Shift has expanded its leadership team with two senior appointments.
Melinda Anderson (pictured above left) has taken up the role of head of product design and Ricky McAlister (pictured above right) has been appointed head of engineering at the SME fintech lender.
Anderson will focus on ensuring all new products and existing platforms provide a best-in-class customer experience, ranging from external customers and partners to internal stakeholders.
“Without giving too much away, we’re working on features that make the process of matching the right product with the right thresholds even more seamless for brokers and their customers. Automation will be a key part of this,” Anderson said.
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“Alongside this comes the need to ensure that while the underlying technology is amazing, the experience of the user – be it a broker, their customers, or our internal teams – is also an easy one. This is more important than ever as we continue to grow and build out features across our platforms.”
Anderson said Shift’s platforms and products were second to none and this was a huge part of what attracted her to the role.
“Above all, Shift’s culture is one of collaboration, which is key to the success of my team,” she said.
“When we are working with engineering, product, marketing and other stakeholders, we need to keep customers at the heart of our business.”
Anderson’s previous roles include head of product strategy & design at Lab49 (a financial markets technology consultancy), experience design director for Digitas and user experience lead mobile at Commonwealth Bank.
As head of engineering, McAlister will lead a team that plans to build, evolves and future-proof Shift’s platforms across brokers, merchants, customers and internal users.
“My focus is on making sure our engineering team is constantly evolving as we bring on more brokers, merchants and their customers,” McAlister said.
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“This means working with the team to ensure all the one percenters are looked after, while focusing on things like automation and our software development lifecycle as we constantly iterate platforms such as Shift Connect to provide even more support to brokers.”
McAlister said with Shift’s continued growth comes a strong engineering need to ensure people, processes and technology were at the forefront.
“While my role has a strong tech focus, it is equally about encouraging growth and innovation within the current team while introducing individuals who can add to the incredible talent at Shift,” he said.
McAlister joined Shift from Zip where he was director of engineering responsible for Zip Business B2B products and the merchant and partner platforms.
Shift chief technology officer Eldar Averdi said both new appointments were part of setting up the lender for its next phase of growth, which comes with product iterations and an exponential increase in use across Shift’s online platforms.
“With Mel’s focus on best-in-class product design and Ricky’s holistic people-and-technology view of engineering, we are well placed to continue innovating as more businesses look to us for finance on demand,” Eldar said.
“Our broker platform Shift Connect, along with our Shift Trade platform and new equipment line are experiencing strong growth. We will continue to grow our team of functional experts with a focus of developing new products and processes while iterating current platforms to ensure the customer experience is second-to-none.”
