Aura Hires eBay Veteran Joe Martin to Lead Engineering

Ex-Indiegogo executive Martin brings three decades of engineering and development experience to Aura, which has now originated more than $750 million in loans

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aura, a mission-driven financial technology company that offers affordable loans to hard-working families, today announced that Joe Martin has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Engineering. Mr. Martin reports to Aura CEO James Gutierrez and oversees all engineering and development for Aura’s suite of financial services products.

“Aura is thrilled that Joe is leading our engineering teams at a critical moment in our growth,” said James Gutierrez, CEO of Aura. “Joe is an incredible leader, he brings deep engineering management experience, and his story as the son of Mexican immigrants makes him a perfect fit for Aura. Going forward, Joe will continue to grow our engineering team, ensure that we build the best customer experiences and most innovative financial products available to low-income families today, and help Aura scale well beyond $750 million in loans.”

Prior to joining Aura, Mr. Martin served as SVP of Engineering, Trust and User Operations for Indiegogo. In this role, he ran engineering and product while also managing operational issues such as trust and safety, customer happiness, and campaign strategy. Before that, he served as Senior Director of Engineering for eBay and Principal Development Manager for Microsoft.

“I decided to join Aura for a very simple reason: Aura’s mission is close to my heart,” said Joe Martin. “I want to help families that are working towards financial prosperity. I look forward to continuing to build upon Aura’s early success and talented engineering team, and, together, we will help millions of hard-working people make their dreams a reality.”

Earlier in his career, Mr. Martin held engineering roles for a diverse set of Silicon Valley companies including Fogbreak Software, PlanetRX.com, PeopleSoft, JAS Systems, and ASK Computer Systems.

Mr. Martin holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he was a member of the Society of Latino Engineers and Scientists. He lives in Danville with his wife, Carla, and together, they raised three children.

About Aura

Aura is a technology-powered Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that provides small, affordable loans to working families in America. Aura’s mission is to build financially healthy low-income communities by providing empowering financial services to America’s 66 million underbanked and unbanked. Aura has pioneered a cloud-based lending technology that enables trusted local businesses to submit credit applications for centralized review and approval by its proprietary scoring algorithms.

Currently available in over 1,150 locations across California, Texas, Illinois and Arizona, Aura has provided hundreds of thousands of credit-building, responsible loans to low-income households since launching in 2014. Aura was founded in 2012 by James Gutierrez, Kevin Kang and Randy Wong. All three founders helped create and scale Oportun, a CDFI and one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Most Genius Companies in 2018.