Umbraco has announced the appointment of Phil Whittaker as Staff Engineer (AI).

Working with Umbraco’s core CMS team, Phil Whittaker will focus on developing Umbraco MCP Servers and supporting AI transformation.

The Umbraco content management system (CMS) underpins the digital platforms of Carlsberg Group, The Council of the European Union, and Renault UK. It is one of the top three web platforms used by the UK public sector. Organisations including the British Army, Royal Navy, Westminster Abbey, and Sheffield Council have built sites and digital services on Umbraco.

Over the past twenty years, the Umbraco CMS has attracted a highly-engaged community of more than 250,000 open-source contributors and an international network of digital agency partners. The open-source CMS is backed by the Umbraco commercial organisation, which ensures that the platform remains supported, updated, and resilient.

Phil Whittaker brings 25 years’ experience working in senior roles as a software developer, digital agency founder, CTO, and lead engineer. He is a prominent member of Umbraco’s open-source software community. His commitment to sharing his knowledge with fellow developers and organising Umbraco user meetups in Manchester has earned him Umbraco MVP status on five occasions.

Commenting on his appointment, Phil Whittaker said, “Being part of the Umbraco open-source community over the past fourteen years has made a huge difference to me professionally and personally. I’m delighted to join a team of people whose work I have admired for many years.”

In November 2024, Anthropic open-sourced its Model Context Protocol (MCP) to provide a standardised method of integrating large language models (LLMs) with data sources, software tools, and workflows. MCP Servers exist as part of an organisation’s infrastructure, allowing developers to program in greater controls governing precisely what LLMs can and cannot access.

Explaining his role in supporting organisations’ AI transformation, Phil Whittaker added, “I’ve been developing AI apps for a couple of years and using AI for content generation and coding since before Chat GPT was launched. I started experimenting with Model Context Protocol at the start of this year and was hugely impressed by its potential when combined with a CMS. This led me to the development of an MCP Server for Umbraco. It’s incredibly powerful, while providing strong control. We’ve built the right tool in the right way at exactly the right time. As a developer, you don’t come across anything this momentous more than once or twice in your career.”

Umbraco CTO, Filip Bech-Larsen, welcomed the appointment, saying, “Phil Whittaker is a major contributor within our open-source community and is at the very heart of Umbraco MCP Server development. We’re excited to be able to work alongside him at Umbraco HQ to support organisations as they learn how to harness the power of agentic AI, while retaining full control and transparency over its operation.”

Phil Whittaker’s appointment closely follows Umbraco’s establishment of its Bristol office in September. The company has made several key appointments to provide local sales, technical, and customer support to British digital agency partners building ecommerce and digital experiences for enterprises.