It’s a new year, and we’ve got a fresh batch of String and Key Crew profiles coming your way! These profiles are a great way to get to know the people who inspire us and make our company awesome. As always, if you like what you read and you think you’d enjoy working with us, check out our job openings because we’re hiring.

Company Role: Director of Platform Engineering

Most likely to: Show up on a bicycle

Secret talent: Staying up later than you

If you’re looking for some cool extra-curricular ideas, look no further as we share some hobby inspo via our Director of Platform Engineering, Seth. He builds his own bicycles, knows a thing or two about lockpicking, and can give you the oral history of most dance music styles. So how did this bike pro, part-time locksmith, and dance music enthusiast end up as part of our senior leadership at String and Key? Well, his story begins in the ‘burbs of Tampa, where he grew up. Choosing to stay in his home state to go to college in Miami, Seth graduated as a classically trained tubist, then spent some time playing music and working as a recording engineer in the magic city. He intended to stay in that lane career-wise, however, as many a tech tale goes, his side gig of doing web development for extra income really took off, and well, you know how that story…

An impressive crew of strategic planners, digital marketers, data analysts, and overall get-sh*t-done-ers, our Strategy & Marketing Team is at the foundation of everything we do here at String and Key. As a startup, we value innovation and problem solving above all else, so if our strategy is not in shape, the whole ship goes down. Any company that’s worth their salt knows that. That’s why one of our greatest strengths is having a talented team that is branched out into different areas of expertise and is focused on just this.

As a FinTech company operating in the ever-evolving tech space, the team does an excellent job of keeping us ahead of the curve. To succeed, they know that we must understand the industry — and our product — inside and out. That means knowing all of the existing problems in the scene and bringing forward ideas and execution strategies that will solve these issues (talk about getting yourself a team who can do it all). …

As part of our ongoing employee spotlight series, we’ll be profiling colleagues who inspire us. Today, meet David Hyman.

Company Role: Director of Client Engineering

Most likely to: Be too honest (to his own detriment)

Secret talent: Actually a musician in real life

What if we told you, our Director of Client Engineering, David (basically the guy who runs the mobile and web frontend engineering show at String and Key), has a master’s degree in Jazz Studies and another one in Music Technology. A bit of a head-scratcher, right? Well, to cut a long story short, David’s tale is the tale of many a struggling artist. After spending 15 years in New Orleans going to school for music and just living that laidback NOLA life, he woke up one day and said, “hmm, I just can’t keep playing music for no money.” While looking into more “professional” jobs, a friend told him that musicians make pretty-good programmers (we looked it up, and yep, that’s a thing). So, he took a programming grad course and, sure enough, found a parallel with composing music, which was the ability to create and shape something from nothing. …

As part of our ongoing employee spotlight series, we’ll be profiling colleagues who inspire us. Today, meet Kate Goff.

Company Role: Data Manager

Most likely to: Be discussing cats

Secret talent: Knows everything there is to know about nail polish

Coming from a non-profit background, our Data Manager, Kate spent the best part of ten years fighting for epic women’s rights causes across the US, South East Asia, and Africa before coming over to the tech world. One particularly interesting program she worked on was the Goats for Girls program in east Africa, where young women were given a goat straight out of school. A highly-prized animal in that part of the world, many girls were able to break the cycle of poverty and start their own businesses or continue with their education with just a goat (or two) in tow. …

As part of our ongoing employee spotlight series, we’ll be profiling colleagues who inspire us. Today, meet Dennis Bui.

Company Role: Junior Software Developer

Most likely to: Drop one-liners/jokes during a conversation

Secret talent: Appearing mild-mannered during the first impression

From chemist to coder — Dennis’s journey to String and Key is a unique one. After working as an analytic chemist for five years, he got the itch to change careers. But it wasn’t a yearning to switch to something completely random. It was more of a desire to get back to his original passion for software engineering — a passion originating from his love of playing video games growing up (and wanting to build a game of his own someday). …

As part of our ongoing employee spotlight series, we’ll be profiling colleagues who inspire us. Today, meet Krizia Vance.

Company Role: Creative Department Producer

Most likely to: Get injured stumbling on their own feet

Secret talent: An expert in random celebrity facts + gossip

An aspiring artist in her younger years, Krizia came to the realization — early on — that some passions shouldn’t be made into careers. …

As a fintech startup, we rely on technology in everything that we do, so you could say our Web Engineering team is the foundation of our company’s goals and successes. From building our websites, along with our back-of-house software, and the internal tools that bring our products to life, they are responsible for architecting and writing software that delights. And, they work closely with our other equally-as-important Creative, Strategy, and Infrastructure teams to keep everything running securely and reliably.

Made up of a passionate and dynamic group of young professionals, the team is constantly chasing a perfect balance between self-sufficiency and support. They know that writing code is, in its own way, a creative endeavor, so their team process is set up to allow for focused time to get in the zone along with space for development and mentorship. Sometimes that means pairing with a peer or digging into code review feedback together. Other times, it means taking time to work through a course for a new language or framework, so the front-end and back-end teams better understand each other’s work. …

As part of our ongoing employee spotlight series, we’ll be profiling colleagues who inspire us. Today, meet Soong Shin.

Company Role: Senior Designer

Most likely to: Check soccer news every day (mostly European leagues)

Secret talent: Great photographer, DJ, FIFA player, and flute player

After spending most of his life in Chuncheon, South Korea, our Senior Designer, Soong, moved to San Francisco for school. After a year or so studying on the west coast, he went back home but then decided the east coast—and NYC in particular—sounded like a good place to settle down (and who can blame him?).

From working on motion graphics, 3D animation, graphic design, and more, to showing his fine-art digital photography at both big and small exhibitions and publications in Seoul, New York, and New Jersey, Soong’s early career saw him eyeing both the design and photography fields. However, after quickly realizing the high cost of living in NYC, he temporarily hit the brakes on his artistic endeavors and went full throttle on pursuing a design career. It looks like it all worked out as he’s now a full-time member of our Creative team and, outside of that, has been working with some of our team members for over six years (so he’s basically family now). …