I’ve led engineering managers and their teams across six regulated gaming markets.
I’m Michael Chambers, a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Bede Gaming. My teams owned how players register, sign in, verify who they are and stay protected, across the UK, Germany, Ontario, Brazil, New Zealand and South Africa.
Career highlights
Regulated market launches
My teams built the player sign-up and verification that several regulated market launches depended on.
Compliance that holds up
I delivered player-protection features on time with very few defects, and our regulatory reporting was among the first certified.
Moving players safely
I drove a large player migration from another provider without anyone re-registering, with exclusions, limits and verification intact.
Faster change, same confidence
I used test automation and AI to cut effort on a major framework upgrade, and built AI-assisted failure investigation.
How I lead
Most of how I lead comes down to one question: where does engineering time pay back, and where does it just cost more the longer it’s left?
Growing leaders from within
I’d rather develop the next lead than recruit one. They already know the platform and the team, and succession planning means I know who could step up before a role opens.
Developed three engineering managers and a staff engineer in-house, with retention and workstream eNPS above the company average.
Deciding where the effort goes
I own my workstream’s roadmap for everything that isn’t customer-driven, shaped with compliance, product and our principal engineer. Part of that is knowing when the answer is more people, and when it’s sharper skills.
Made the case for extra headcount in several critical periods, and influenced training budget towards real gaps such as advanced SQL and communication.
Keeping the cost of change down
I put upgrades through normal planning, each with its own ticket and a named engineer. The lesson I took from the framework upgrade: automated tests were debt worth paying earlier, not bundling into the upgrade.
Open dependency alerts fell from 540 to 93, with 994 fixed in six months; my AI upgrade playbook was used on all five upgrades.
Fixed dates, fewer surprises
When a date is agreed with a regulator, it doesn’t move. I take risk out early: dependencies locked in up front, performance testing ready ahead of time, and release slots ring-fenced.
Introduced sprint health checks that became standard across the workstream, and met both a fixed operator launch and a date agreed with the regulator.
