Engineering, Data, and Security teams converge at Deriv Tech Summit 2025

Building AI-driven trading platforms: Deriv’s month-long tech summit

Deriv hosted an ambitious month-long Tech Summit in February 2025, bringing together teams from our Cyberjaya and Dubai offices to reimagine our technological approach for the coming year. Moving beyond standard planning exercises, this three-week journey explored how engineering, data, and security can work together in an increasingly AI-driven landscape. 

With financial technology evolving rapidly, our global teams focused on developing practical strategies that will enhance how we build our platforms and serve our traders worldwide, creating a roadmap that balances innovation with implementation.

AI integration strategy and AI in fintech: Engineering leaders map the future of trading technology

The first week saw 40 engineering leaders from six countries gather for intensive planning sessions. Over five days of collaboration, our teams charted Deriv's approach to AI integration. 

Led by Chris Horn, our Head of Engineering, the engineering teams highlighted the importance of aligning people, processes and technology as the three pillars of our strategy. Conversations focused on:

• Finding practical ways to scale AI across our internal operations
• Developing architectures that can support future AI needs
• Creating solutions that genuinely improve our traders’ experiences
• Maintaining excellence in our financial technology offerings

The concept of an "agentic framework" emerged as a central theme—a technical ecosystem where systems work together intelligently to improve how teams collaborate and deliver results.

Creating a unified data foundation: Building AI-powered trading infrastructure

Our Data Summit tackled the crucial infrastructure needed to support our AI ambitions. Led by Xavier Gorriz Torner, our VP of Business Intelligence, teams collaborated to build a unified data layer with proper security measures. 

The discussions positioned AI not as a mere technological addition but as a fundamental part of our core business strategy. Teams worked to bridge the gap between our ambitious AI vision and practical implementation steps, with several initiatives identified for immediate action.

Highlights from the week included:

• The HR Data Squad shared their recent work in streamlining HR reporting, particularly their successful integration of our HR management system data in late 2024
  ‍
• Our Marketing Squad presented their recent achievements, including dashboards for affiliates and paid marketing initiatives, alongside early AI experiments in customer insights
  ‍
• Various squads outlined plans for practical AI implementation, such as using AI to summarise dashboard insights and building data models that enable self-service reporting

A significant portion of discussions addressed everyday challenges like improving data quality, overcoming API limitations, and reducing manual processes across our systems.

Securing the AI ecosystem for trading: Implementing protection across cloud to mobile

The final week, led by Rotimi Akinyele, our VP of Security, focused on building the security infrastructure that underpins all our innovation efforts. The security discussions covered multiple touchpoints across our technology stack, ensuring that security controls are seamlessly integrated from cloud infrastructure to mobile and web applications, all supporting secure trading for our customers.

These sessions connected our engineering vision for AI agents with the data infrastructure needed to support them, all while ensuring proper security. Conversations included:

• Developing security measures appropriate for AI agent implementation
• Creating data protection strategies for our unified data layer
• Establishing protocols that treat AI agents with the same security rigour as human team members
• Finding the right balance between innovation speed and security requirements

From vision to implementation: Deriv's finance and AI roadmap for 2025 and beyond

The Tech Summit produced comprehensive roadmaps for each tribe with clear goals, deliverables and ownership. A key insight emerged throughout the summit: AI has shifted from being a competitive advantage to an essential business component. 

Our vision involves integrating AI throughout Deriv's operations, enhancing internal processes, increasing automation, and even developing AI agent-to-agent communication systems.

Our shared vision now includes:

• Developing AI assistants that work alongside our team members
• Building a unified data foundation with strong security measures
• Adjusting our team structures to better support AI-driven objectives
• Addressing cross-team dependencies and resource needs
• Setting measurable targets to track our progress in AI implementation

After three weeks of honest discussions, creative problem-solving and genuine teamwork, we’ve mapped out a path where people and AI can truly work together. The energy and collaboration across these three weeks have set us on an exciting journey for the year ahead.

For those interested in AI careers, the summit highlighted Deriv's position at the cutting edge of financial technology innovation. This is your opportunity to work with talented teams on challenging projects that will shape the future of our operations and the broader trading industry. Click the button below to view our open positions.