Finastra Bets Big on Atlanta, Planting Its U.S. Headquarters — and Its Top Executives — at the Perimeter

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Hypepotamus. It is published on Global Atlanta as part of our content partnership with the Southeast’s top source for innovation news. Sign up for Hypepotamus newsletters here. 

Atlanta’s fintech ecosystem landed another marquee name late last year when London-based Finastra announced it would plant its U.S. headquarters inside the iconic King Building at the Perimeter.

The move signals more than a real estate decision for the financial services technology company, which has raised $5 billion in venture debt from names like Blue Owl. The recently-opened Atlanta office now serves as home base for CEO Chris Walters, Chief Technology Officer Mike Stawchansky, and Chief Data Officer Ali Khan. They’re all based here alongside engineering, product, and data teams.

That concentration of leadership and technical talent under one roof, Finastra executives say, is by design. The office currently employs around 50 people, but that number is set to double quickly. The company has an equivalent number of open roles posted right now, spanning everything from engineers and product managers to revenue and sales professionals.

Finastra’s View on Atlanta

CTO Stawchansky spoke to Hypepotamus about the opportunities Finastra sees in Atlanta. For him, the value of the Atlanta office comes down to proximity and cross-functional energy.

“Having the entire breadth of the organization here — customer service, product and tech, the actual R&D folks — we all catch each other in the hallways,” he told Hypepotamus. “The support folks hear the challenges we’re having. They feed us challenges. Just having a snapshot of the entire company in the Atlanta office is great.”

That pitch extends to prospective hires. Stawchansky describes Finastra as occupying a strategic middle ground in the tech space. He said Finastra offers new employees “the best of both worlds.”

“They get to see how large banking customers work at scale — we have some banks that are 100,000-plus employees globally — and you get to see how we service them, how they operate, how a product integrates with them. Finastra is not a startup, but we’re also not a massive public company. We’re in a nice middle ground of a moderate-sized company that can move at pace and can move with the latest technologies.”

He’s quick to add a caveat: “We move at a fast pace, but we don’t move dangerously.”

Stawchansky characterizes Finastra as a “product and R&D heavy.” The company operates offices in India and Bangalore, making the Atlanta location a key node in a global footprint rather than a standalone bet.

AI as a Job Requirement, Not a Perk

CTOs around the tech world are all trying to navigate the rapidly-changing AI space. For Stawchansky, engineering talent joining Finastra is expected to be fluent AI power users within their first 90 days on the job. That means producing the majority of code through their AI copilot.

The expectation reflects a broader philosophy about what AI actually does well in software development.

“[AI] can get you to a bad answer faster, which sometimes is the right thing to do,” Stawchansky said. “If you want to run through all the choices you have, you want to do rapid iteration.” He’s particularly bullish on AI’s role in test writing…one of the more unglamorous corners of engineering work.

“It writes the tests for you. In some instances, things that software engineers absolutely do not like to do, but it’s a requirement of their job.”

Stawchansky joined Finastra in 2024 after stints at Salesforce, WebMD, and other technology organizations. Much of his career has been spent watching banks and financial institutions navigate the seismic shift from on-premise data centers to cloud infrastructure — experience that made him a natural fit for Finastra as the company deepens its push into modern, cloud-native financial technology.