15 June 2021 at 13:00 (GMT) Download PDF
- Responsible for Trainline’s tech vision, empowering customers to make greener travel choices
- Tasked with driving innovation for Trainline’s customers to make train travel as simple and seamless as possible
- Also focused on helping the rail industry leverage Trainline’s platform to accelerate recovery, and growth in passenger numbers
LONDON, 15 June 2021: Trainline, the leading independent rail and coach platform, has appointed Google’s Milena Nikolic as Chief Technology Officer. Joining in early July, Milena will be responsible for Trainline’s innovation strategy and tech vision, ensuring it continues to launch new features and technology to make train travel as seamless as possible for Trainline’s customers across the UK and Europe. Milena joins from Google Play where she held the role of Engineering Director.
Trainline’s technology team comprises over 300 travel tech specialists who manage more than 300 product releases each week, driving ongoing enhancement of the customer experience. A home-grown British tech company with over 20 years of deep rail tech expertise and data, Trainline has played a pivotal role in working with the rail industry to accelerate new ticketing technology to make train travel as easy and affordable as possible. In the UK, Trainline has increased the usage of digital tickets, which save travellers time, enable touch-free journeys and increase frequency of train travel, with around 70% of all digital train tickets sold nationwide bought by Trainline customers.
In the last year, Trainline has launched several features that solve train traveller needs, such as Crowd Alerts, which uses crowdsourced data to enable its community to tell each other in real-time which parts of their train are busy or not. Another innovation is SplitSave, which finds clever combinations of tickets that save customers money via ‘split ticketing’ on the majority of routes across the UK, without any need to change trains. Trainline has also released digital railcards, so customers can keep railcards alongside tickets in the Trainline app, plus delivered further automation of the refund process so that more customers can now self-serve online via their Trainline accounts.
We’re delighted to welcome Milena who will play a key role in ensuring Trainline’s technology continues to provide a seamless travel experience and innovative ways of meeting the evolving needs of train travellers across the UK and Europe. Milena brings with her deep tech expertise, including extensive knowledge of harnessing data to create an exceptional customer experience, and a proven track record of leading world-class tech teams.
As well as launching new innovations for Trainline customers, Milena will focus on helping the rail industry leverage the Trainline platform to better serve its customer needs and accelerate growth in passenger numbers to facilitate a modal shift from road and air to rail.
Jody Ford
Trainline CEO
I’m excited to join a business which has a longstanding history of creating industry-leading technology for the rail sector. I’ve been really struck by the pioneering culture of the tech team at Trainline, its autonomous working environment and commitment to creating products which empower people to make greener travel choices.
Milena Nikolic
Chief Technology Officer at Trainline