Mentor Spotlight: Si Jia @ Revolut

Mentor Spotlight

Meet Si Jia, a Mentor at The Commons and Operations Manager, Crypto at Revolut.

To summarize Si Jia's career path in one line: Investment Banking at RBC Capital Markets --> Strategic Finance @ Revolut --> Core Payments @ Revolut --> Crypto @ Revolut

Describe yourself with three emojis

🇬🇧 One of my life goals was to work in an international city. I made that dream come true two years ago when I moved to London, UK.

💸 I work on the Crypto team in Revolut. I'm super excited to learn more about the metaverse, particularly digital worlds and NFTS.

💡 I love learning new things and building new projects.

Current role & location?

📍Product, Crypto @ Revolut in London, UK.

Tell us more about your role at Revolut! What do you do there?

I’m an Operations Manager for the Crypto team. This means I wear many different hats. My day-to-day includes:

  1. Scaling the the crypto product offering
  2. Driving the initial scoping and strategy of new crypto products
  3. Collaborating and managing relationships with various protocols 
  4. Building performance and risk tracking dashboards
  5. Analyze trends and create meaningful insights from data

My role is super cross-functional, so I work with tons of other teams in the business to get things done, including engineers, designers, copywriters, and product marketers. Everyday I’m learning and doing something different.

You've transitioned internally within Revolut three times. What advice would you have for someone looking to do something similar?

  • Transparency is key. Let your former boss know as early as possible and be honest about why you want to make the move. It's important that they hear it from you and not from somebody else. In both of my transitions, I told my managers months in advance so they had time to file new requisitions and transition workstreams.
  • At the same time, it’s also imperative that you find a champion on the other side. An internal transition is ten times easier if you are in demand. In my case, I had to comb through the internal job board to understand where the biggest opportunities within the company were. I then set up calls with those PMs to convince them why I could do the job better than anyone else.

Any other words of wisdom or motivating thoughts for people who are looking to break into tech?

Don’t sell yourself short when talking about your work experience! Experience doen’t necessarily have to come in the form of a formal job or internship. It can also be the projects you build on the side or the online courses you take (such as The Commons). One of the most valuable opportunities I’ve created for myself was building my Canada Vaccine Tracker Twitter bot, where I taught myself Python from scratch. I learned so much from the project and developed skills that I can can use in my work daily.

The Commons community thinks you're incredible - what do you love about mentoring with The Commons?

  1. I love the moment it “clicks” for someone and then they figure out the solution.
  2. I love seeing people hit their goals. It’s incredibly rewarding watching a mentee grow from not knowing SQL at all to landing their dream role.
  3. I love the community we’ve built. Everyone at The Commons is generous and it’s environment where people are constantly giving more than taking.

What's your favourite way to keep involved with the community, aside from mentoring? 

The Commons team recently launched S’Up, a Slack bot that generates fresh triads of community members to meet every week. It’s a cool way for me to have conversations with people in the Skillful Community I never would have had the chance of speaking to otherwise.

And now, a few fun tidbits about you!

Tell us some of your favourites:

💻 A tech company you think should be on everyone's radar: Party Round

📚 Book: Principles by Ray Dalio

🌟 A leader you admire: Brené Brown

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Interested in more?
Mentor Spotlight: Lamya Ezzeldin
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Mentor Spotlight: Lamya Ezzeldin
Meet Lamya, Senior Product Manager at GoBolt & Product Mentor at The Commons!
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