Tyro Appointments Director of Engineering to take growth to new level

Tyro announced today the appointment of Dr Dave Coombes as its new Director of Engineering.

Dr Coombes will join Tyro’s executive management team in July, leading almost 200 product and design engineers.

He is the fifth senior Tyro appointment to join from an established institution in the last eight months, reflecting the company’s growing reputation in the market for excellence and innovation.

Tyro is a key player in the Australian payments sector and is the only technology company in Australia to be granted an unrestricted banking licence.

Tyro CEO Gerd Schenkel said that after more than 10 years as a startup, Tyro was preparing to scale up the business, by attracting some of Australia’s most innovative experts to its management team.

“Dave Coombes’ extensive experience with online and mobile platform development, agile methods and his deep knowledge of the financial services industry makes him ideal to lead our already highly skilled engineering team to deliver the next phase of our ambitious growth plans,” Mr Schenkel said.

“Tyro has a highly developed engineering capability and we build everything inhouse and own the entire solution infrastructure. By building our systems, processes and services from the ground up we control every aspect of our product and services development to produce superior system performance for Australian businesses.

“We create our own bespoke solutions for Australia’s 1.2 million small and medium sized businesses, many of which are in the retail, hospitality and health sectors.

“Overwhelmingly our customers recommend us to their friends and family, and that provides a solid base for us to innovate and grow further.

“With that in mind we have created two new roles of Head of Engineering and Head of Product. Our new Head of Product, Kareem al Bassam joined us in January from PayPal.”

Commenting on his move to Tyro, Dr Coombes says, “I am incredibly excited about joining an organisation that not only values engineering excellence but uses the enormous knowledge and passion of its people to push the boundaries of innovation.

“I was also attracted by Tyro’s clear purpose to fundamentally improve the banking experience for Australian businesses. I look forward to meeting and working with all of the talented team at Tyro and playing my part in their continued growth and success.”

Established in 2003, Tyro currently serves more than 18,000 businesses, processed $8.6 billion in transactions and generated more than $95 million in revenue in FY16.

About David Coombes

• Over the past 20 years, Dr Coombes has been instrumental in the design and implementation of technology platforms for the financial services sector, both in Australia and the UK.
• He was the General Manager Strategy and Architecture at Tabcorp and prior to that, a Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks, the world leaders in applying agile methods to enterprise application development.
• At ThoughtWorks, Dr Coombes was responsible for both consulting and delivery engagements at leading financial institutions including BT Financial Group, Suncorp, Macquarie, Fidelity Investments and Dresdner Kleinwort, in both the UK and Australia.
• Most recently, he was Head of Group Technology at IAG Digital Labs where he led teams responsible for application and infrastructure architecture, integration, database operations, automation and robotics.
• Dr Coombes holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sheffield and a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Theoretical Physics from the University of Birmingham

Need to know more?

For more about this news story please contact:
Carolyn Prendergast, Head of Corporate Communications on 0409 910 561 or cprendergast@tyro.com
Matthew Johnston, Corporate Communications Manager on 0432 535 893 or mjohnston@tyro.com