Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based Manager operating in the Operating Systems space. If you think a Manager is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Derrick McCourt
General Manager, Customer Success Unit of Microsoft
Derrick McCourt is leading a team responsible for supporting customers to deliver cutting-edge services and drive real business impact through Microsoft cloud technologies. Since joining Microsoft in 2001, Derrick has held multiple leadership roles, including General Manager for Microsoft’s Public Sector Business, and is a member of the Microsoft UK Senior Leadership Team. In July 2017 Derrick took on the role as executive sponsor for Microsoft UK’s Diversity and Inclusion plan to ensure that all current and future employees feel encouraged to contribute their unique insight and skills that help solve some of the most complex technology challenges for our customers. Derrick is a strong supporter of accessibility in tech, digital skills, girls in STEM and Women in Technology initiatives. He has played a leading role in Microsoft’s strategic partnership with the Institute of Technology at Bletchley Park as well as UA92; empowering people of all ages, skills and abilities in a technology driven world.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
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Diego González-Zúñiga
Program Manager of Microsoft
Zúñiga is a computer engineer from Costa Rica. He holds a doctorate in Informatics and a master degree in Multimedia from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, as well as a master degree in Information Systems from the Costa Rican Institute of Technology. These studies served as a starting point for his 3D journey, studying stereoscopic Graphical User Interfaces, and more recently VR, where he focused on WebVR and is interested in defining the “semantics of depth”. He currently works for Samsung Research UK, as a Senior Engineer/Web Advocate for the Samsung Internet browser. You can find more information about his projects at diekus.net.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Marianne Roling
General Manager Global System Integrators for TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and HCL of Microsoft
Marianne joined Microsoft in 2005 to lead the EMEA business for the Mobile Communications Business, managing the growth of Windows Mobile, working closely with mobile device makers, mobile operators, resellers and software developers. In 2007, she then took on global responsibility for the strategy development of the global expansion program of Microsoft’s Mobile Business and subsequently was asked to lead the Global Sales of Windows Phone. In 2011, Marianne moved to the Central and Eastern Europe team to become the Managing Director for the Operator Channels working on joint partnerships of Microsoft Devices and Services. In the summer of 2014, she became Partner and GM in CEE for the division that leads the Partner network, Corporate Account Sales, and SMB sales, covering a large majority of Microsoft’s sales and marketing for the 33 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Marianne brings with her a wealth of relevant industry experience, in both the fixed line and mobile space across Europe, USA and Latin America.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Hugh Milward
General Manager, Corporate, External and Legal Affairs of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Manuela Pichler
Senior Program Manager of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Edward Ryan
Senior Customer Success Account Manager of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Stuart McCarthy
Senior Program Manager of Microsoft
Customer Program Manager in Microsoft Teams Engineering, working with strategic customers to help them deliver value on Microsoft Teams and gain insights into how we can further improve the product.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Rakhi Sachdeva
Customer Success Manager of Microsoft
Rakhi Sachdeva is a Customer Success Manager for Modern Workplace Solutions working with Public Sector customers in the UK. Rakhi has worked in global customer success & partner management roles across Dynamics 365 & Modern Workplace solutions both in India and UK. She comes to Microsoft with over 11 years of work experience in Business Development, Customer Service and Project Management positions. Rakhi is an active member of Women at Microsoft Community and is a vivid supporter of events like Microsoft YouthSpark Program for middle and high school girls, TechHer (A learning Event for women) to help bring more women in the technology world. Rakhi is super enthusiastic about working with customers around their Diversity & Inclusion efforts. She also loves working with UK charities to promote Microsoft’s Tech for Good initiative which provides non-profit organisations an opportunity to understand how technology can solve their business problems.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Liz Leigh-Bowler
Product Marketing Manager of Microsoft
Liz Leigh-Bowler recently joined Microsoft as the Product Marketing Manager for finance, supply chain management and fraud protection. Within this role, Liz is responsible for the commercial success of Microsoft’s core ERP products in the UK across all customer segments. Before coming to Microsoft, she started her career as an assistant language teacher in Japan before making a complete change and jumping to finance at Barclaycard. Since then, she has specialised in proposition and product marketing where she can ensure customer needs are put at the heart of business decisions and Go-To-Market strategies. Following her time at Barclaycard, Liz implemented the global payments and banking strategy across Sage Accounting solutions and took up the position as Director for Product and Marketing at Sage Pay with extensive experience in payments, ecommerce and fraud.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
George Adams
Senior Program Manager of Microsoft
George Adams is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft and is the recently appointed chair of the Working Group Steering Committee at Adoptium. He has been leading the community outreach efforts at AdoptOpenJDK for the last year and is heavily involved in the Java ecosystem. George also contributes to both the OpenJS Foundation and the Node.js Foundation where he is a core collaborator and plays an active role in several of the work groups.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Joel Bloomfield
Business Manager of Microsoft
Joel has been at Microsoft for 3 years and is the Industry lead for Higher Education in the UK. In his role Joel is responsible for working with Microsoft’s Global Education team to bring best practise and learnings to Universities in the UK, he is also responsible for setting the strategy in the UK and working with customers to deliver their vision around Digital Transformation. Joel also manages 25 customers relationships across the South of the UK and has a particular interest in driving Microsoft’s position in the Academic Research space as well as leading on how Artificial Intelligence can enhance the learning experience.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Rebecca Jones
Program Manager – Mixed Reality Studios of Microsoft
Becky is a developer and specialist in emerging technologies. Her company builds mixed reality prototypes and solutions for clients using Microsoft HoloLens, with a keen focus on elucidating best practices for user experience in this new paradigm. Becky also organises the meetup group Mixed Reality London.
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About Bektio, Microsoft, Portal Entertainment: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Gary Pretty
Senior Program Manager, Conversational AI of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Ken Liu
Talent Acquisition Manager of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Chris Webb
Principal Program Manager of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Elena Cordova Russ
Customer Success Manager of Microsoft
Elena Cordova Russ has been a Customer Success Manager in the technology industry for the past 7 years. She is currently working on the Financial Sector at Microsoft helping customers maximise the value of their O365 investment. Her focus is to identify and align her customer’s business objectives to the Modern workplace solutions and increase their productivity and collaboration. Elena has also been an accessibility champion at Microsoft where she discovered how much technology can help everyone.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Edward Thomson
Principal Program Manager of Microsoft
Edward Thomson is a Program Manager for Git in Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services. Previously, he was a software engineer, building version control tools at Microsoft, GitHub and SourceGear. He is the co-maintainer of the libgit2 project, an author of books and video training about using Git, and the co-host of All Things Git, the podcast about Git.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
James Marshall
Senior Customer Program Manager | Azure of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Paul Collinge
Senior Program Manager of Microsoft
Paul Collinge is Senior Program Manager in the Microsoft Office 365 product team, primarily looking after network connectivity and performance to the service. Working directly with customers to plan and optimise their enterprise connectivity to the cloud whilst also driving engineering changes to help improve the service in this area has enabled him to gain a wide experience of the challenges and solutions to enterprise Office 365 connectivity. Paul has worked at Microsoft since 2004, previous roles include, Senior Support Escalation Engineer within the Windows Core and Networking teams and also as a Principle Premier Field Engineer concentrating on network problem isolation, specifically within the Cloud/Office 365 space.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Theo van Kraay
Sr. Program Manager of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Marcus Robinson
Principal Technical Program Manager of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Stuart Kent
Group Program Manager of Microsoft
Stuart is a Group Program Manager at Microsoft working on services and tools to help developers be more productive. Current areas of focus include approaches to identify and remove technical debt from code, and a new feature in Visual Studio Online to search code and components across an enterprise. He has also worked on, and remains responsible for, Code Map and CodeLens features in Visual Studio. He lives in the UK, working with teams in Cambridge, Redmond and Hyderabad. Before joining Microsoft in 2003, Stuart was an academic and consultant. He worked with IBM and others on the UML and MOF standards, and was active in software modeling and visualization research.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Graham Fox
Schools Business Manager of Microsoft
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About European Electronique, Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Marcus Robinson
Principal Technical Program Manager of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Graham Fox
Schools Business Manager of Microsoft
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About European Electronique, Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Andy Gordon
Principal Research Manager of Microsoft
Andy Gordon is a Principal Research Manager at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Gordon’s main project is Calc Intelligence, which brings intelligence to end-user programming, especially spreadsheets. Gordon also holds the Chair in Computer Security and is a member of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science and the Security and Privacy group in the School of Informatics in the University of Edinburgh. Gordon convenes the University of Edinburgh Microsoft Research Joint Initiative in Informatics, and participates in both the Data Science PhD program and the Cyber Security & Privacy Research Network. Before joining Microsoft in 1997, Gordon was a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Gordon has been a Visiting Professor in the School of Computing Science at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Gordon’s research is on programming languages and their semantics and logics, with application to security and privacy, machine learning, concurrency, and databases. Gordon has published and lectured on: input/output in pure functional programming, hardware description languages, mobile computation, security protocols, web services security, distributed authorization, configuration management, and database programming languages. He has also worked on probabilistic programming for machine learning.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Martin Percival
Pre-sales Manager UK&I Commercial vertical of Red Hat
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About Red Hat, Red Hat: Red Hat is a multinational software company engaged in providing open-source software products to the enterprise community.
Craig Beddis
CEO of Hadean
An entrepreneurial senior executive with 25 successful years and experience grounded in building and transforming business and accelerating growth.
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About Hadean: Deploy Cloud Native Applications Simply and Securely
Rafael Neville
Board Member & Assistant Manager of Advanced Virtual
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About Advanced Virtual, Advanced Virtual, Animaclub, CleverInvest, Cosmosair, Dotspot, Flook, Kubik Records, Open Dynamics, Roirobot, Webgenius, Zanker: Artificial Intelligence, ML, DL, Operating System, Personal Supercomputers, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Big Data, IoT, Blockchain
Bryan Wood
Customer Success Manager of one.network
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About one.network: One.network is a single platform for planning, communicating, and analyzing all types of road events.
