Gene Conroy-Jones PhD

The PhD

Science, practicality, objectivity — Civil Engineering was a natural fit. I was the first in my family to go to university and spent six brilliant years at Cardiff. I can't say enough good things about the place.

I completed a BEng and then a heavily experimental PhD studying high-strength concrete — making, moulding, and testing a variety of concrete types. The work was published in the Magazine of Concrete Research, one of the most prestigious journals in the field. Those years honed my testing instincts and taught me something I still carry: how you test something matters as much as what you find. That rigour of objectivity — and the ability to debate ideas openly — has shaped my entire career.

Afterwards I spent time as a postdoc in Reykjavík at the University of Iceland, modelling chloride diffusion in blended cement mortars and presenting results at EU science conferences in Oslo.

London, Iceland & Investment Banks

My first decade in software was spent in London's financial district and a detour through Reykjavík — Morgan Stanley, WestLB, Strategic Thought, and Mens Mentis in Iceland. I arrived just in time for Y2K, and the rigour of that testing effort — systematically validating mission-critical systems against a hard deadline — set a standard for quality control that has stuck with me ever since.

The work was more startup-like than people expect from banking. We were embedded within trading desks and business teams as what the industry now calls Forward Deployed Engineers — sitting with the customer, observing their workflows, identifying problems, building a POC, and iterating until it worked. Same loop I run today: understand the pain, ship something fast, refine based on feedback.

I built automated testing suites, business process tooling, and portfolio analytics across multiple banks and asset classes. The stakes were real — zero tolerance for downtime, regulatory scrutiny, and an expectation that you'd deliver fast without breaking anything. That discipline is something startup culture often lacks, and it's something I bring to every organisation I join.

By the time I left I knew two things: I wanted to build products, not just internal systems. And I wanted to do it somewhere that moved even faster.

Working Together

All of these experiences — academia, banking, seven startups, two acquisitions — have brought me to a place where I have strong intuition about what makes engineering organisations and products succeed. My speciality is seed to Series B, but there are startup-like teams inside every organisation that could benefit from the same approach.

Gut feel gets you a target, but data tells you if you're getting there. You can't improve what you don't measure.

I operate from data-driven principles across people, process, and architecture, and I measure those principles — the four signals — to identify where an organisation can improve. I believe in generative cultures: ego-less, blameless, and relentlessly focused on getting better. That said, I'll work with any organisation to help them move in the right direction and become objectively more performant, wherever they're starting from.

I'm drawn to companies solving real problems in whatever sector — if the need is genuine, I'm interested. Available as a full-time CTO, interim or fractional CTO, consultant, advisor, and for speaking engagements.

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Publications & Patents