Uber-owned Autocab, a Manchester-based tech company supplying software to assist taxi and private hire companies with more than a million trips every day, has appointed Pete Willingham as its chief technical & product officer. His focus will be on building technology to achieve the company’s ambitious mission of having Autocab software in every taxi in the world.
Willingham has over 20 years’ experience in developing products and services for several businesses and sectors. He began his career as a software engineer on life and mission critical systems for organisations including BAE Systems and NHS Blood and Transplan before moving into leadership roles, initially at Manchester Enterprise Resource Planning business Sorted Group.
Most recently Pete headed up engineering in the identity division at GBG, a multinational digital identity and fraud prevention business. There, he helped a range of customers from banking, gaming, e-commerce and social media to build trust in a digital world.
Safa Alkateb, CEO at Autocab said: “As we enter into Autocab’s next phase of accelerated growth, we’re excited to build atop our robust, cloud-based platform to tackle large-scale industry challenges. Having Pete at the forefront of our engineering and product divisions will further our efforts to push beyond the status quo, and his leadership will be critical to ensuring our customers are future-proofed for our ever-changing industry.”
Willingham added: “Autocab is well-positioned and poised to successfully build and innovate as the global taxi industry continues to embrace technology. I’m looking forward to joining a company with such a rock-solid foundation, and one that has established itself as an industry trailblazer from both a relationship and technical perspective.”
Willingham will be joining Autocab at its brand new, 20,000sq ft workspace in Circle Square. He is Autocab’s third senior appointment in the space of a month, and the company aims to create a further 200 new jobs by 2025.
