App-driven games platform Skrmiish has appointed João Pela (PhD) as their new Head of Data.
Pela’s hardcore data science background saw him working as a researcher and experimental physicist at CERN's facility in Switzerland before moving to tech startups Rotageek and Seatfrog. He now joins Skrmiish to focus their drive for data-driven innovation and to help deliver exceptional experiences to Skrmiish’s global community of gamers.
Speaking about his new role, Pela said: “I am joining Skrmiish at a key moment in its journey and I will be focusing on building up our data practice and making sure we have a data-driven culture in all we do. I will be Skrmiish’s data voice as we grow into a major player in how gamers can generate income from doing what they love. I’m excited about joining a fast-growing business with a lot of potential, where I feel I can make a real impact!”
Based in the Isle of Man with a team in Cape Town, Skrmiish allows any gamer to monetise their matches in their favourite games. The company aims to pioneer play-to-earn technology for the AAA gaming market with over half a million GBP in earnings has paid out so far and more than 75,000 active players earning money gaming every month.
Crunching data
During his nine years at the world’s largest particle physics lab, CERN, Pela’s strong background in algorithm and model building, forecasting and analytics played a part in helping to discover the famous Higgs Boson - the so-called ‘God Particle' - that won the team the Physics Nobel Prize in 2013.
From there Pela joined Rotageek as a Data Scientist and took the lead building their flagship auto-scheduling products. He then moved to Seatfrog in 2018 as Head of Data where he built their engineering and analytics teams.
Both Rotageek and Seatfrog have successfully raised over $40-million in funding between them.
“João comes from an incredible background of data science and smashing particles together deep underground in CERN,” says Skrmiish co-founder and MD, Chris Heaton. “We are all very excited to have someone with his expertise in the business. He is another weapon in our armoury helping Skrmiish to achieve incredible success.”
“João’s appointment marks a significant milestone for Skrmiish as it continues to expand its
capabilities in the gaming industry. He will join our CEO Luke Grob and team in the London office.”
