About

Architecture is the job title. The instinct is older: build the tools and rails that compound other engineers’ leverage.

🙂 Andrew Bevan 🔴🔵🟡🟢 Software Architect · Games Platform / Lead Architect, Jackpots @ Derivco Durban, South Africa · 19+ years at one company · 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 family-first

What I do

I’m Software Architect of Games Platform at Derivco, with the role of Lead Architect for Jackpots — one of the highest-stakes domains in iGaming. 19 years at one of the largest iGaming organisations in the world, across testing, dev leadership and platform architecture.

Today I lead platform architecture across a multi-region engineering team, with a focus on AI-first delivery, architectural integrity, and the kind of platform modernisation that doesn’t force a rewrite. Same instinct as 15 years ago: build the tools and rails that compound other engineers’ leverage.

Now

What’s actually on the desk in 2026:

🚀 Lead Architect for progressive jackpots — platform foundation, distributed systems, observability, GitOps
🤖 AI-first development loop — Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in production, exposing enterprise game data to coding agents (Copilot, Claude Code) so engineers can put agents to work against real systems
🧭 Architecture coaching — supporting engineering teams across regions to raise the bar on system design and delivery practice
🏗️ Modernisation in place — strangler-pattern thinking applied to long-lived platforms, so the business never has to choose between “rewrite” and “stay stuck”

How I work

Operating principles I keep coming back to:

Optionality beats prediction. Most architecture decisions are about not foreclosing options the business will want in two years.
Boring tech for the load-bearing walls; novel tech where the optionality lives. Apache Kafka and SQL Server are boring on purpose. The interesting bets go on the edge, where they can be replaced.
Deletion is a feature. The fastest way to improve a platform is usually to remove something, not add something.
Modernise in place. A “rewrite” is almost always the wrong unit of change. Strangler-fig the legacy out, one seam at a time, and never break production.
AI-first is a workflow, not a product. Agents are most powerful when wired to your real systems via well-scoped tools — not as a chatbot bolted on the side.
Build the tools that compound other engineers’ leverage. This is the through-line. Always has been.
Read the room in colour. Same content, different door — direct ask for 🔴 Red energies, evidence-up-front for 🔵 Blue, story-first for 🟡 Yellow, intent-and-people-impact for 🟢 Green.

Architectural through-line — 15 years, one instinct

Across very different stacks, the work I’m proudest of has the same shape: make the engineers around you faster.

2010 — Tesla Innovation Award for internal tooling that gave devs and testers superpowers on the poker platform.
2012 — Da Vinci Innovation Award for a web app that took the friction out of cross-team work allocation.
2018 — Poker-client SDLC re-architecture: configuration delivered via API/DB so the client didn’t need re-rolling, and core-file releases that bypassed the heavyweight Build & Commit ceremony.
2020+ — Game management and aggregation platform that consolidated game delivery for the entire estate, removing per-product integration grind.
2026 — Production Model Context Protocol server exposing enterprise game data to Copilot and Claude Code, so engineers can put AI agents to work against enterprise systems.

Different scale, different stack, same instinct. It’s the lens I bring to architecture decisions: prefer the option that gives the team around me more leverage tomorrow.

Career arc — 19 years, one company, five chapters

I joined Derivco in January 2007 and have been there ever since. The progression from tester to Lead Architect happened across five distinct chapters, each shaped by a different platform and a different scale problem.

2007–2013 — Tester → Senior Tester, Poker Network Testing. Started in QA on one of the largest independent poker networks in the world. ISEB Test Analyst certification (2009). Built developer- and tester-facing tools that won the Tesla Innovation Award (2010), followed by a cross-team work-allocation web application (Da Vinci Innovation Award, 2012). Best Overall Performer in 2011.

2014–2018 — Developer → Dev Lead / Tech Lead, Poker Client. Cross-platform delivery to Web, Android, Windows and Mac across squads in two countries. Architectural initiatives included WebSockets + SharedWorkers for client connection multiplexing, a tournament list performance rewrite supporting 3,000+ concurrent tournaments, an external tournament lobby, and an SDLC re-architecture so the client could be reconfigured at runtime without re-rolling a build.

2020–2025 — Architect, Game Management & Aggregation Platform. Designed and led a cloud-native game management and aggregation platform spanning an entire iGaming estate — hybrid hosting across Azure cloud and regulated on-prem sites. Multi-phase Business Value programme covering bet-settings governance, game-delivery streamlining, single-source-of-truth metadata, and universal game aggregation. Strangler-replaced multiple legacy systems without downtime.

~2024–2025 — Cross-Pillar Architect. Cross-cutting platform architecture work to separate game-server and player-account responsibilities and introduce a next-generation game-hosting platform — without disrupting the live wallet and player-account estate.

2026–present — Software Architect, Games Platform / Lead Architect, Jackpots. Leading platform architecture for progressive jackpots — one of the highest-stakes domains in iGaming. Multi-region engineering team. Focus areas: platform modernisation in place, AI-first delivery, distributed-systems architecture, and architectural integrity across a high-volume, regulated production system.

Writing & speaking

Internal-only for now. Long-form architecture notes, ADRs and platform decision records live inside the company. A public stream is on the roadmap — when something I’m working on can be shared without compromising the platform, it’ll show up here first.

Qualifications

Credential	Awarding body
BTech, Information Technology	Durban University of Technology
Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate	Microsoft
Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals	Microsoft
MCSD — Web Applications & App Builder	Microsoft
MCPD — Web Developer	Microsoft
MCTS — .NET Framework	Microsoft
Applied Project Management in Information Technology	UNISA
AI and Big Data	Learning Machines
ISEB — Test Analyst	BCS

Awards & recognition

Derivco internal awards — peer- and company-recognised contributions across testing, tooling and platform work:

Microsoft programme recognition:

Leadership development

Programme	Focus
Insights Discovery — Reforming Director	Self-awareness, communication, team energy reads
Results-Based Leadership	Outcome-focused leadership programme
Kaizania Agile Bootcamp	Agile delivery and team practice
Toastmasters	Communication & Leadership
MBTI Step 1	Personality and team dynamics