DA LANGUAGES

Company background

Headquartered in Manchester, DA Languages is one of the fastest growing language services providers in the UK delivering critical support to both the private and public sectors.

With a network of more than 8,000 mother tongue interpreters and translators, covering 450 languages and dialects, its service offering spans face-to-face, video and telephone interpretation along with written translation services.

In 2021, DA Languages was acquired by pan-European private equity fund IK Partners which is working with the management team to continue scaling the business both organically and through add-on acquisitions, with a particular focus on further investment in DA’s differentiated technology offering in order to broaden the client base and expand the range of services.

The brief

To support this critical point in DA Languages’ growth journey, Directorbank’s Head of Tech, James Searby, was mandated to source a commercially-minded, innovative CTO for the business.

Working with the executive management team, the CTO would be responsible for developing DA’s tech capabilities across a broad range of services while scaling engineering efforts and operational technology to meet the company’s ambitious strategic goals.

Mission-driven with the desire to make quick impact, the ideal candidate would be a proven leader with a strong track record in designing and delivering technology strategy, platform solutions and all aspects of the software development life cycle.

The process

James commenced the search by working with the DA Languages team to develop a detailed brief for the role. With support from Head of Research Faye Middleton he ran a methodical search process to identify a number of potential candidates that matched the criteria. Detailed interviews and reference checks were then conducted to pinpoint the most suitable candidates.

Sam Wilson was successfully appointed to the position.

Result

Sam is a very bright CTO with extensive experience as a Developer, Architect and Director. He is particularly strong in building scalable business intelligence and customer facing platforms and leading high quality international teams to achieve rapid growth.

Prior to DA Languages, Sam was Director of Digital Solutions & Technology at Bruntwood, the commercial property company, where he had overall responsibility for creating and developing technology systems, processes and teams to support the business’s growth agenda.