From London to Workhuman: My Journey in Tech, Leadership, and Golf in the Rain
by Matt Spencer
Last updated
2 min read
Hi there! I’m a Senior Engineering Manager here at Workhuman, and if you’re reading this, maybe you’re curious about what it’s like to work here—or just how I spend my time when I’m not shepherding data or engineering teams. Spoiler alert: there’s a lot of cats, a little bit of chaos, and some golf in the Irish drizzle.
Frequent feline interruptions: I’ve got two cats who have no respect for professional boundaries and love to make surprise appearances on my Zoom calls.
New dad adventures: I became a dad in April of this year which has meant that the past six months have been all about adjusting to life as a parent—and learning a whole new set of challenges!
Rain doesn’t stop play: I love playing golf and aim to get out once a week come rain or shine (mostly rain in Ireland) But hey, it builds character!
How I Got Here
I’m originally from the UK and met my Irish wife while working in London. We’d always dreamed of trading city life for something a bit quieter, so we made the leap to Ireland. That’s when I came across Workhuman on the Great Place to Work website.
My career has been a bit of a whirlwind. My tech journey started working for the NHS in the UK where I helped modernise the technology used by GP’s and set up integrations between GP surgeries and local hospitals. From there, I moved into education, working at a global business school where I helped introduced new tech like interactive lectures on iPads and streamed classes across campuses from Shanghai and São Paulo to Boston and Dubai (this was pre-Zoom, so it felt pretty cutting-edge!). It was here that I also got my first taste of leadership, looking after a team of engineers spread around the globe.
Eventually, I shifted into finance, joining the Bank of England’s data team. This role allowed me to specialise in data and refine my leadership skills. Then came Workhuman—an opportunity to build something meaningful whilst continuing with my speciality interest in data. Since joining, I’ve gained more responsibilities, been promoted to Senior Engineering Manager, and have enjoyed building something really special in the Data Platform team. We get to work with a strong tech stack, have a great group of engineers and solve challenging yet rewarding problems every day.
What Inspires Me
I get a great deal of satisfaction from helping others achieve their goals, be that solving big problems with data, helping a team member grow their career, or breaking down big complex problems into more manageable chunks and bringing order to chaos.
I’ve worked with a number of really great leaders throughout my career so far that have helped shape my approach to leadership. Growing as a leader is a bit like rolling a snowball, picking up little nuggets of wisdom as you go from other leaders or personal experience, and using that to grow and shape how you lead and solve problems in the future. My priority is to continue to support my own team members in the future to help them grow within their own careers.
Highlights of My Career
When I joined Workhuman, we had the very barebones of a Data Platform, both in terms of the team and the platform itself. It has been great to go through all the ups and downs over the past three years as we’ve grown the team and built out more and more functionality on the platform. A recent highlight was the launch of the AI Assistant, a brand new LLM backed feature that can help our customers to get more value from our product using data from our platform. It’s been a wild ride but seeing it all come together is incredibly rewarding.
Without our humans, it’s just work.Opens in a new tab