< The 2017 Tech 40

If there is a shortage of computer scientists and engineers, it isn't preventing Bloomberg from bringing them in by the hundreds. The number overseen by Vlad Kliatchko, global head of engineering, is approaching 5,000 in 11 countries, and growing by double-digit percentages each year. And those scientists and engineers work regularly with chief technology officer Shawn Edwards' group of fewer than 100, researching emerging technologies for an organization that for years has explored machine learning and natural-language-processing systems. "This is a culture with an endless ability to generate creative new business ideas, resulting in an infinite number of projects to work on," says Kliatchko, 48, who's been with Bloomberg for 14 years. The company, led by founder and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, attracts talent in part because "our engineers can come in and have a direct impact," Kliatchko says. "They are very connected to the business and to customers," taking on the network's challenges of global reach, speed, and scale: There are 325,000 Bloomberg Professional terminals and daily volumes of some 100 billion market-data messages, 400 million email messages, and 17 million chats.

Since Edwards became chief technology officer in 2008, Bloomberg has become an active participant in the open-source community, with a noticeable acceleration in the past few years. In a paper presented at the 2016 Very Large Data Bases Conference in New Delhi, India, Bloomberg signaled that it would be open-sourcing and inviting "more open collaboration" on Comdb2, its primary database system, which has been under continuous development since 2004. Edwards, also 48, who has been at Bloomberg for 14 years after stints with Bear, Stearns & Co. and IBM, has forged academic relationships and is executive sponsor of a data science grant program. "We are big believers in an approach that combines human curation and machine intelligence," he explains. "A lot of human knowledge goes into filtering out noise." Edwards also sponsors and advocates for the Data for Good Exchange conference, which explores ways to apply data science in the public and nonprofit sectors and is now in its fourth year.

 
The 2017 Tech 40

1. Adena Friedman NASDAQ 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 3. Robert Goldstein BlackRock Private Markets Investment Outlook Q2 2025: Opportunities Amid Uncertainty Sponsored by Schroders Capital May 1, 2025 4. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 5. Lance Uggla IHS Markit

6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 7. David Craig Thomson Reuters 8. Michael Spencer NEX Group 9. Don Callahan Citigroup 10. Elisha Wiesel Goldman Sachs Group

11. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 12. Terrence Duffy CME Group 13. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 14. Sean Belka Fidelity Investments 15. Chris Concannon CBOE Holdings

16. Guy Chiarello First Data Corp. 17. Steven Lieblich Citadel 18. David Rutter R3CEV 19. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 20. Alfred Spector Two Sigma Investments

21. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw Group 22. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 23. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 24. David Gledhill DBS Bank 25. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings

26. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 27. Peter Brown & Robert Mercer Renaissance Technologies 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 29. Peter Cherecwich Northern Trust Corp. 30. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence

31. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 32. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma

36. Brian Conlon First Derivatives and Kx Systems 37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Michael Cooper BT Radianz 39. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions 40. Jim Minnick eVestment