom of the early 2000s presented new opportunities. Dean worked on innovative projects, including “the world's first WAP search engine”.
However, the volatility of the dot-com era was evident when this project became obsolete almost immediately due to the advent of high-speed mobile internet.
Undeterred, Dean continued to expand his expertise. He worked on an HR onboarding platform for international relocations, backed by Swiss Life. This venture thrived until the dot-com bubble burst.
The early 2000s saw Dean transition to an investments, pensions and annuities company. “We built new applications for things like actuarial calculations for life expectancy,” he explains, highlighting his growing involvement in application development.
A significant phase in Dean’s career began when he joined a service provider as an architect. Over nine years, he progressed from senior systems administrator to head of hosting services.
During this time, his team achieved a remarkable feat: “We actually built the world's first public cloud based on Hyper-V,” Dean notes.
This experience led to collaborations with Microsoft on early Azure architecture.
“We worked alongside Microsoft and got involved in some of the early architecture that eventually became Microsoft Azure,” he recalls.
Dean's career then took him to a boutique consultancy focusing on cloud-native solutions for asset management and insurance. This role allowed him to delve deeper into cloud technologies, particularly AWS.
After a brief return to investment banking as a global head of web engineering, he moved into cloud-native consultancy. His final step before joining GFT was implementing a cloud platform for a large retail bank.
Reflecting on his diverse career, Dean notes: “I've had quite a bit of experience with financial service companies now with investment banks, insurance, annuities and investments.”
This wealth of experience across various sectors of the financial industry has positioned him perfectly for his current role as CTO at GFT UK.
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