Jonathan Locke

Software Engineering Manager | Distributed Systems & High-Scale Platforms | Crypto & Fintech

London, England, United Kingdom

About

Engineering leader with 19+ years in software and 5+ years in management. I lead teams that build backend and platform systems in fintech and crypto. My background is in distributed systems and consensus. These days I lead the teams building that sort of thing, and my focus is getting it shipped reliably. I combine people leadership with technical depth. I stay close to architectural decisions, design reviews and trade-off analysis, so short-term delivery doesn't come at the cost of the system's long-term health. At Shopify I ran high-scale Subscriptions infrastructure and led BFCM readiness through three peak seasons without incident. At Gemini I owned onboarding and funding for Europe across the exchange and Nifty Gateway, in a regulated environment. At R3 I led development of Corda's next-generation consensus notary. At Cryptio I lead the Platform team through a Rust-based storage engine migration, with a focus on predictability, observability and stability. I'm interested in crypto and fintech work where correctness and reliability matter to the business, and where the engineering leader is expected to understand the systems they're responsible for.

Experience

  • Engineering Manager at Cryptio
    Apr 2026 - Present · 3 mos

    Leading the Platform team at Cryptio on a major Rust-based storage engine migration. Focused on improving delivery predictability and stability by introducing automated testing, observability, and lightweight team processes.

  • Software Engineering Manager at Gemini
    Jan 2025 - Mar 2026 · 1 yr 3 mos

    Led multiple full-stack teams of nine engineers at Gemini across two distinct environments: first in a fast-moving, startup-style setting building a digital production platform at Nifty Gateway, then within the larger Gemini Exchange where I owned the Onboarding and Funding domains for Europe in a regulated environment. Combined people leadership with technical guidance to tech leads on architecture and design decisions, while introducing planning processes that improved alignment and helping teams adapt to new domains and operating models during transition.

  • Shopify (Full-time · 3 yrs 5 mos)
    • Software Development Manager
      Jan 2022 - Oct 2024 · 2 yrs 10 mos

      Led multiple full-stack teams of nine engineers in Shopify’s high-scale Subscriptions domain, combining people leadership with close technical involvement. Delivered the billing cycles API and inventory-aware subscriptions that improved correctness and unlocked significant GMV. Provided technical guidance on architecture and design decisions while leading BFCM preparation work that delivered three consecutive stable peak periods. Introduced and coached others on operational processes that improved predictability and reduced firefighting.

    • Staff Software Engineer
      Jun 2021 - Jan 2022 · 8 mos

      Technical Leader of the Subscriptions run team, which was the team responsible for handling technical defects. Responsibilities included: * Prioritizing technical defects and ensuring technical defect tickets captured sufficient information. * Helping new developers onboard, as this was a time of rapid growth for Subscriptions. * Mentoring more junior developers through pairing and coaching. * Solving technical defects through code. * Reduced technical debt, including optimizing slow queries.

  • R3 (2 yrs 5 mos)
    • Staff Software Engineer
      Jun 2020 - Jun 2021 · 1 yr 1 mo

      Lead engineer on a distributed application development squad. Responsible for architectural direction, stakeholder meetings, task assignment and line management.

    • Product Manager
      Jan 2020 - Jun 2020 · 6 mos

      Secondment to product manager for the performance and resiliency aspects of Corda Enterprise, our flagship offering. Responsible for scoping and prioritising development work as well as acting as a communication channel between engineering and clients.

    • Software Engineer
      Feb 2019 - Jan 2020 · 1 yr

      Joined the notaries team, which implements consensus algorithms at R3. Led the development of the next generation JDBC compliant notary, including integration with CockroachDB and integration testing suite using testcontainers. Was release manager for Corda 4.3 and have continued assisting with release management.

  • BrightRockZA (Johannesburg Area, South Africa)
    • Senior Software Developer
      Jul 2018 - Dec 2018 · 6 mos

      Promoted to Senior Software Developer. Additional responsibilities include code reviews and mentoring more junior developers.

    • Software Developer
      Apr 2016 - Jun 2018 · 2 yrs 3 mos

      In house software developer at a small and rapidly growing life insurance company. Challenges include ways to enable the business to scale without requiring a linear growth in staff. Projects worked on include premium calculation engine, policy servicing, commission maintenance including contract transfer and SPA based portal for internal and external users. Technologies used include C#, SQL Server (2012 and 2016), WCF, WPF, Silverlight, Knockout and Typescript. Complexities in the environment relate to the sheer amount of components interacting and the many layers involved.