Axoni, a New York-based blockchain startup, has announced the appointment of Stephen Sandberg as Director of Client Services.

An industry veteran and former Deloitte executive, Sandberg brings over 20 years of experience in financial technologies, with a particular focus on post-trade infrastructure, to the startup. In his new role, he will manage client engagements and oversee large-scale deployments of Axoni technologies.

Sandberg served as a Senior Manager at Deloitte where he led engagement sales and execution with Tier 1 financial institutions related to the impact of derivative regulations on trading technologies and business processes. He founded the Deloitte Advisory Blockchain Community of Practice to explore cross-industry blockchain developments and lead business development for Deloitte Advisory’s blockchain efforts in capital markets.

Prior to Deloitte, Stephen served as an independent consultant for large financial institutions, including the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). He has also served as Program Manager for Interest Rate and Credit Derivatives at Traiana. In addition, he held technical roles for over ten years, including as a developer and systems integrator for financial software companies and as the co-manager of Barclays Capital’s credit derivatives platform.

Earlier this month, Axoni welcomed distributed cryptography specialist John Maheswaran to its technical team.

In October, Axoni organized a group which included the likes of Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, IHS Markit, Thomson Reuters, and Capco. The group tested blockchain technology and smart contracts to manage affirmations and post-trade lifecycle processing for OTC equity swaps. Also, in September, R3 and Axoni explored the use of distributed ledger technology to reduce risk in reference data management with buy and sell side financial services firms, which included AB (Alliance Bernstein), Citi, Credit Suisse and HSBC, among others.