The truth about life after Revolut: Where do the GSDs go?
When you hear people talk about jobs at London based digibank Revolut, it's often less about what you can do at Revolut and more about what you can do next if you have Revolut on your CV. You're 'there for a good time, not a long time' if your idea of a good time is being one of Revolut's hard-working self-described GSDs (Get S*** Done).
But if that's the case, then what happens when the s***t is done and the party's over? Which firms are interested in hiring Revolut alumni and where do the Revolut GSDs go next? This is a look at some of Revolut's exiters in recent months and the common trends in their new destinations.
Senior Staff Stick to Stealth Startups
Revolut is a young person's game. Its junior and graduate staff are trusted with responsibilities far greater than their peers elsewhere. Senior Revolut people who joined as heads of their department therefore look to maintain a stronger sense of seniority and ownership by occupying senior positions in startups.
Some of the Revolut's biggest recent leavers might be teaming up together for something new. The Block, reports that former COO Adriana Restrepo has joined former head of crypto Jean Meyer in a startup crypto venture.
They may be bringing along a number of other ex-Revoluters who are currently in stealth mode. They include former tech lead Mario Eguiluz Alebicto who had left Revolut 6 months earlier for digital asset platform Ledger, and former head of core payments Aaron Beck. Neither responded to request for comment.
Leavers for other senior roles in startups include senior crypto engineer Fedor Chmilev, formerly Krakow based, now acting as the CTO for a startup in London. Ulaş Türkmen, a former senior Revolut software engineer, co-founded Berlin logistics tech firm Senvo in February.
Hedge Funds and HFT firms don't want Revolut engineers
Revolut's engineers are known for doing great work and having an even greater work ethic. With that kind of hustle, you might assume a logical destination for them as the highly demanding worlds of hedge funds and high frequency trading firms... the truth is far from that.
Citadel, Jane Street and Balyasny only appear to employ one ex-Revolut engineer each. Likewise for Hudson River Trading in the HFT space. European-focused firms like Optiver don't appear to be hiring them either.
Why is this? Those companies have a much greater emphasis on AI, data science and quantitative analysis. It's somewhat ironic because...
FAANG loves Revolut... ❤️
There are a significant number of Revolut engineers working at the major tech companies today. You can see them across most of the major firms.
AWS, for example, hired senior java developer Ilya Mezhov in December. Or take engineers Sergey Razamov and Sami Gerges who joined Microsoft a few months earlier.
...But London fintechs love them more ❤️❤️❤️
Perhaps the most natural destination for someone working in a London fintech is another London fintech. A lot of the other major players in that ecosystem seem to value Revolut alumni highly.
The main two hirers of ex-Revolut staff are Monzo and Checkout.com. We've written before about Monzo's big Revolut hires, but Checkout.com match them stride for stride. Checkout's recruits include senior Revolut director Ed Simmons and ex-GSD product professionals, including Nikhil Chandrashekhar in January.
Revolut's product staff in particular seem to be hot at rival fintechs. For example, Wise brought in Bablu Vijayakumar from them while Ilya Vorobiev is Monzo's product director.
Risk staff can also find homes elsewhere. GoCardless hired Justyn Fleming as head of enterprise risk in December.
European banks hire the most, American banks hire the best
Naturally, some of Revolut's bigger names will end up going into investment banking. While there are large numbers of Revolut alumni working in the big European banks like Barclays and Credit Suisse, it's the Americans hiring them to more senior positions.
One of the biggest recent movers was Rohit Singhania. He joined Goldman Sachs as an executive director for operational risk this January.
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