The Mike Burns

I was educated at Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire, where I was able to develop my already keen interest in practical Electronics, for which I won several Regional and National awards. I went on to study Electronic Engineering at the University of Southampton. In parallel, as a schoolboy I taught myself to program first in BASIC and then Z80 Assembly Language.

On leaving University, I embarked on a career in Software Development, first briefly in the Manufacturing sector, before moving into the Financial Services Sector, where I have spent substantial periods designing and building systems for major companies such as Prudential, Barclays and Moody's. I joined a Financial Software startup in the late 90's as the first non-board level employee, and took the primary role in building a Development team, recruiting over 100 high-quality people. Whilst at Barclays, I led the project to build an industry-leading STP system for processing Pooled Fund orders worth millions of pounds per day, to critical acclaim in the industry press.

Throughout my career, my philosophy and overarching goal has been to enable business to leverage technology to the maximum possible extent, providing creative and innovative solutions and bridging the gap between the technical and the non-technical.

I am currently employed full-time at M&T Bank in the City of London, where I am the Europe Application Technology Manager.

I live in London with my partner Sarah, having between us five children, mostly now all grown-up.