The Starling Developer Podcast is back with Series 4

We’re excited to announce that after a year’s hiatus the Starling podcast is back, with series four. Jason Maude, our chief technology advocate, returns to present another set of six episodes talking about how technology at Starling is evolving and what we’re working on right now. The series features discussions with many Starling engineers as well as members of our fraud, data science, and executive teams and covers topics such as AI decision making, open banking, and how we can avoid falling into the legacy trap.

We’ll be launching the series on June 12th and releasing an episode a week. Here’s a rundown of the episodes you can look forward to.

• Episode 19 - Automated vs human decision making in banking
• Episode 20 - Avoiding legacy code
• Episode 21 - Software architecture reliability at scale
• Episode 22 - Deploying code rapidly and reliably
• Episode 23 - Open Banking and APIs
• Episode 24 - Making software language choices

Episode 19 - Automated vs human decision making in banking

In this episode we discuss computerised decision making, from the automation of human processes, to machine learning and AI. When do we let machines make decisions on their own and when do we provide human guidance?

Our Starling special guests this week are:

Catherine Walpole, head of AML and fraud, responsible for keeping customers safe from financial crime. This includes ensuring the bank keeps up to date with industry standards in fighting fraud and money laundering using cutting-edge technology.

Harriet Rees, head of data science, passionate about using technology and AI to drive better customer experiences in banking - this includes tackling fraud intelligently using patterns and insights from data.

Rich Sale, fraud engineering team lead. Rich works closely with fraud investigators to build features which detect and prevent financial crime.

Episode 20 - Avoiding legacy code

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all large software systems will be increasingly made up of legacy code. But is this actually the case? In this episode we explore the concepts of legacy code, adaptable architecture, and agile tech companies, and explain how Starling is aiming to avoid the pitfalls of software landscapes of the past.

This week, our special guests are:

Ricardo Avalos, lead software engineer. Ricardo has a background in investment banking tech and writes code for the Starling products he uses everyday. Fun fact: Ricardo just became the father of a lovely baby girl.

Martin Dow, head of back office engineering, was one of the first engineers to join Starling and now looks after our "back office" technology, building the core systems of the bank. Fun fact: Martin has only ever met one other software engineer who also studied anthropology.

Episode 21 - Software architecture reliability at scale

In the first episode in the first series of this podcast we talked about how we ensure that the software architecture that we use at Starling ensures reliability as far as possible. Since then Starling has scaled up from hundreds of customers to more than half a million. In this episode we will look at how we have adapted our reliability strategies to deliver at scale.

This week, our special guests are:

Harry Austin, regular software engineer, prides himself on his efficient approach to scaling and stabilising the bank. Fun fact: in his free time, Harry likes to read compiled byte code over a glass of lukewarm water.

Alex Pardoe, scale and stabilise team lead, spends most of his time thinking about all the code that can be deleted to reduce the surface area for bugs. Fun fact: the rest of Alex’s time is spent tempering Harry’s fiery passion for drinking lukewarm water.

Episode 22 - Deploying code rapidly and reliably

Starling generally deploys software to production at least once a day during working hours. How do we ensure that this deployment process is easy for engineers and not disruptive for customers?

Episode 23 - Open Banking and APIs

Open banking and PSD2 have the potential to revolutionise banking. The ability for customers to seamlessly share their financial data in a secure manner between different financial service providers could provide enormous benefits if implemented well. So how is Starling approaching providing these benefits to its customers?

Episode 24 - Making software language choices

One of the biggest decisions that you have to make when starting a large software project is which language or languages to write it in. In this episode we discuss what factors you should consider when picking a language and what language decisions Starling has made over the past three and a half years.

Discover our show by searching iTunes or your favourite podcast app.