A divisive ex-Morgan Stanley tech head is hiring senior engineers in fintech

Since departing Morgan Stanley for fintech, Rob Rooney has been quietly yet steadily hiring for HyperJar, the digital wallet fintech of which he is the CEO. In 2024, HyperJar has been building out its roster of senior technologists, hiring from rival fintechs and from quant trading.

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HyperJar’s most recent hire is Keith Pyle, joining as its head of core engineering. Pyle spent the last two years at fintech trading platform Capital.com, and also previously worked at Hong Kong digital asset firm OSL. He spent 16 years before all that at IG Group, a $3bn trading platform and part of the early 2000s fintech wave. Pyle specializes in low-latency programming, Python and Java.

Another HyperJar hire back in April was Richard Rose, head of engineering for SaaS (software as a service). Rose, conversely, spent decades in traditional finance, holding director roles at Morgan Stanley, RBS and UBS, focused on areas including low-latency electronic market making. He spent the last six years as CTO of an algorithmic trading platform at Cabestan Quant Research.

Rooney wasn’t always popular at Morgan Stanley, but he has an 82% approval rate at Hyperjar on Glassdoor. Negative reviews in the past year say the team lacks “a sense of camaraderie and rapport,” while more positive ones instead praise the “nice” office and “great people.”

HyperJar cut headcount last year as moved away from its purely B2C offering and added B2B products too. A spokesperson said the engineering team is bigger as a result. 

Rooney cut technology headcount at Morgan Stanley in 2019. In doing so, he received praise from higher-ups, but he certainly wasn’t loved by everyone.

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