Meet Lee Winder, Senior Manager, UK Engineering.

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I love our ‘tell, don’t ask’ policy to work-life balance.

So often life throws things in our way, from something as trivial as the fridge leaking to having health issues that we need to deal with. If someone needs to be flexible, to work from home or anything else that would make their lives just a bit less chaotic, they don't need to ask permission to be flexible. Instead it's up to them to work as they need, as long as they ensure that their work and responsibilities are delivered and covered.

I switched gaming for gambling, before finding finance.

I started out as a programmer in the games industry. My first role was frontend, UI and compliance for Zapper: One Wicked Cricket. The next 13 years included a number of other gaming gigs. Leading a team working on Sneak King, in the heady, but thankfully short-lived era of Advergames. Building up a number of teams to work on titles for XBox LIVE Arcade and PSN. And later moving to SEGA as their Technical Team Lead for their mobile studio, where I worked on Sonic Dash. (Three years is more than enough blue hedgehog for anyone!).

I then took up a role as Games Development Director for a company in the gambling industry for about 12 months, before finding my way to Capital One at the end of 2017.

Now I lead our data tribe.

My first year as a Senior Engineering Manager at Capital One was spent working with a lot of different people, especially the data steward community, to align the business on what it meant to have a Data Engineering function. How could we start to transition to a more real time, data-oriented business?

I spent time building up the Data Engineering function across London and Nottingham, bringing on some truly excellent engineers. Now I lead our data tribe. And I'm responsible for our engineer onboarding programme.

We’re pioneering UK-US working models.

We're currently working hand-in-hand with the LegoLand development team to develop the platform and bring it over to the EU in 2019. It’s a data-enterprise-developed data science/analyst platform, which will have a significant impact on the efficiency and quality of life for data scientists and analysts all over the business.

This model of embedding engineers and UK development teams into US functions is one we'll see again and again in the future and it's great that we can be at the forefront of that.

We’re investing big in real-time data and rapid discovery.

Combining LegoLand with our in-house Data Registration Service really starts to open the door to rapid data discovery for data scientists, analysts and engineers. It puts clean and usable data at their fingertips. Hooking that stream of data with our Tag Stream Service will really allow us to take advantage of real time data use and discovery, in a way we haven't been able to before.

I've also started working on a program called the Data Championship Hub, to help improve the quality, production and use of data in a true cross-tribe manner. It should really help us improve how we produce and use the data we have available.

Total project ownership lets personalities and ideas shine.

The best part of my job is being able to give associates within my teams the space and time to develop in a way in which suits them. To create the tools and services that best fit the needs of our customers. It opens up the way we do things and how we solve the problems that come our way.

I think what makes technology at Capital One different is not the tech itself, but the way in which we approach it. It’s not clinical, or dry, but a way for individuals to express themselves and put parts of themselves into the work they do. They have clear ownership of the work they're doing and how they want to do it.