Episode 19 – Automated vs human decision making

The software engineering industry is increasingly acknowldging the importance of ethics in technology. How does this apply to Starling Bank? We look at technology ethics from a Starling perspective by discussing managing customer data, AI and machine learning, and treating vulnerable customers fairly. Host Jason Maude chats virtually with Starling engineers Malin Litwinski and Jamie Coombs.

Up till now Starling has deployed its back-end server code as a single entity, even though it is split into multiple different services. As we grow this has become less and less tenable. Why have we been deploying like this so far and how are we changing our deployment process as we expand? Host Jason Maude chats virtually with Starling engineers Saff Soobratty and Matthew Salt.

With COVID-19 confining many of us to our homes we are taking a look at how Starling Bank is coping with this rather unusual situation. How are we continuing to support our customers and each other during this pandemic? Host Jason Maude chats virtually with technical lead for the public APIs team Chris Bowers and web content developer Sarah Deakin.

One of the biggest decisions that you have to make when starting a large software project is which language or languages to write it in. In this episode we discuss what factors you should consider when picking a language and what language decisions Starling has made over the past three and a half years. Host Jason Maude investigates this with Head of Engineering for Apps and APIs Sam Everington and Lead Android Engineer Vasily Siminov.

Open banking and PSD2 have the potential to revolutionise banking. The ability for customers to be able to seamlessly share their financial data in a secure manner between different financial service providers could provide enormous benefits if implemented well. So how is Starling approaching providing these benefits to its customers? Host Jason Maude discusses this with Head of Banking Helen Bierton and Marketplace Engineers Chris Bowers and Josh Cooke.

Starling generally deploys software to production at least once a day during working hours. How do we ensure that this deployment process is easy for engineers and not disruptive for customers? Host Jason Maude finds out about Starling deployment strategies from Starling Site Reliability Engineers Nassos Antoniou and Andrew Cochrane.

In the very first episode of the first series of this podcast we talked about how we ensure that the software architecture that we use at Starling ensures reliability as far as possible. Since then Starling has scaled up from hundreds of customers to over half a million. In this episode we will look at how we have adapted our reliability strategies to deliver at scale. Host Jason Maude finds out how Starling has been developing this area from Starling Scale and Stability Engineers Alex Pardoe and Harry Austin.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all large software systems will be increasingly made up of legacy code. But is this actually the case? In this episode we explore the concepts of legacy code, adaptable architecture, and agile tech companies, and explain how Starling is aiming to avoid the pitfalls of software landscapes of the past. Host Jason Maude discusses this with Head of Back-Office Engineering Martin Dow and Lead Customer Service Engineer Ricardo Avalos.

In this episode we discuss computerised decision making, from automation of human processes, to machine learning and AI. When do we let machines make decisions on their own and when do we provide human guidance? Host Jason Maude discusses this with Head of Fraud Catherine Walpole, Head of Data Science Harriet Rees, and Lead Credit Engineer Rich Sale.

In this episode we discuss a variety of different topics that we have received requests to talk about on the podcast including the problems with updating the Starling app to handle multiple currencies and how we build and test the UX of new features. With Starling engineers Josh Cooke, Lucas Johnston, Teresa Ng, and your regular host Jason Maude.