The 2015 Tech 50: R. Martin Chavez

WhenR. Martin Chavezwas promoted from COO of equities to chief information officer of Goldman Sachs Group in September 2013, the role was expanded to include oversight of the company’s engineers — one third of the New York–based firm’s 34,000 employees, who work with 1.5 billion lines of software code — along with a seat on the management committee and an opportunity to think big about externalization of the firm’s technology. “We’re not delivering a portal or a terminal; we’re giving you apps,” the 51-year-old explains. The opening up of Goldman’s digital platforms started over the past year in the securities division, including equity and foreign exchange, and has moved into investment banking, corporate finance and other areas. “I’d be hard-pressed to think of any business in the company that isn’t engaged, at some level, in the process of externalizing our platforms to clients,” Chavez says. Meanwhile, he and his team are looking at the leading edge of artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning and pattern recognition systems. “Applying good pattern matching and statistics is going to have a big impact on all aspects of our business,” predicts Chavez, who has a bachelor’s in biochemistry and a master’s in computer science from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in medical information sciences from Stanford University. Chavez is on his second tour at Goldman, having served as a senior energy strategist in the 1990s. Before that he co-founded a San Francisco start-up, Quorum Software Systems, and later he was CEO of Kiodex, a New York risk management systems company that SunGard Data Systems acquired in 2004.

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”