Philip Howson is a technology executive currently serving as the Chief Technology Officer at Algo Viral. Previously, he held the role of Chief Technology Officer at Iona Mind, a company that participated in the Y Combinator S21 batch. Throughout his career, he has held various senior technical and quantitative roles at financial institutions including XTX Markets, GSA Capital, Barclays Capital, and UBS.
Chief Technology Officer at Algo Viral
Oct 2025 – Present
Chief Technology Officer at Iona Mind
Oct 2019 – Jun 2025
S21 Batch at Y Combinator
Jun 2021 – Sep 2021
Funded by Y Combinator Summer 2021 batch
Mentor at Techstars
Feb 2017 – Jun 2020
Mentoring on the Barclays Techstars Fintech Accelerator programme. Programme was shut down in 2020
Retired at Home
May 2016 – Oct 2019
Partner at XTX Markets
Jul 2015 – Apr 2016
Early member of an automated FX trading desk which eventually span out to form XTX Markets.
HFFX Desk at GSA Capital
Jun 2009 – Jul 2015
Work for Barclays Analytical Trading (BATS) on their algorithmic trading system, in the Fixed Income space.
Algorithmic Trading Developer at Barclays Capital
Nov 2008 – Jun 2009
Propriatry Trading Desk in UBS's Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities Division. The desk specialises in Algorithmic Trading.
Analyst, Quantitative Trading Strategies at UBS
Oct 2007 – Nov 2008
Equity “Smart Execution” team – XN (eXecution Network) System At UBS I worked for the algorithmic trading / equity smart execution team as a developer on their core system for executing algorithmic trading strategies (XN). The system provides the ability for clients to execute large equity trades at volume weighted average price, time weighted average price, with minimum market impact etc. etc.
Developer at Developer
Jun 2006 – Oct 2007
At Morgan Stanley I work for the Bondtrading Technology team, specifically the E-Trading part of the team. Primarily I have been working with the research department on collection, aggregation and analysis of historical market data from the various markets we connect to. Recently I have designed and built a system for simulating the effect and analysing the performance of different algorithmic trading strategies using our repository of historical data. Additionally I have been working on a system which for executing these trading strategies in real time.
Assocaite at Morgan Stanley
Jun 2004 – Jul 2006
Worked as a part time developer on a number of applications for MIK UK Ltd who specialise in "Business Intellegence" / OLAP products. At the time the main clients were Daimler Chrysler UK and Toyota UK).
Developer at MIK UK Ltd
Oct 2002 – Apr 2003
I worked as an intern for the FX Options Trading Technology team at RBS, working mainly on the front end used for options trading (a system called Pabulum Trader). I was involved in a number of GUI improvement projects as well as various projects to integrate the system with other bank systems such as the firmwide counterparty management system Nucleus.
Intern at Royal Bank Of Scotland Financial Markets
Jun 2002 – Sep 2002
Worked on a number of Java applets for tracking satellite positions and graphing telemetry gathered. Applets were used on the Intranet and on a Satellites for Schools website.
S21 Batch at Y Combinator
May 2021 – Sep 2021
Co-founder of Iona Mind, Y Combinator Summer 2021 batch
1st, Computing at Imperial College London
2001 – 2004
Awarded Governer's prize for highest overall mark on BEng Computing Degree.