Umbraco appoints Phil Whittaker to lead AI & MCP Server work
Umbraco has named Phil Whittaker as Staff Engineer (AI) to lead work on the development of its MCP Server and support the adoption of AI technologies within the platform.
As part of Umbraco's core CMS team, Phil Whittaker's focus will be on developing the Umbraco MCP Server to facilitate organisations' ability to integrate artificial intelligence into their digital services. The appointment reinforces Umbraco's commitment to supporting its users as the sector explores new applications of AI.
The Umbraco content management system is widely used by major organisations, including Carlsberg Group, Rubbermaid, The Council of the European Union, Baker Tilly, and Renault UK. Several UK public sector bodies such as the British Army and Royal Navy have also utilised the platform for their online services. According to the company, Umbraco is among the top three web platforms in use across the UK public sector.
Community engagement
Over two decades, Umbraco has developed an engaged community of more than 250,000 open-source contributors. This user base is supported by a network of international digital agency partners, with the platform backed by Umbraco's commercial operations to ensure ongoing support, updates, and resilience.
Phil Whittaker joins Umbraco with 25 years of experience in software development. His background includes founding a digital agency, serving as Chief Technology Officer, and operating as a lead engineer. Recognised within the Umbraco community, he has achieved Umbraco MVP status five times due to his participation in developer knowledge-sharing initiatives and the organisation of user meetups.
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.
AI development
The Model Context Protocol (MCP), which was open-sourced by Anthropic in November 2024, serves as a standard method for integrating large language models (LLMs) with data sources and tools. MCP servers allow organisations to programme controls across their infrastructure, determining what data and resources LLMs are permitted to access.
Discussing his role, Phil Whittaker outlined his experience and understanding of MCP in the CMS context:
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.
Organisation response
Filip Bech-Larsen, Umbraco's Chief Technology Officer, welcomed Whittaker's addition to the team, underlining his significance both to the community and to recent AI-focused product development:
Phil Whittaker is a major contributor within our open-source community and is at the very heart of the Umbraco MCP Server development. We're excited to be able to work alongside him at Umbraco HQ to support organizations as they learn how to harness the power of agentic AI, while retaining full control and transparency over its operation.
The Umbraco platform is constructed on Microsoft .NET and offers integration capabilities with third-party applications. The MCA Server development forms part of the company's broader strategy to support custom digital solutions and address evolving organisational requirements around AI, security, and data management.
