Ripjar’s diverse mission in data intelligence means we are often at the forefront of both technology and criminal enterprise. Deploying AI-based solutions within a bank can help financial institutions detect much more rapidly the presence of money laundering or terrorist financing. Similarly, government agencies and large security operations teams who are faced with a deluge of cyber attacks every day, now use Ripjar technology to make sense of that all their data, fusing and joining the dots between infrastructure, behaviour and adversary.
But there’s still so much more we want to build; we need your help to stay one step ahead of the relentless innovation of advanced global criminal networks.
This week at the Equal Engineering careers fair in Bristol, we launched two limited edition metallic-print posters, featuring two of our favourite hero bots, from Ripjar’s array of technological capability. While other companies may glorify adversaries, or present an homogenised view of automation and “AI” – we prefer to call out to our army of specialised autonomous processes that can help risk and security teams scale-up and tackle the breadth of the modern data landscape.
So, if you’re someone with a passion for solving hard problems in machine learning, data analytics, software engineering and working directly with global companies developing our technology, then we want to hear from you. Especially if you are an aspiring:
Ripjar has recently signed the Tech Talent Charter (TTC) as part of its work to proactively encourage diversity in its recruitment pipeline. Maria Cox who leads on Ripjar’s HR strategy recently answered questions on the diversity agenda and what it means to Ripjar.
What is your role at Ripjar?
I look after the most important asset to our business: our people. I’ve been with Ripjar since 2016 and I’ve seen huge changes growing from successful startup into a global business. People are the most important ingredient to our success, so I make sure we have everything that is necessary to have a vibrant, diverse and thriving workforce, and to attract and recruit the best talent where we need it most.
What is the most important thing about diversity?
Diversity is essential in the way we operate. Having people from different backgrounds, genders and experiences ensures that we make decisions with a truly global perspective. Diversity gives us strength in our technology, analysis and relationships.
How do you go about improving diversity within an organisation like Ripjar?
It seems the traditional approaches to diversity and inclusion have been well-meaning and have involved significant effort for example, where targets are set for increasing numbers, HR duly puts action plans in place of how to get there. While there’s nothing wrong with having something to aim for or to measure against, the problem comes when numbers become our only focus and we lose sight of our real purpose which is to increase the true diversity and inclusiveness of our company.
It’s time to recognise that for all the effort, business cases, targets and initiatives, progress has been slow. We want to shake things up and actually make a difference.
What is the challenge that technology companies like Ripjar have?
There are studies that show the number of female employees in the technology sector in the UK is very low, perhaps 15% or less. This is a concerning number when you think about the overall number of women in the UK workforce. We know that there are a number of factors that contribute to this, from early education to discrimination in the hiring process and for this reason the problem needs a number of different approaches to solve it. It’s definitely a journey, not a destination, and there is much work to do.
What attracted you to the Tech Talent Charter?
I think the most important part of the charter is the relationships it gives us across the community. Through collaboration, sharing best practice and learning from each other in the industry, we can show that a career in technology is incredibly rewarding and through tweaking our approach and mindsets around attraction, recruitment and retention we can increase diversity in tech and inspire younger generations.
The charter helps us support the attraction, recruitment and retention practices so that our business processes more actively increase diversity in the workforce. Learning from the other signatories, and shared online resources including bench-marking reports, and playbooks.
Also, through this collaboration we are helping to generate data which is invaluable to tackling the wider problem at the national level.
What are the next steps for Ripjar’s diversity agenda?
We are imagining the world as it ought to be, not necessarily how it is. There are some real challenges that we have to put work into if we are to address the imbalances within the technology sector.
Signing the charter is the first step on that journey, and we’re now setting milestones of the things we would like to achieve and tailoring that journey to where Ripjar is and the level of growth we expect over the coming 18-24 months.
Everyone seems to agree that the problem seems to start with young people and making them aware of the education and career opportunities that technology provides, so we’ll invest in that and in our talent pipeline. We also have to ensure that our strategy considers BAME and LGBTQ+ groups and ensures we have a holistic view over the development and growth of our workforce.
Watching the sunrise from the top of the 30 St Mary Axe, better known as ‘the Gherkin’, Ripjar welcomed more than 60 distinguished guests from around the City of London to celebrate the UK launch last year of our signature financial crime solution that uses advanced AI to monitor the risks of millions of clients in real-time.
The theme of the event, the ‘Global Illumination’ of Financial Crime, which costs the world’s economy up to $2TN per year, and effects the lives of millions both directly and indirectly whether through corruption, bribery, and fraud. Ripjar’s data intelligence platform – Labyrinth – gives analysts the power to automatically illuminate unknown risks and identify hidden links in data in order to prevent money laundering and other financial crimes.
Sir Iain Lobban, former Director of the UK’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ provided the keynote address at the event, drawing parallels from history from the code breaking efforts at Bletchley Park to the modern day challenge of countering global terrorist networks.
The exclusive breakfast briefing covered the development of our data intelligence technology, which combines data fusion, machine learning, visualisation and automation to give organisations the ability to tackle complex and dynamic challenges such as money laundering, terrorism and cybercrime.
We’ve focused on building a platform that can scale to the size of the problem, and the organisations that are at the forefront in countering these types of risks. For example, our client screening capability can screen millions of clients for risks across any data source, whether unstructured news or watchlist data about PEPs and sanctions.
Our technology also includes breakthroughs in name matching against client records. Our machine learning algorithms use secondary characteristics in addition to just names, including variants, abbreviations, dates, places, titles, nationalities, relationships – all of which can all help to resolve identities across siloed datasets and narrow down matches to detect real risk much more quickly than a human could.
To celebrate the London launch, we also commissioned a special bottle of gin, hand-made by the wonderfully talented London-based distillers 58 Gin.
Adorned with one of our favorite Churchill quotes, the bottles were warmly received in preparation for the long hot summer ahead.
“The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire”
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
We’re truly excited about sharing our journey with you as we develop our technology and help thwart criminal activities all over the world. Please get in touch at the email address below if you’d like to know more about our unique technology and find out how we can help your institution to counter financial crime.
Ripjar was founded in 2012 with a mission to provide corporates and global institutions with the most advanced data and analytics solutions in the fight against cybercrime, money laundering, and terrorism. This important mission requires a truly diverse array of skills from software engineering, data science, business support, relationship management and the analysis and synthesis of new information to detect unknown threats.
Despite this critical need for diversity in thinking and in life experiences to accomplish our task, until 2015 there were no women in our business. Now as we head into 2019, 19% of our workforce are women working across all aspects of our company from business operations, finance, technology and sales; we feel we’re truly moving in the right direction, but there’s so much more we need to do to create a balanced workforce.
One of our biggest challenges is not only attracting women into technology roles but making sure we keep them. We are working hard to stand out as an employer and ensure we create a diverse people-centred culture. To ensure we’re on the right track we have in place well-being initiatives, enhanced maternity and paternity leave and flexible working practices.
So Ripjar is celebrating International Women’s Day with its theme for 2019 – #BalanceforBetter. Creating a gender-balanced world is essential for businesses to thrive, and essential for security and intelligence companies and agencies to tackle the evolving risks that threaten companies, institutions and even the security of our nation. We’re committing to improving balance in every aspect of our operations as we look to the remainder of 2019 and beyond.
Successful careers, bringing up children, fulfilled family lives and, happiness are not mutually exclusive. With the right balance and support, anything is possible.
Kate, Financial Controller
Balance for better is about recognising everyone has valuable skills and qualities regardless of gender, giving everyone a voice leads to a stable and successful workplace and ultimately a better world.
Simon, Technical Delivery Manager
It’s about having that balance between prioritising work and family life, keeping our minds open to different views and perspectives.
Maria, Business Support Director
Being able to balance challenging opportunities at work with ensuring I always have time for the people I care about.
Sandra, Full Stack Engineer/Tech lead
One of the ways I like to balance my life is to dedicate time to focus on ME. I make sure I keep fit, enjoy downtime and ensure I take time to appreciate all those things that help keep me in balance.
Ben, Full Stack Engineer/Tech lead
Founded by former members of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Ripjar develops software products that combine automation, artificial intelligence, and data visualisation to help companies solve the most complex risk and security management problems at scale.
