The situation
UK Tote Group runs the Tote, the UK's pool betting operator for horse racing.
Under private equity ownership the business needed a platform of its own, built from scratch. At the same time, developer hiring was running behind plan and quality depended heavily on manual testing.
What I did
- Pitched the new platform to the operating and executive committees, and secured almost £5m of investment.
- Architected the platform from the ground up and worked hands on across it: .NET services, a React front end built on a shared TypeScript component library shipped as web components, and Storyblok as the headless CMS.
- Led delivery end to end with a cross-functional team of 15 remote engineers, using test-driven development throughout.
- Ran a 12-week training course that moved six QA engineers into automation engineering roles.
- Rebuilt developer hiring around verbal technical walkthroughs instead of take-home tests, and improved the benefits package.
- Reorganised the engineering guilds into autonomous groups working on a floating-resource model.
- Acted as engineering's GDPR champion, keeping delivery aligned with data policy and gambling legislation.
How it was built
A new .NET back end and React front end, built from scratch. One React and TypeScript component library, published as web components, meant the same building blocks worked across every Tote product, with MUI and Tailwind CSS underneath the design system and Storyblok managing content.
Every component was built test-first, which is why so few defects reached production.
- .NET
- C#
- React
- TypeScript
- Web Components
- Storyblok
- MUI
- Tailwind CSS
- Test-driven development
The result
Three reported bugs in the first four months live.
The new platform went live with only three reported bugs in its first four months. It moved into steady-state maintenance and was handed to the out-of-hours support team under a negotiated warranty.
The new hiring process grew engineering headcount by 10%, and six QA engineers moved into automation engineering roles.