A NEWRY-born technology specialist now living in Surrey has seen his cloud company secure $10.3 million in seed funding, enabling it to scale-up rapidly, attract more talent, and expand further into North America.
Justin Mullen, an experienced leader in enterprise data engineering and management, co-founded and is now chief executive of DataOps.live, a software firm dedicated to helping enterprise companies build and life-cycle manage data applications and data products.
His company, founded in 2018, has just received the funding from Anthos Capital and also Silicon Valley-based Snowflake Ventures, which in its first year made more than a dozen investments representing more than $100 million in deployed capital.
Justin, who was born in Newry 1970 and is a past pupil of St Colman's College, said: "This signals the start of the next stage in our journey, and will see us continue building our presence in North America and Europe."
After leaving St Colman's in the late 1980s, Justin - whose father is well known Newry man and honorary Polish consul Jerome Mullen - attended the University of Portsmouth, where he graduated in computer science.
He has never returned to Northern Ireland to live or work, instead building a stellar career in England, working in a number of his own companies, which he has built with partners in the IT sector over the past 30 years.
He is married to Oksana, a Ukrainian national, and they have two daughters aged 14 and 12.
Since 1995 Justin has launched and then sold a number of companies in the IT space.
He was co-founder and chief executive at SMI Technology (which he sold to Innovation Group), then MiFlow (sold to Sourcecode Inc), and most recently Datalytyx, which was sold to the global technology specialist Mphasis Inc at the end of 2020.
He now heads DataOps.live, which enables organisations to secure and govern their data, automate testing, orchestrate data pipelines, build full data applications, and so deliver new value to stakeholders.
Its customers include the world's largest biotech company Roche and the world's second biggest satellite operator OneWeb. Numerous projects are currently under way, with a raft of new clients ready to go.
"What makes DataOps different is who we are, as well as what we do, and how we do it," Justin said.
"When people buy into DataOps.live they're buying into two things. First, the genius of our tech team and their deep technical expertise on Snowflake, led by our CTO, co-founder and 'Snowflake data superhero' Guy Adams.
"And second, my absolute commitment to deliver, to make our customers successful, and to enjoy that journey with them. We're well known for doing whatever it takes to enable our client to be successful – no ifs and buts."
He added: "We're delighted to receive this investment from Anthos Capital and Snowflake Ventures.
"But it's always about people, no matter how fantastic your technology is, and doing the right thing to drive success for customers - whatever that success looks like."
