Affinity’s mission is to build a new kind of infrastructure that powers the world’s relationship-driven industries and applications, and we recently welcomed a new addition to the Affiniteam who will help us accelerate that mission: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Dominique Simoneau-Ritchie.
Dominique’s impressive credentials speak for themselves. She’s led teams at Shopify, Lever, BlackBerry, and most recently, Wealthsimple. So why make the jump to Affinity? What unique opportunities here piqued her interest? We sat down with Dominique to find out—along with what engineers interested in our open roles should get excited about.
Talk us through your journey to Affinity. What have been some of the highlights?
I spent my early career working with several startups, complemented by substantial roles at industry giants like IBM and BlackBerry. A highlight from that time was launching the first BlackBerry 10 device, the Z10. Specifically, I really enjoyed working on the user experience of the home screen and apps.
One of the core aspects I designed with teams was the application programming interfaces (APIs) for applications and the home screen. This determined what showed on the screen at any given time—including when you received a phone call.
Building these required not just novel technical solutions, but also aligning with product and design across multiple teams. We needed to ensure consistent and simple user interactions so that our solution could easily scale as we introduced more complexity. We then integrated six layers of services and corresponding interfaces to make it possible to build BlackBerry apps, and eventually run Android applications as if they were natively built.
We also introduced a gesture to switch between apps, using APIs to tell apps how to behave, and it was fun to collaborate with design to make it feel perfect. It’s easy to forget the significance because now every phone uses gestures, but back then we were the first—and making it feel natural took effort!
At Lever, I built the first presence for the company outside of San Francisco, and I was responsible for defining and executing against their integration strategy. When I joined, we were manually adding new partners and integrations at a pace of about 1 per month—we increased that number by 300%.
We also unblocked the creation of incredible customized experiences for our enterprise customers by building best practices for technology foundations, including authentication, permissions, application support, and APIs tailored to the use cases of our customers and partners.
Most recently, my time at Wealthsimple was defined by unifying five products into a single mobile app and launching a new banking product. Ensuring that we built an extremely performant app that was delightful to use required investing in our design system, which is a set of reusable components and patterns that engineers use to build what a customer interacts with on screen. We also built a componentized frontend architecture. This made it possible for multiple teams to contribute without stepping on each others’ toes and allowed us to consistently release new features.
While at Wealthsimple, I established the architectural strategy to standardize our APIs and their underlying data models, and made significant investments to reduce technical debt. I also prioritized increasing diversity and inclusion. My goal was to make it a more productive and enjoyable place to work, and that’s something I’m excited to bring to Affinity.
What drew you to the role at Affinity?
Affinity is upfront about its values and the one that really stood out to me was ‘We care personally’. Through the interview process. It became clear how much the company had already invested in many inclusive team practices that I care about. Things like career ladders, best practices for career conversations, proactive growth plans, and inclusion workshops.
On the technical side, Affinity is at the point where we have a product that customers love but we’re also continuing to build new and exciting products. I like to build things well and in this environment, investing in our foundations is required for our success—not just a nice to have. We move faster by making the right technical decisions, and I'm excited to invest in our platform.
Ultimately, I was looking for a role that would provide a balance between applying my knowledge and strengths, while also continuing to learn and grow—particularly by leading our data platform and the delivery of our new AI products. Affinity offers the best of both.
What other Affinity values stand out to you?
It’s been great to see how the value of being obsessed with learning is brought to life at Affinity. I like being surrounded by people who want to learn and grow and that’s definitely the case here.
On my leadership team, we’re consciously adopting more inclusive meeting practices. We rotate the chair for our weekly strategy meeting and that person is responsible for the agenda, leading the discussion, and then transparently sharing what we discuss and decide on in the wider team Slack afterwards. This willingness to change process has really validated that the team wants to continually iterate and learn. They’re along for the ride with me!
Affinity really feels like a place that’s invested in its people, from the commitment to growth plans to how proactively managers communicate. I’ve seen managers lead with empathy and take action when they know their people need additional support. That’s the foundation to build a great team.
What are you excited about working on in 2024?
Affinity is already a great platform with high-quality underlying data, and I’m excited to see us develop more into a full service investment platform.
We have a huge opportunity to provide more value to customers by evolving our platform to provide real insights about their operations and the companies they target for investment. Applying AI and machine learning to the unique set of data we have in our platform can have a material impact on things like deal sourcing, investment decisions, and firm operations.
In industries where relationships are the currency that often separates leaders from laggers, we’re helping more organizations than ever to harness the power of their networks. That’s also true with Affinity for Salesforce, which launched earlier in 2023 and is being adopted across industries. I’m excited to be part of the team building on its success.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
Since becoming a parent, I've developed a passion for health and nutrition. I grow many of our own vegetables from seed; recent favorites have been cucamelons, lettuce, and tomatillos.
Recently, I've started milling my own flour from locally grown wheat that I get delivered from the farmer himself, and delved into fermentation as well. My team knows not to be surprised if they see me doing a stretch and fold for my family's whole grain sourdough bread during a call!
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