Alasdair McCaig

Biography

About Alasdair

A seasoned technologist, architect, and engineering leader with a 29-year career spanning systems administration, software engineering, technical architecture, cloud transformation, and long-term product stewardship.

Alasdair is the co-founder and Technical Director of everosi Limited, a consultancy delivering architecture, engineering, and advisory services to organisations across the UK, and the former Head of Technology at Substance, where he led the evolution of the company's flagship platform, Views, from early concept to a modern, scalable, cloud-ready ecosystem.

His career is defined by a rare combination of breadth and depth. He has operated across the full technical stack — from Linux systems and mail servers to backend engineering, mobile development, distributed architecture, and cloud autoscaling — while also providing strategic leadership, mentoring teams, and guiding organisations through complex technical decisions.

Alasdair is equally comfortable writing production code, diagnosing infrastructure issues, designing large-scale systems, or advising executives on long-term technology direction. He has a particular talent for seeing solutions and pathways that others don't, and for translating complex technical realities into clear, actionable strategy for non-technical stakeholders.

Long before DevOps existed as a discipline, he was already operating across the boundaries that modern teams often silo: OS, network, application, database, deployment, monitoring, scaling, and security. That foundational breadth continues to define how he works today.

Career Highlights

Flagship Achievements

Substance

Views Platform — Concept to Cloud-Scaled Ecosystem

Architected, modernised, and led the long-term evolution of a national-scale outcomes-tracking platform used by charities, public bodies, and major organisations across the UK. Delivered PHP 5.2→7.4 migration, monolith→modular transformation, and full cloud autoscaling via DigitalOcean with load balancers, autoscale pools, and stateless file storage.

UEFA

National-Scale Digital Platform Delivery

Delivered architecture and engineering for a high-profile, high-traffic digital platform supporting major European football operations, ensuring resilience, security, and long-term maintainability.

Spirit Studios

Digital Transformation

Led technical modernisation and platform redevelopment for a leading creative-education organisation, improving reliability, scalability, and user experience across the entire digital estate.

Historic Royal Palaces

Visitor Experience Modernisation

Architected and delivered systems supporting visitor engagement, operational efficiency, and digital transformation across iconic UK heritage sites, with a focus on resilience and long-term sustainability.

TRAC Associates

Platform Stabilisation & Modernisation

Stabilised, modernised, and re-architected a complex legacy platform, improving performance, reliability, and maintainability — reducing operational risk and restoring team confidence.

LiDAR Advisory

Technical Strategy & Architecture

Provided strategic technical direction and architectural guidance for LiDAR-driven data platforms and analytical tooling, ensuring scalability and future-proofing for high-volume geospatial workloads.

Career

Professional Experience

2008 – 2023

Head of Technology & Strategic Systems Architect

Substance — High Peak, UK
Originally engaged as a Strategic Systems Architect and contractor from 2008 before transitioning to a permanent senior role in 2016. Led the full evolution of the Views platform and the wider technology function.
- Architected and oversaw the Views platform from concept through to national-scale deployment, serving charities, public bodies, and major organisations across the UK.
- Led a complete infrastructure migration from Rackspace to DigitalOcean, implementing autoscale pools, load balancers, and stateless file storage — improving resilience and reducing operational costs.
- Drove the PHP 5.2→7.4 migration and a monolith-to-modular architectural transformation, significantly reducing technical debt.
- Built, led, and mentored an in-house development team of six, introducing CI/CD pipelines, code review culture, and structured release processes.
- Provided strategic technical direction, risk management, and long-term platform planning at board level.
- Delivered client solutions for UEFA, Spirit Studios, Historic Royal Palaces, and TRAC Associates under the Substance umbrella.
- Implemented Social Value measurement platforms for UEFA and Substance, including early work with the SROI framework.
2002 – Present

Co-founder & Technical Director

everosi Limited — UK (Consultancy)
Co-founded and continue to lead everosi as a vehicle for architecture, engineering, and advisory work alongside long-term client engagements.
- Delivered software architecture, backend engineering, Linux systems design, and database work for a wide range of national and SME clients over more than two decades.
- Developed an early C# application for Windows CE / Windows Mobile — demonstrating cross-platform engineering capability long before modern mobile ecosystems matured.
- Provided long-term technical stewardship for MLRS Books (e-commerce and publishing platform) and Bakewell Holiday Cottages (booking and property management system), both of which remain active.
- Delivered advisory, architecture, and infrastructure work for clients ranging from public-sector bodies to creative agencies and SMEs.
- Maintained expertise across PHP, C#, JavaScript, Python, Linux administration, and cloud infrastructure throughout.
1997 – 2002

Systems Administrator, Developer & Team Lead

Poptel
Began career at Poptel working across multiple parallel roles, reflecting an era where full-stack ownership was the norm rather than the exception.
- Linux/Unix Systems Administrator, PHP Developer, Database Administrator, ASP Developer, and Team Lead — often simultaneously.
- Developed foundational skills in systems, networks, databases, and application development that continue to inform an holistic, systems-level approach to technology today.

Selected Work

Projects & Platforms

Long-Term Active Platforms

OngoingFull-StackBrand

Vortex Gymnastics Academy

Designed and built the public-facing website on a proprietary WebCMS platform (everosi). Designed the club logo and brand identity. Built a bespoke Views–GoCardless financial integration for automated direct debit and payment reconciliation. Developed a suite of custom operational reports that Views itself could not produce — giving club management the visibility needed to run the academy day-to-day. A full end-to-end engagement: brand, web, systems integration, and bespoke reporting.

OngoingE-Commerce

MLRS Books

Designed, built, and continue to maintain a bespoke e-commerce and publishing platform supporting digital and physical sales, catalogue management, and secure content delivery. A testament to long-term client trust and stable, sustainable engineering.

OngoingBooking System

Bakewell Holiday Cottages

Developed and maintain a custom booking and property management system for a holiday-let business in the Peak District. Handles availability, pricing, enquiries, and customer communication — a reliable alternative to off-the-shelf solutions.

Legacy Impact Work

Public SectorMIS

MyPas (MYS/MYC) — Youth Service MIS

Built a comprehensive MIS for Manchester Youth Service, tracking attendance, staff training, and programme outcomes. Adopted by Rochdale and Stockport councils.

Public SectorMIS

Life Long Libraries

Designed a staff and client engagement system for Manchester's library services, recording interactions and programme outcomes across government-funded initiatives.

Creative TechStreaming

53degrees — Early Creative Platform

Built a pioneering digital platform for Manchester artists, with video upload and streaming capability, predating Flickr and YouTube.

MobileC#

Sea Angling Diary — Mobile App

Maintained and extended a C# Windows CE/Mobile application before leading its rewrite into React Native and subsequently Ionic Framework.

Technical Depth

Skills & Technologies

Languages

PHP C# JavaScript Python Bash SQL ASP

Architecture & Design

Systems Architecture Distributed Systems API Design Modular Platforms Domain-Driven Design Legacy Modernisation

Infrastructure & Cloud

Linux Administration DigitalOcean Autoscaling Load Balancers Nginx Exim / Mail SSH / Security Docker

Databases & Data

MySQL Schema Design Query Optimisation Reporting Data Modelling

Mobile & Frontend

React Native Ionic C# / Windows CE Bootstrap 5 jQuery FullCalendar

Frameworks

CodeIgniter 4 OAuth2 SAML / SSO DataTables Select2

Practices & Tooling

CI/CD Git / Gitea PhpStorm Code Review ISO 27001 Rsync / SSH

Leadership

Technical Strategy Team Mentoring Risk Management Stakeholder Alignment Fractional CTO Architecture Review

Working Style

Professional Identity

Systems Thinker

Alasdair consistently sees solutions and pathways that others don't. He is drawn to the messy, complex problems that require someone who can hold the whole system in mind simultaneously — not just the component in front of them.

Pragmatic Architect

Not every problem needs the newest technology. Alasdair brings a measured, evidence-based approach to technology selection — choosing what fits the organisation's actual needs, team capabilities, and long-term trajectory.

Trusted Mentor

Throughout his career, Alasdair has built a reputation as someone teams want to learn from. He creates clarity, builds confidence, and elevates the engineers around him — making organisations more capable long after he's moved on.