Betfair exchange CTOs as Paul Cutter takes up post

Betfairhas appointed former BSkyB director of software engineering Paul Cutter as its new chief technology officer.

Cutter takes over as CTO at the online betting and gaming exchange from Tony McAlister, a former IT executive at mobile network Vodafone, who was in the role from January 2009 and featured on last year’s CIO 100.

Mechanical engineering PhD Cutter – who champions lean and agile development, open source tools and cloud computing – was at BSkyB for more than five years. At Betfair HQ in Hammersmith, west London, he inherits an IT staff of around 700 and a budget of over £100 million.

Former CTO McAlister spoke to CIO UK in 2010 about R&D and recruitment at the Gibraltar-registered company, having taken over his role from predecessor Rorie Devine the previous year.

Now CTO at taxi app Hailo, Devine has written guest articles for CIO UK about Big Data and served as a judge for last year’s CIO 100.

Devine was profiled in a CIO interview in 2008 where he discussed management and communication with the then 300-strong IT team, which at the time made up a quarter of the Betfair workforce.