One of Northern Ireland’s most prominent authorities on artificial intelligence joins Belfast software firm

Northern Ireland software company SciLeads has announced that Alastair McKinley, one of Northern Ireland’s most prominent authorities on artificial intelligence, has joined as its new head of data engineering and AI.

SciLeads is a market intelligence platform that helps scientific companies identify, engage and close their ideal buyers.

The Belfast-based company has the most comprehensive and accurate global database of scientific companies and researchers and helps sales teams identify who needs their products.

In his new role Alastair will build on the AI work SciLeads is already doing and help to develop new customer-facing features using AI, enabling customers to gain even more value and insights out of SciLeads unique data set. He will also lead the implementation of AI within the business to enable the company to expand more quickly.

Previously chief technology officer at Analytics Engines, Alastair has extensive data engineering experience, including data cleansing/matching, knowledge graph implementation, search, database architecture and performance optimisation. He has worked on countless AI projects adding value and solving unique challenges across the public and private sectors.

Alastair, said: "I'm delighted to join a company that's already taking advantage of the benefits AI has to offer and am excited to grow this even further to benefit both our customers and the company as a whole. I am really looking forward to applying my experience to the extensive product suite at SciLeads.” Laura Haldane, co-founder and VP of sales and marketing at SciLeads, explained: “We're very happy to have Alastair onboard. As someone who has been using AI since before it was cool, we're excited to see how we can build upon our recent generative AI features to develop even more impactful tools for our customers.”

SciLeads is trusted by hundreds of scientific companies globally to accelerate sales and drive growth. 93% of its customer base is outside of the UK, with its software currently used by everyone from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups.

The appointment of Alastair McKinley comes as SciLeads launches a new AI-powered message generation feature that helps its customers create highly personalised messages tailored to specific researchers. These messages can be copied and sent through platforms like email or LinkedIn, saving time for users and making lead generation more efficient by automating the creation of contextually relevant messages that resonate with their target audience.

Since it was founded in 2016 by friends Daniel McRitchie, Laura Haldane and James Campbell, SciLeads has operated a 100% remote working model, offering its team a truly flexible culture and control over their work-life balance. It also gives each employee a generous home office set-up allowance to create their ideal working environment.

The majority of SciLeads’ 90-strong team is based in Northern Ireland and Canada, with staff also based in other locations across the UK, Europe and Asia.

SciLeads is currently on the lookout for talented data and software engineers. To see open positions visit scileads.com/careers.