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Endava plc announces CFO changes, effective September 21, 2026. Published on 09/21/2026 at 05:04 pm EDT S&P Capital IQ Endava plc announced that Conor McShane of AlixPartners LLP, a leading global business advisory firm, was appointed as Interim Chief Financial Officer, effective September 21, 2026. Mr. McShane?s appointment followed the decision of the Company?s Board of Directors, upon the recommendation of the Audit Committee of the Board, to place Mark Thurston, Chief Financial Officer, on administrative leave, also effective September 21, 2026. Mr. Thurston?s leave is pending the conclusion of an ongoing investigation being conducted by independent outside counsel for the Board?s Audit Committee, which was initiated in response to concerns about the Company?s accounting treatment of certain customer and supplier agreements and related matters. (C) S&P Capital IQ - Business Wire - 2026

Endava's CPO on how HR can retain top talent. September 20, 2026 Complacency kills retention. Endava Chief People and Locations Officer Rob Machin reveals how stretching teams with meaningful work keeps employees engaged 2000: an era defined by frosted tips, cable television and MP3 players. It was a time before algorithms dictated corporate life, and human connection was entirely offline. It was also the year Rob Machin joined a small, tight-knit London engineering business called Endava. Fast-forward 26 years, and Endava is now a billion-dollar global technology services company that spans 29 countries. And Rob? He's the company's Chief People and Locations Officer. When Rob first arrived, the company could count 300 heads - now, there's over 11,225. With growth at this scale, Rob explains that "retention is no longer just about individual initiatives; it is about protecting the things that made the company special in the first place". * Endava is a UK-based IT services company founded in 2006, focused on digital transformation and custom software. * The company's regional revenue splits roughly: North America 40%, UK 31%, Europe 23%, rest of the world 6%. * It's grown via acquisitions, including merging operations with ISDC in Bulgaria/Romania (2016) and buying GalaxE.Solutions and EQ Tek in early 2024. * Endava has launched Dava.Flow, an AI-native engagement lifecycle tool, as part of its AI pivot. * Endava operates in 29 countries across the globe. Balancing culture with retention. In practice, Endava's approach to retention across the globe focuses on maintaining a culture built on challenge, collaboration and care, while making sure it can work consistently across very different locations and markets. Rob believes that small, empowered teams of seven to 10 people outperform large hierarchical structures, and trust is therefore given to local leaders to make decisions within a shared cultural framework. Going beyond this, Endava has positioned its offices as creative hubs, providing spaces for innovation, mentoring and mental wellbeing. Rob explains: "As we have grown, the biggest shift has been becoming much more intentional about how people experience Endava day to day: the teams they work in, the leaders they learn from, the communities they belong to and the career path they can see ahead." Protecting these small-team experiences is viewed as "one of the most important things" a business can do - especially as a company grows - as they help foster "ownership, accountability and a stronger sense of connection to the work". Local leadership is another important factor. "People need to feel connected to the global business, but they also need leaders close to them who understand their market, their community and their context," Rob notes. "That balance between a shared culture and empowered local decision-making has been central to sustaining engagement as we have scaled." This partly stems from Endava's belief that "people stay in a company when they can tangibly see the impact of their work, when they have autonomy and agency in their role, and when they have strong bonds with their peers." In larger hierarchical models, decisions and recognition can get diluted, and gaps appear up and down the chain. Empowered teams also help leaders become coaches too, enabling a healthier environment for high performance. When people see a path ahead, they stay hungry, and that hunger powers innovation and performance Rob Machin, Chief People and Locations Officer at Endava For Rob, the key is consistency. "We try to be consistent on the key experiences we want every Endavan to have, such as our culture, standards for leadership and fairness," he shares. This people-first approach means belonging is placed at the heart of Endava. "Belonging doesn't happen by accident at our scale; you really have to purposefully drive it," Rob says. The goal is for people to feel both part of their immediate team and part of something much bigger: a global business with a shared culture of challenge, collaboration and care. Spotting and stopping turnover. Leaving a business is rarely a sporadic decision - there are very often warning signs. But spotting these warning signs - and mitigating them - is the real challenge for HR leaders. Rob notes that although these tend to differ from individual to individual, there are general factors that leaders can keep an eye out for, such as a noticeable drop in energy, withdrawing from the wider team and showing less curiosity about the future. "The best interventions we can make in these cases are fast and human, whether that's a genuinely meaningful conversation about their career, understanding the emotional blockers that may be making that person feel disconnected or re-clarifying expectations to make the day-to-day experience work for them," Rob advises. This being said, high-performing employees want to feel like they are still growing - if they don't, businesses are at risk of losing them. Endava has therefore made it its mission to always value the people who challenge assumptions and ask "why?". "That mindset sharpens thinking and drives better outcomes for clients," Rob says, "but it also means those people need to feel stretched." These employees therefore want to be part of work that matters, "to keep learning and to feel that their contribution is recognised". Or, in other words, ensure employees avoid stalled development, lack of meaningful challenge, weak connection to purpose and, ultimately, feel properly seen by an organisation. One way to embed this into an organisation is through culture - with Rob describing the two as "inseparable." People stay in a company when they can tangibly see the impact of their work Rob Machin, Chief People and Locations Officer at Endava He adds: "People join [Endava] because they're excited by our purpose and culture; they see what we do and how we do it, and want to be part of our team." He explains that seeing themselves develop year on year is what makes them stay, which requires out-of-the-box thinking progressing beyond job titles. For example, by focusing on deepening engineering skills, building leadership capability, expanding client impact and learning how to use AI to enhance human insight and creativity. "When people see a path ahead, they stay hungry, and that hunger powers innovation and performance," he notes. People strategy as a form of business transformation. Rob's takeaway message is clear: Leadership quality is fundamental to retention. However, sustaining this transformation requires "leadership that listens as well as directs". To tackle this, Endava has put a lot of emphasis on trust and open dialogue. He states: "In a world where no plan survives contact with AI-driven disruption, trust and open dialogue become the operating system. That applies throughout the business." Leaders, therefore, need to create clarity, but they also need to prioritise the conditions for "challenge, collaboration and care" to help people grow. It's also the responsibility of leaders to help connect employees to meaningful outcomes, while giving teams the autonomy to perform at their best. Rob's advice for others to achieve this is simple and straightforward: Leaders should not separate people strategy from business transformation. "The two have to move together," he concludes. "When people can see a path ahead, feel connected to the culture and understand how their work contributes to meaningful outcomes, they stay engaged. That is good for retention, but it is also what powers innovation, performance and long-term transformation." Who does Endava partner with? OpenAI: Endava is one of only seven companies worldwide chosen for OpenAI's exclusive Beta Services Partner Program, formalising a year-long collaboration between the two organisations. Together they've built industry-first products and services for joint customers, embedding generative AI into client workflows to automate complex tasks and create personalised, adaptive user experiences. Cognition: Maker of Devin - an AI software engineer - and Windsurf - an agentic development environment -,Cognition's technology works alongside engineering teams to support productivity, quality and consistency across large-scale software development. In February 2026, Endava significantly expanded this partnership to scale governed agentic coding across enterprise engineering environments. Miro: Endava partnered with the AI Innovation Workspace company to bring collaborative AI workflows into its global operations. The partnership integrates Miro into Endava's Dava.Flow platform, operationalising AI across the delivery lifecycle, aiming to shorten client decision cycles and reduce rework in transformation programmes.

AI ads, ChatGPT ads, and Amazon emails draw scrutiny. Ad Network September 02, 2026 AI critics are highlighting new concerns as advertisers show interest in ChatGPT ads and buyers face limited controls over where those ads appear. Adweek reports that about 14% of ads in ChatGPT have no relevance to the user's query, adding to questions about ad quality in a channel that is still developing. The article also says that overreliance on AI can create problems for advertising and customer service. It points to Omnicom, which offloaded more than 460 engineering and product team members who built Omni, its in-house AI platform, to third-party contractor Endava. Omnicom said it entered a multi-year partnership with Endava to support Omni development and operations, while a former team member questioned whether outsourcing the engineering effort was a good idea. Another example of AI-related friction comes from Amazon, which is stripping product details from order confirmation emails. Customers have reported more generic descriptions in receipts, and Amazon told Business Insider the change is meant to bolster privacy protection by limiting the customer information that leaves Amazon's four walls. The company previously made a similar change in 2020 and later rolled it back. The article also notes that the Trump administration is backing OpenAI in the New York Times' copyright lawsuit, with the Justice Department arguing that OpenAI's use of NYT materials for training is protected under fair use. The piece says the final decision will rest with Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern District of New York. About the company. OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company that develops artificial intelligence systems and products. The company says it was created to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Its products include ChatGPT and other AI tools for research, business, and developers. company spotlight Upstream. Upstream leads in mobile marketing automation, specializing in customer acquisition and engagement across mobile channels. The company reaches over 1.2 billion consumers globally, conducting 3.1 billion monthly interactions. Its Grow platform excels in lead optimization and interaction, employing predictive technology and marketing strategies to deliver a 12x ROI for e-commerce. Upstream uses advanced MarTech tools for campaign management, identity resolution, and ad fraud prevention, ensuring optimal performance.