Richard Lewis

Senior Product & Engineering Leader | 20+ Years Driving Innovation & Growth in SaaS & Tech | Building & Scaling Global Products | Expert in secure communication and collaboration, payments, Blockchain, AI, Cybersecurity

Woking, England, United Kingdom

About

Dynamic and results-oriented Product & Engineering Leader with 20+ years of success in delivering global-scale products and driving innovation within the SaaS, collaboration, and communication technology sectors. Proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams, defining and executing successful product strategies, and fostering a customer-centric culture. Key Strengths: * Building high performing engineering (and Product) teams. Extensive experience working with globally distributed and remote teams. * Product Vision & Execution: Translate strategic objectives into compelling product roadmaps, leading teams to successful global launches and ongoing delivery. * Technical & Commercial Acumen: Bridge the gap between business and technology, leveraging deep technical expertise and commercial insight to identify opportunities and deliver innovative solutions. * Customer-Centric Approach: Fanatical about understanding customer needs and exceeding expectations, ensuring products deliver exceptional user experiences. * Data-Driven Decision Making: Utilize data analytics and KPIs to inform product strategy, measure success, and drive continuous improvement. * Leadership & Collaboration: Build and lead high-performing, globally distributed teams, fostering collaboration and achieving results through effective communication and stakeholder management. * Expertise in Cutting-Edge Technologies: Stay ahead of the curve with expertise in blockchain, AI, cybersecurity, web/mobile development, and cloud platforms. Experience Highlights: * Led product strategy and delivery for Element, a global-scale SaaS platform for secure communication and collaboration, achieving over 100,000+ deployments and 125 million users. * Co-founded Onedox, a fintech SaaS platform, driving customer savings and securing national media recognition and industry awards. * Directed engineering at Amdocs (OpenMarket), managing a global support and engineering team, supporting a platform processing 1+ billion messages/month and generating $100+ million annual revenue. * Successfully led post-merger integrations, organizational change management, and global team collaboration initiatives. Beyond Work: Passionate about all things tech, with personal projects ranging from home automation to custom motorcycles, showcasing a continuous drive for learning and innovation.

Experience

  • Director of Engineering at Element Materials Technology
    Jun 2025 - Present · 1 yr 2 mos

    Creating innovative AI tools to help customers navigate regulation and compliance needed to bring new products to market, quikly and efficiently.

  • CEO / CTO at SMETCO (smetco.co.uk)
    Jun 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 2 mos

    Helping SMEs expand their engineering capabilities. Providing consultancy on technical strategy, solutions architecture, and product and engineering team scaling. Also taking on unique technical projects and delivering POCs that require a high degree of innovation and a broad range of skills and experience -- https://smetco.co.uk.

  • Vice President of Product & Engineering at Element
    Jan 2017 - May 2024 · 7 yrs 5 mos

    A core member of the founding teams of Matrix and Element. We created Matrix as an open source, decentralised, e2e encrypted, secure messaging protocol and ecosystem (https://matrix.org/). I architected and led creation of all commercial products, including a robust, global scale hybrid SaaS platform for managed & self-hosted Matrix deployments and integrations to external platforms and services. The core products include the Enterprise Server Suite of commercial, enterprise grade collaboration tools, comprising a messaging stack, App Store, Bots, bridges, integrations to other platforms, and customer demos / POCs. Element powers Matrix deployments for SMEs, global enterprises, governments, militaries, over 100,000 deployments and 125 million users worldwide!

  • VP of Engineering at Matrix.org
    Jan 2017 - Jan 2024 · 7 yrs 1 mo

    Responsible for building new technologies on top of the core Matrix.org platform including App Store, Virtual Reality, Bots, and bridges to other platforms. Starting a Riot (https://riot.im) to grow the Matrix.org ecosystem!

  • Co-founder and Head of Technical Operations at Onedox
    Jun 2015 - Feb 2017 · 1 yr 9 mos

    I led development of a groundbreaking platform designed to unify online consumer accounts and subscriptions by automating collection and storage of user data (e.g. bills and correspondence) from disparate online sources. Automatic analysis of service usage and collected data, alerts users when action is required or money can be saved by automatically or manually changing suppliers. Rapidly growing startup, featured in national publications (The Times, The Sun etc.), media broadcasts and winner of various fintech startup innovation awards.