Interview With CTO, Jamie Howard

Tell us a bit more about the business you represent.

Capital on Tap's mission began from the understanding that small business owners are the foundation for growth in our economy, and yet today’s banking system has left them behind. To innovatively serve this market that has traditionally been neglected, Capital on Tap provides an all-in-one small business credit card and spend management platform tailored to small businesses.

Founded in 2012, Capital on Tap's singular goal, to make the lives of small business owners easier has driven us to help over 200,000 SME customers across the UK and the US.

Being the CTO, what do your day-to-day responsibilities look like?

When the company started I was very hands-on, writing code, designing databases, commissioning firewalls and fixing printers (all very typical for a start-up CTO). More recently, and as the company has grown, my role has evolved to be much more people focused. Most of my time is spent ensuring that we are hiring and retaining the right people and building and nurturing an incredible team. Delegating the day-to-day work was probably the hardest transition I’ve had, but it’s an essential part of the job to ensure that you have a high-functioning team that meets the needs of the business and our customers.

What frameworks do you use for managing technical debt?

We use a number of tools such as JetBrains Resharper and StyleCop to identify code smells and surface-level technical debt. Without a doubt, these tools are invaluable, however, they only tell you part of the story. We continually evaluate new tools and platforms to help us make our code better.

The most effective way we identify, manage, and pay down technical debt is to instil a deep culture of ownership within the engineering teams (of all disciplines). At Capital on Tap, all our technical teams maintain their own technical debt registers and have allocated capacity within each sprint to tackle it.

The Executive team also play their part by understanding what technical debt is, what the ramifications are of not dealing with it and the importance of allowing engineering time to pay it down.

How do you decide whether something is so painful that it merits a full rewrite?

Full rewrites come in two flavours, the iterative development process that replaces a system over time and the side-by-side replacement.

We are constantly evolving our systems and so over time these are organically rewritten. We do the work in place, replacing small parts of the program gradually, to ensure that we are building a better platform without disrupting the service we provide to our customers.

The other flavour is where we have had to work on a replacement system alongside the live one. These instances are quite rare, but where we have made the choice to do this, the rationale has always been due to two things: 1) where new technologies have become available that would allow us to build a significantly better product, or 2) the business model or product have pivoted so far beyond the original requirements, the time-to-market on new product features is unacceptably high or the customer experience is suffering.

How does your technical organisation work with the other operational components of the company?

We accomplish this in two ways. Firstly, the Managers and Heads of Departments in IT have very good working relationships with their business stakeholders. They understand each other's worlds, aspirations, and pain points.

Secondly, our Product and Product Operations team acts as a nexus between the technical world and the front-line operational functions throughout the business. These teams are responsible for ensuring that our products are running smoothly and efficiently and that all teams are working together towards the same goals. They play a critical role in driving product success and ensuring that the company is well-positioned to meet the needs of its customers.

What do you see as the hottest trends within your industry today?

This is a tough one as there’s a lot going on at the moment!

When I think about trends in technology, it’s impossible (and unwise) to ignore the rapid advancements in AI and Large Language Models. These are incredibly impressive technologies that businesses can’t ignore, however, I believe a little caution will be needed until their application can be fully understood.

Another area that shouldn’t be ignored is the need for more sustainable technologies, particularly with power generation and consumption. Cloud computing providers will need to develop greener ways to power their data centres and create greater efficiencies when delivering these services.

Finally, I see cybersecurity being a hot topic in the next two years. Political instability, macroeconomic turmoil, and the fallout from the pandemic have all led to an environment where cybercrime is increasing rapidly. Improvements to maintain and enhance security posture will be essential.

Can you tell us what book you are reading currently?

A bit of an eclectic mix at the moment: “Phoenix Project: A Novel About It, Devops, And Helping Your Business Win” (Gene Kim) - always looking for different perspectives on technical team relationships

“Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain” by Peter Shankman - to help improve my understanding of people who are neurodivergent

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood - pleasure reading

Do your technical teams or do you use log analysis as part of your role? If you do, how do you find this helps day-to-day operations?

Capital on Tap has a central log repository for all software, hardware, and platform-related events that we use to help identify errors, anomalies, and patterns in the data, which is essential to troubleshoot issues and optimise performance in our systems. We also have an independent SIEM platform in place that helps our security team detect, analyse and respond to security threats before they can do any damage.

What can we hope to see from your business in the future?

I believe we are already the best small business credit card in the UK, and our US business is going from strength to strength. We have an ambitious product roadmap, full of new and innovative features that will make the lives of our SME customers easier. There are 38 million small businesses across the UK and the US so there’s still a lot of work to do and many more businesses to help!

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