Interview with Jakob Jónasson, new VP of Engineering of Lucinity

In this interview, Jakob Jónasson, Lucinity’s new VP of Engineering, shares his perspective on building scalable systems, making practical architectural decisions, and using AI to move faster while staying grounded in real customer needs.

Where do you see the biggest technical opportunities for Lucinity in the coming years?

Making the codebase as AI friendly as it can be so we can leverage AI to move faster ourselves.

How do you decide what to build in-house versus relying on external technologies or platforms?

Ideally, we should not build something unless it is in our domain. Even something simple like authentication easily gets complex and should be used as a service. That being said, if we cannot find a good solution that fits our needs, building it ourselves should be easier than ever with agentic AI.

What kinds of technical foundations need to be in place for a company like Lucinity to scale effectively?

Finding the right balance and building it well enough from the start, with a focus on monitoring and separation of concerns.

How do you approach making architectural decisions that will still hold up several years from now?

The world is moving fast and architectural decisions can become stale quickly. We should thus try to avoid one way doors where a decision cannot be easily changed after the fact, for example, where we host our software.

Engineers should be able to make most decisions autonomously most of the time, but bigger decisions need a formal proposal and alignment before being moved forward.

We thus have to build up the culture of enabling the engineers to move fast when they can, but still with high quality and involve others when truly needed.

What role should AI play in the future of financial crime investigations?

I like thinking about it as a conductor. It has access to tools and will be able to solve cases on its own in most cases. Where it cannot, it will loop in a human to help with decision making. Even with a human in the loop, cases will move faster than ever.

What are the biggest engineering challenges when building systems for highly regulated industries like banking?

Compliance, concurrency, data volume, security, isolated hosting and row-level encryption.

How do you balance shipping quickly with maintaining a clean and maintainable codebase?

By doing it incrementally, with every change you make. Doing things correctly enough will go a long way in decreasing complexity and overall waste over time.

How do you ensure engineering teams stay connected to real customer problems?

By working closely with customer-facing teams such as support and customer success as well as meeting customers directly and hearing about their problems.

What makes collaboration between engineering and product teams work well in practice?

By having the mindset of being in the same team and making decisions together. Capabilities and maintenance should be everyone's concern. Often, engineers are not great at explaining the value of maintenance and thus it needs dedicated attention.

How do you translate complex technical capabilities into real value for customers?

Start with the customer problem they are trying to solve, followed by a high level approach (diagrams and designs can help), followed by the outcome for customers.

A common mistake is starting with what a customer asks for instead of the underlying problem. That often leads to solving the wrong problem and building the wrong solution.

What signals tell you that a product feature is truly solving the right problem?

High adoption and strong customer satisfaction are usually the clearest signals. It’s mostly about listening to the customers, really try to understand them and adjust the products accordingly.

What part of engineering leadership do you enjoy the most?

Making decisions that directly solve problems.

What keeps you curious about technology after many years in the field?

The fact that it is always evolving and continuing to solve problems.

If your team described your leadership style in three words, what would you hope they’d say?

Take action

What do you like to do when you want to step away from screens and code?

I love sports, in particular Olympic lifting. I also play the trumpet and play card and board games.

What is one habit that helps you stay focused when things get busy?

Put on headphones and listen to music. It is the best way to signal to my brain that it’s crunch time.