Derek Lyons

Derek Lyons is the CTO and co-founder of Actual. Derek was previously a software engineering manager at LinkedIn and a platform engineer at Heighten, which was acquired by LinkedIn in 2017. Derek has also worked as a lead game developer at Motion Math. Derek has a passion for cognitive science and applying it to strategic issues of usability, user productivity, and engagement. Derek is a skilled full-stack engineer and has experience with entity resolution, automatic estimation of data importance, and business process management.

Derek Lyons has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Cognitive Developmental Psychology from Yale University, a Master of Science (S.M.) in Media Arts & Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a Rhodes Scholar with a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Information Engineering from the University of Oxford. Derek also has a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Chemistry from Reed College.

Some individuals on their team include Mike Chang - Platform Engineer, Rick Terrill - Platform Engineer, and Shawn Tabai - Platform Engineer. Their manager is Rajesh Chandran, CEO & Co-Founder. Derek Lyons works with Justin Ferrell - Head of Customer Experience, Karthik Balakrishnan - President & Co-Founder.