"CTO in Focus" Daniel Whiteley, Bede Gaming
- Kevin Jones
- Sep 2
- 4 min read
From fintech to immersive media to betting, Daniel Whiteley has built his career in industries where milliseconds matter and trust is non-negotiable. Now, as CTO of Bede Gaming, he is applying those lessons to a sector where the margin for error is vanishingly small and the business stakes existential. In this CTO in Focus, Whiteley unpacks the principles that shape his leadership resilience, calculated risk, and trust and explains how they influence everything from database migrations to regulatory compliance.
Gaming Eminence: You’ve led complex technology programmes across fintech, betting, and immersive media domains where milliseconds and trust matter. What personal principles now shape your decision-making at Bede, where the stakes aren’t just technical, but existential?
Daniel Whiteley: "I tend to operate around three core principles: resilience, calculated risk, and trust. In iGaming, where uptime isn’t just expected but critical, building performant resilient systems is non-negotiable. But resilience isn’t just technical—it’s also cultural. I believe in creating an environment where we can fail fast and learn quickly without compromising the bigger picture, as taking smart, bounded risks is often the only way to move at the pace innovation demands.
From a trust point angle, both internally with teams and externally with customers, this is what allows us to move quickly without eroding integrity. In fact, when executed well, it builds confidence and more trust. At Bede, I aim to make decisions that not only scale under pressure but also reflect the bold, responsible leadership you’d want in moments that truly test a business."
Gaming Eminence: Technical cultures often reflect the temperament of their leaders. In your view, what part of Bede’s engineering DNA today carries your fingerprint, be it in how systems scale, how teams think, or how problems get solved under pressure?
DW: "I think you see it most clearly in how we approach complexity. I don’t believe in building “clever” systems just for the sake of it as there’s a real difference between innovation and overengineering.
We’ve fostered a culture where simplicity is a virtue and robustness is a shared responsibility. When something breaks, we don’t just patch the symptoms, but rather fix the underlying system. I try to model a mindset that’s curious, pragmatic, pressure-tested, and proactive, and I see that reflected in how our teams operate. This ethos shows in our approach to continual improvement, designing for failure, and always asking how we can deliver even greater value to our customers."
Gaming Eminence: Can you walk us through a moment where you deliberately took a route others may have avoided—perhaps a high-wire technical decision, a platform shift, or a trade-off that required conviction over consensus? What was at stake, and what did you learn?
DW: "One example that stands out is our migration from Microsoft Cosmos DB to MongoDB Atlas. It wasn’t the safe or easy route and carried a fair deal of risk, but staying where we were meant reduced portability, rising costs, and deeper vendor lock-in, none of which I’m comfortable with.
Naturally, there was some resistance. Not because people doubted the end goal, but because the journey was uncertain. We had to unpick a complex architecture, handle massive volumes of data, and prove both integrity and performance under pressure, all while delivering a clear ROI.
The result was a huge success, cutting costs by 70% for the same workload levels, with zero degradation, full data portability and a powerful new database platform. It reminded me of that famous David Bowie quote: “If you feel safe in the area you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in.”
Gaming Eminence: The gambling sector lives in tension: speed vs. scrutiny, creativity vs. control. As a CTO, how do you personally hold that line between experimentation and compliance, especially when moving fast might mean brushing up against regulatory grey zones?
DW: "For me, compliance doesn’t have to mean constraint. If you bring regulatory thinking upstream, baking it into how you approach problems and architecture, you can innovate within boundaries rather than in spite of them. It’s much like security: when built in by design, it doesn’t slow you down. It strengthens everything around it and can help deliver even more value to your customers.
Ultimately, it’s about creating systems that are agile by default, but audit-ready by design. We move fast and experiment, but with guardrails in place that make regulatory scrutiny part of the feedback loop and not just an afterthought. That’s how we maintain velocity without losing trust."
Gaming Eminence: From your vantage point, what’s the next real inflection point for gambling technology, not just another AI add-on, but a meaningful shift in how systems are built or how players interact? What frontier are you quietly preparing for?
DW: "I think data, AI, and autonomous operations working in tandem will be the real difference maker. Data drives deeper player insights and better experiences, while AI can enable smarter decision making for businesses, moving beyond simple automation to adaptive, context-aware systems.
Autonomous operations will also transform how we manage platform performance in the future. In an industry where speed and reliability are critical, systems that predict issues, respond instantly, and self-heal without the need of for human intervention will definitely be the biggest game changers.
We’re investing heavily in engineering expertise and tooling to deliver advanced observability, AI-powered anomaly detection, and automated mitigation. The frontier I’m preparing for is where data, AI, and autonomous systems converge to create platforms that are resilient by design and provide seamless, context-aware experiences that can add real value to players and customers."
Gaming Eminence: What keeps you intellectually sharp outside of the day job? Are there habits, disciplines, or even non-tech interests that help you see problems and solutions differently as a technology leader in this industry?
DW: "I try to spend time with people and explore ideas beyond tech—whether that’s listening to podcasts about our reliance on key resources, renovating my house, or going indoor climbing. These all help me clear my head, work through problems, and see ideas from fresh perspectives.
I think the best insights rarely come from staring at a problem. It’s usually only when you step away and let your mind wander that real breakthroughs happen, so outside of work, I’m always trying new things. I believe getting out of your comfort zone is one of the best ways to stay sharp."