FOR many people the prospect of redundancy can be terrifying. For Eileen McLaren it turned out to be life-changing - in a good way.

After spending the best part of two decades working for Edinburgh financial giant Standard Life, the chance to take voluntary redundancy set Ms McLaren on a path that took in early-stage stints at two of the biggest names on the Scottish technology scene before leading her into her current role as chief operating officer at start-up Cognitive Geology – blazing a trail for women in tech on the way.

While Ms McLaren says that Standard Life gave her “an amazing variety of experience”, being able to try other things after taking redundancy opened her eyes to the world of opportunities that lay beyond such a large institution.

After dabbling in consultancy, her next move - to Skyscanner - was the one that has shaped everything she has done since.

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At that point - the latter part of 2009 - the travel aggregator business, which was bought by China’s C-trip in a £1.4 billion deal at the end of 2016, employed just 40 people from a small office in Leith, with Ms McLaren coming on board to lead a software engineering team of just a dozen people.

“I was the first project manager type person they had brought in and I just thought I’ve found my niche in life because it was all about the start up,” she says.

This appealed because everyone in the Skyscanner team was learning as they went along, with the technology Ms McLaren and her team was building helping to power the firm’s “crazy growth”.

“There was a lot happening and the people round about were all learning at the same time - no one knew all the answers or how to do it all. That was the really appealing thing,” she says.

With the firm tripling in size by the time Ms McLaren left two years later, the chance to help another start-up achieve similar growth after another spell in consultancy was too good an opportunity for her to pass up.

“FanDuel was there at the right time,” Ms McLaren says when reflecting on her decision to join the daily fantasy sports business as a senior project manager in 2013.

“It appealed to me because it was at a very similar stage of development as Skyscanner had been – it had about 25 to 30 people across New York and Edinburgh and the engineering team was about eight people.

"Plus, I’m a big sports fan so it was my dream job.”

As with Skyscanner, FanDuel had grown exponentially by the time Ms McLaren left in 2016, with the firm at that point employing a total of 450 people at its bases on both sides of the Atlantic.

Having been involved with two firms that had grown from a standing start to become tech unicorns with valuations of $1 billion, transforming the Scottish technology scene on the way, growth was something Ms McLaren had got a taste for.

So when she met with Cognitive Geology chief executive and founder Luke Johnson – a former scientist at US energy corporation Chevron – it did not take him long to convince her to come on board there.

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“It was a chance meeting - I was talking to someone I knew in recruitment who had talked to him the day before and she said ‘you have to meet this guy’,” Ms McLaren recalls.

“I spoke to him for one and a half hours and had that tingly feeling: I thought this could be amazing, this could be another one.

“His ambition and enthusiasm is so infectious. The more I found out about the business, the more it seemed like a great opportunity.

“The ambition and drive is huge.”

Cognitive Geology, which builds technology that helps businesses including Shell and Baker Hughes find and develop oil and gas reserves, operates in a completely different sector to anything Ms McLaren has been involved with before.

Not that she sees that as an issue, given that the skills of a software developer or engineer are so transferable.

“A really good software engineer can turn their hand to just about anything, they just need the subject matter experts to work with,” Ms McLaren says.

“That was the thing that appealed to me most about being in tech - when you are at school or university you don’t need to pigeonhole yourself into a particular area. I’ve done financial, sport, gaming and now geology.

“The beauty for me of what Cognitive Geology is setting out to do - and is in the process of doing – is that it is being driven by people who were in the industry and who know there are better, more efficient ways to do things.

“We are building the software to help them do that.”

Just as she did at Skyscanner and FanDuel, Ms McLaren is setting about building the tech teams at Cognitive Geology and has already transformed a four-strong team of engineers into two five-person teams of geologists and engineers to work on the firm’s two main products: Hutton and Smith.

Read more: Skyscanner joins the unicorns

While further growth is on the cards, Ms McLaren said finding the right people to bring on board can be can be difficult, in part because not everyone working in tech shares her enthusiasm for the start-up model, and in part because there are not enough people in the market to fill all the jobs being created in what is the fastest-growing sector of the Scottish economy.

“If there are not enough people the knock-on effect could be huge: if you don’t have the people you can’t scale or grow your business,” Ms McLaren says.

“There are government bodies like ScotlandIS and Digital Skills Scotland that are doing things, but it kind of feels to me that there’s not enough ‘joined-up-ness’.

“It needs to be coordinated or to have a real structure in place. There are lots of good things happening, but there could be more.

“Maybe it needs people like me and others to have more time available to try to do that.”

One thing that Ms McLaren has been pleasantly surprised by since joining Cognitive Geology is that the business appears to have a better gender balance than most other firms operating in the technology sector, where just 17 per cent of jobs in the UK are believed to be held by women.

Nevertheless, as a woman who has held senior positions across the industry, she recognises that much more needs to be done to encourage more women to consider a career in tech.

Like others operating in the sector she believes education holds the key to achieving that.

“My personal view is that our school system doesn’t do enough to educate boys and girls on a consistent basis about what computing is all about and what it can do,” she says.

“I have talked to some teachers and heard some case studies from schools that are phenomenal because they’ve got a teacher who has been in the business then has gone into teaching and can train pupils and show them the opportunities that are out there.

“If the Government wants to do anything to make things better they need to start there.”

Read more: In search of Scotland's next tech unicorns

An extension of this, she believes, would be to offer teachers and lecturers the opportunity to gain internships in the same way students do, so those teaching the subjects would have up-to-date commercial experiences to share with their students.

None of this will happen overnight and, as Ms McLaren recognises, it would need the buy-in of numerous stakeholder groups in order to succeed. 

In the meantime, when it comes to Cognitive Geology itself, Ms McLaren has her eyes fixed firmly on the prize she believes the business will prove itself capable of winning.

“I want to make this unicorn number three,” she says.

EILEEN MCLAREN - SIX QUESTIONS

What countries have you most enjoyed travelling to, for business or leisure, and why? 

For leisure it has to be the Caribbean, specifically Saint Lucia, Nevis and Montserrat. Each island in the Caribbean has its own character, the people are incredibly friendly and we just feel relaxed as soon as we get off the plane. 

When you were a child, what was your ideal job? Why did it appeal?

Anything to do with food. I loved trying to create new things and loved home economics at school, but a very good careers guidance teacher talked me out of that as a career.

What was your biggest break in business?

Finding Skyscanner when I did. It introduced me to the world of start-ups and showed me the potential. It got me re-energised in the whole IT side of things.

What was your worst moment in business?

I worked for a large global corporation and felt frustrated by the bureaucracy. Actually getting things done was a nightmare, having to jump through hoops with everything taking forever.

Who do you most admire and why?

This changes, but now I am going to say Luke Johnson (my current boss) for his enthusiasm, his passion, his drive, and ability to bring people with him and drive the company forward. I also admire Brendan Rogers because he’s the manager of Celtic but also for his overall demeanour. 

What book are you reading and what music are you listening to? What was the last film you saw?

I have just finished reading Christmas at The Grange: A Lady Hardcastle Mystery by T E Kinsey. This morning I listened to a mixed playlist which included Thin Lizzy, Gregory Porter, and George Michael. The last concert I went to was a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in Winchester Catherdral.The last film I saw was Star Wars: The Last Jedi.