Tobie Morgan Hitchcock

CEO

London, England, United Kingdom8 yrs 7 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Founder of one of the fastest-growing open-source databases.
Expert in real-time data systems and distributed databases.
Raised $44M in funding for innovative database solutions.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and Open Source Database Architect with a focus on real-time data systems.

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Skills

Core Skills

Distributed DatabasesReal-time SystemsDatabase ArchitectureCloud-native ArchitectureScalable SystemsProduct Strategy

Other Skills

Distributed SystemsOpen-Source SoftwareHigh Availability ArchitectureGraph DatabasesDocument DatabasesData ModelingQuery LanguagesConsistency ModelsEvent-Driven ArchitectureServerless ComputingData StructuresRust (Programming Language)SQL

About

I am a technology entrepreneur and software engineer with over 20 years of experience building distributed, highly available systems. I am the founder of SurrealDB, one of the fastest-growing open-source database platforms, used in production by developers and enterprises to power real-time, data-intensive applications. SurrealDB is a distributed, collaborative document-graph database designed for AI agents, knowledge graphs, embedded and edge systems, and real-time applications, with adoption driven by real-world production use and an active global open-source community. I hold a Master's degree in Software Engineering from the University of Oxford, where my research focused on temporal versioning and immutability in distributed graph databases, directly informing SurrealDB's architecture. My work focuses on real-time data systems, distributed databases, and simplifying technology stacks to improve developer experience and operational scalability. I am particularly interested in how real-time, versioned data models can support AI systems, agent memory, and continual learning.

Experience

8 yrs 7 mos

Total Experience

2 yrs 5 mos

Average Tenure

6 yrs 8 mos

Current Experience

Surrealdb

Co-founder and CEO

Aug 2022 – Present · 3 yrs 10 mos · London, United Kingdom

Co-founded and lead SurrealDB, an open-source multi-model database built in Rust that unifies document, graph, relational, vector, time-series, and key-value capabilities into a single platform. SurrealDB enables developers to replace fragmented database stacks with one system, queried through SQL and SurrealQL - a familiar SQL-like language with native support for graph traversals, real-time queries, and advanced security permissions.
Grew SurrealDB from initial concept to one of the fastest-growing open-source database projects in the industry - reaching 31,000+ GitHub stars, 2.3 million downloads, and 1,000+ forks. Raised $44M in total funding across Seed and Series A rounds from FirstMark, Georgian, Chalfen Ventures, Begin Capital, Crew Capital, and Alumni Ventures.
Key milestones:
Defined long-term technical vision, product roadmap, and platform strategy
Led the launch of SurrealDB 1.0 and SurrealDB 3.0, introducing live queries, advanced indexing, vector embeddings, and event-driven AI application support
Named to the Redpoint InfraRed 100 list of innovative infrastructure companies
Launched SurrealDB Cloud, bringing the database to a fully managed cloud offering
Built and scaled an engineering team shipping a production-grade database engine, supporting embedded and distributed deployment modes, and multi-tenant security
Featured on Software Engineering Daily, Digital IT News, and other industry outlets
The core engine is written in Rust for performance and safety, supporting deployment embedded in applications, at the edge, in the browser via WebAssembly, or as a distributed cluster.

Database ArchitectureDistributed DatabasesDistributed SystemsReal-Time SystemsOpen-Source SoftwareScalable Systems+12

Hire insight

Co-Founder

Oct 2019 – Present · 6 yrs 8 mos · London, United Kingdom

Co-founded Hire Insight, a multi-award-winning SaaS platform that modernises retained and executive search. The platform replaces fragmented recruitment workflows with an integrated system spanning business development, candidate management, client CRM, and structured assessment.
Designed and built the product around a "remote assessment centre" methodology - where candidates submit rich profiles including video introductions, behavioural assessments, and competency evaluations - giving hiring firms a more rigorous, data-driven alternative to traditional CV-based shortlisting.
Responsible for product strategy, technical architecture, and early platform development. Built the platform to help executive search consultancies present candidates more effectively, improve hiring success rates, and differentiate their service offering in a competitive market.

Product Strategy