Mission
"Our mission is to facilitate a trusted, accredited network of distinguished engineers and senior technology leaders who provide independent advice, strategic guidance and mentorship to worthy causes and Communities. Through our collective efforts, we seek to empower impactful initiatives, promote responsible use of technology, and do good in society beyond the boundaries of our industry roles."
We are a Community of Distinguished Engineers (DEs) — technical experts from leading multinational financial institutions — acting independently of organizational biases to apply deep engineering experience for positive societal impact.
As a Special Interest Group (SIG) within the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), we collaborate across firms to advise worthy organizations, mentor engineers, and promote responsible, ethical, best‑in‑class technology practices.
We bring practical, senior engineering leadership to real‑world challenges through our active working groups and cross‑cutting activities.
Our work is organized into focused subgroups, each tackling a distinct area of our mission:
Partners with charities and social impact organisations that would not normally have access to independent, high‑level technical guidance. DEs from different firms collaborate to:
- Conduct technology landscape reviews — assessing infrastructure, platforms, data management, disaster recovery, and change approaches.
- Provide strategic technical guidance — independent advice on cost optimisation, reliability, scalability, and long‑term technology strategy.
- Enable in‑house teams — identifying skills gaps and building lasting technical confidence.
- Deliver open‑source driven support — drawing on open‑source tools, frameworks, and best practices.
- Maintain organisation‑led, respectful partnerships — the organisations we work with always define their objectives and own their decisions.
Focuses on mentoring, allyship, and inclusive technology practices:
- Mentoring & allyship — mentoring across career stages, prioritizing underrepresented groups.
- Nudge Unit — ethical behavioral design to encourage better decisions without limiting choice.
- Education & development — talks, webinars, school outreach, myth‑busting about tech in finance.
Delivered a standard definition for the Distinguished Engineer role in Financial Services, providing clarity and consistency for organisations establishing or evolving their own DE programmes.
- Technical leadership & guidance — long‑term technology direction; complex systems and architecture reviews; scaling innovation.
- Practical advice — hands‑on help, e.g., AI usage guidance, tender support, tooling and policy checklists, building teams.
- Thought leadership — curating articles, books, and conference content from our members.
- Research — partnering on studies that promote responsible tech and societal good.
We turn this into independently useful public resources: playbooks, templates, checklists, guides, talks, case studies, and research summaries.
Working in the open is intrinsic to our mission:
- Transparency & trust — open discussion, public artifacts, and traceable decision‑making.
- Reusability & impact — CC BY 4.0–licensed materials can be adopted, remixed, and localized widely.
- Neutral governance — multi‑organization maintainership avoids single‑vendor bias.
- Meritocratic participation — ideas are evaluated on their merits via issues, reviews, and community feedback.
- Interoperability & standardization — common patterns and guidance benefit diverse adopters.
FINOS provides a neutral home, community infrastructure, and open governance norms aligned to these principles, enabling cross‑firm collaboration at scale.
Maintainers (DEs).
Distinguished Engineers from multiple organizations act as repository maintainers and steward the SIG’s governance, quality, and roadmap.
Contributors (wider community).
We actively welcome contributions from engineers, subject matter experts, professional/engineering practice groups, and anyone with relevant expertise.
Decision‑making.
We use open discussions (GitHub Issues/Discussions) and PR reviews. We prefer lazy consensus with documented rationale. Substantial changes use a short design note/RFC via PR.
Reviews & Approvals.
At least two maintainer approvals are required for substantial changes. Smaller updates may use a single maintainer approval per policy in CONTRIBUTING.
Meetings & Cadence.
We meet periodically to review progress, triage, and plan. Notes are captured in-repo (e.g., /meetings/) and linked from issues.
Code of Conduct.
We follow the FINOS Community Code of Conduct. Be respectful, inclusive, and constructive at all times.
We are building a public Toolkit of independently useful resources, organized by working group and cross‑cutting themes:
- Outreach — technology landscape review templates, strategic guidance frameworks, charity engagement playbooks.
- Inclusive Engineering — mentor guides, program templates, inclusive practices, ethical nudge patterns.
- DE Role Definition — standard role definition document, competency frameworks, adoption guidance.
- Leadership & strategy — architecture review frameworks, decision records, operating models.
- Practical guidance — AI usage guardrails, RFP/tender checklists, policy/playbook templates.
- Education — slide decks, webinars, short explainer notes, school outreach materials.
- Thought leadership — curated reading lists, talks, case studies / success stories.
- Research — summary briefs, methods, collaboration frameworks.
We welcome issues, discussions, and PRs from across the community.
See CONTRIBUTING.mc for details on:
- What to contribute (docs, templates, examples, research notes, talks, case studies)
- Issue‑first workflow and PR process
- Review & approval (maintainers), and lazy consensus
- DCO sign‑off for all commits
- Style guidance for Markdown, diagrams, and images
- Licensing and attribution
DCO: All commits must be signed (
git commit -s) with a validSigned-off-by:line.
We track the roadmap transparently through issues, milestones, and (optionally) a ROADMAP.md.
Initial focus includes:
- Expanding Outreach engagements with charities and social impact organisations
- Curating and publishing the first version of the Toolkit
- Establishing the Inclusive Engineering mentoring/allyship materials
- Promoting adoption of the DE Role Definition across the industry
- Capturing case studies and research partnerships
- Publishing public talk materials and educational content
Copyright © 2026 Fintech Open Source Foundation
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
SPDX-License-Identifier: CC BY 4.0.