Contact

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasmcgregor/

Summary

Engineering executive who scales high-traffic consumer and marketplace platforms while holding cost flat as the business grows. Twenty+ years leading engineering across travel (Trainline), online marketplaces and e-commerce (Lyst), and adtech and big data (Amobee, Adconion), including regulated environments (ISO-27001, GDPR, PCI, HIPAA). A board- and PE-ready partner who aligns technology with commercial strategy, drives AI and automation into the product, and turns engineering from a cost center into a growth engine.

Selected Outcomes

AI & automation

• Own the AI platform underpinning Trainline’s AI development technology, increasing developer throughput 18% YTD.
• At Lyst, drove the move to 100% AI-driven automation across 270+ ML models, processing hundreds of thousands of updates per minute.
• Led data-driven, AI-enabled modernization of StepStone’s legacy platforms into a single global architecture.

Cost efficiency at scale

• At Trainline, held platform cost flat while the commercial team grew the B2B business (publicly reported £1.08bn net ticket sales, +14% YoY).
• At StepStone, delivered a 17% reduction in annual spend alongside 11% more features shipped and 50% better service availability.
• At Lyst, kept costs flat while expanding to thousands of partners and multiple new markets.

Business impact

• Run the systems operating a B2B unit serving 35,000+ active business clients at 99.9998% availability.
• At Lyst, drove a 40% YoY increase in feature delivery and a three-year streak of 20%+ growth, and played a key role in securing pre-IPO funding.
• At Amobee, delivered brand campaigns with up to 456% performance lift (Lexus, History Channel, SLS Las Vegas).

Key Skills

Experience

VP of Engineering — Trainline: Sept 2025 – Present

Trainline is Europe’s #1 rail app, serving 18M+ active customers.

Reporting to the CTO, I lead 180+ engineers across Core Technology and Enterprise Solutions (Trainline Partner Solutions), the Group’s B2B platform business.

I’m responsible for the systems that operate Trainline Partner Solutions, Trainline’s B2B arm — which publicly reported £1.08bn in net ticket sales (+14% YoY), 58% growth in International B2B distribution, and 35,000+ active business clients (+47% YoY) in FY2026, with TMC partners including Amex GBT and Navan across a c.€6bn European rail market. My focus has been to keep platform cost flat while the commercial team grew that revenue, running these systems at 99.9998% availability and delivering multi-carrier retailing through a single Global API, white-label carrier platforms, and agent and business booking tools.

Core Technology remit spans cloud infrastructure, the AI platform, operations, cybersecurity, and workplace IT.

Senior Vice President of Engineering — StepStone: April 2023 – June 2025

StepStone Group combines StepStone EMEA, the operator of the largest job boards in Europe, with its North American programmatic recruiting network.

Reporting to the global CTO, I ran the EMEA platform and drove global operational standards with a team of 220+ engineers. Modernizing the platform and standards delivered cheaper, faster, and better delivery:

• 17% reduction in annual spend
• 11% increase in features delivered to the market
• 50% improvement in the availability of services to customers

CTO of EMEA — StepStone: Sept 2021 – May 2023

StepStone EMEA operates Axel Springer’s job board divisions in Europe, South Africa, and South America.

Reporting to the CTPO, I drove the digital transformation of StepStone’s multiple legacy platforms into a modern, global, data-driven architecture, and restructured multiple divisions into a global engineering department of 700+ engineers. In this role I:

• created a strategy and business case for retiring multiple legacy systems and adopting a global platform
• worked directly with the C-Suite to drive delivery strategies, budgets, and targets
• rolled out a global engineering model and unified our multiple teams
• introduced engineering chapters and training programs to upskill teams
• embedded 72% of engineering directly into their business units

CTO — Lyst: Jan 2019 – Aug 2021

Lyst is the world’s largest fashion search and shopping platform.

Reporting to the CEO, I managed 80+ engineers plus 20–40 near-shore engineers as part of our dynamic scaling model. My key contributions:

• Technology Leadership: Spearheaded the company’s technology strategy, operations, and engineering talent development.
• Cultural Transformation: Drove a stronger engineering culture, resulting in a 40% YoY increase in feature delivery and a significant boost in employee morale (OfficeVibe score up from 7.2 to 8.5).
• Scalability & Automation: Led the migration to 100% AI-driven automation, scaling the system to process hundreds of thousands of updates per minute across 270+ AI/ML models. Achieved a three-year streak of 20%+ growth in usage and revenue.
• Cost & Efficiency Gains: Automated manually intensive processes, keeping costs flat while enabling expansion to thousands of partners and multiple local markets.
• Executive Collaboration: Played a key role in securing pre-IPO funding, overseeing due diligence and managing the data room.

Head of Product and Technology for Lottovate — ZEAL Network SE: Dec 2018 – Dec 2019

I led the creation of lottery Infrastructure, Platforms, and Software as a Service (I/P/SaaS) for charities, including UNICEF, Conservation International, and Ronald McDonald House.

My team secured 3 lottery licenses in 3 countries and launched 2 consumer lottery products: UNICEF-lotteriet (Norway) and Raffld.nl, the first new licensed lottery in 30 years for the Netherlands.

Head of Technology BBG — ZEAL Network SE: Dec 2015 – Nov 2017

As the technology founder of Lottovate, I built a team of 30+ engineers and 3 product managers, and established the technology, processes, and operations.

I created the original systems and was hands on (11th most active contributor by commits), while the team constructed 84 microservices and 500K+ lines of code. I architected a strategy based on microservices, RESTful APIs, and single-page dynamic applications, and our multi-tenant services were quickly repackaged across multiple products, markets, and regulatory environments.

SVP Engineering — Amobee (formerly Adconion): Aug 2014 – Dec 2015

I led technology, product, and operations, and the post-acquisition merger of Adconion’s AdTech platform into Amobee/SingTel.

I launched Amobee’s new Social Advertising System — the first product in market to serve across the big 3 social APIs at the time (Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest) — and created Amobee’s INK/Social product, which delivered significant lift for brands’ ad spend through intelligent cross-device, cross-channel journeys: 195% lift for Lexus, 363% for History Channel, and 456% for SLS Las Vegas.

SVP Engineering — Adconion Media Group: Feb 2013 – Aug 2014

I led global engineering for Adconion with development teams of 80+ across 7 locations, managing $10M+ in annual technology investment and responsible for $260M+ of revenue-generating products and services.

I introduced award-winning products, including Amobee’s INK cross-channel and cross-device solution, drove industry leadership through events such as AWS re:Invent, Strata, and Dreamforce and standards work with the IAB, and restructured corporate strategy to transform technology from a cost center into a strategic, revenue-generating investment.

VP of Data — Adconion Media Group: Oct 2011 – Feb 2013

I headed the team that developed and operated systems for the large-scale, near-real-time processing of massive data (2B+ daily events, 57Q+ weekly optimizations).

We built a data pipeline that could ingest, normalize, analyze, and report on data from a wide variety of internal and external sources, delivering self-service reporting and analytics that empowered timely, accurate, data-driven decisions across Adconion’s global footprint of 27 offices in 20 countries with follow-the-sun, 24x7x365 operations.

Earlier Career

Director of Engineering — Disney: May 2009 – Oct 2011. Led engineering across Disney’s Family Group, Central Engineering, and Studio Technology — 32 engineers and a portfolio of 14 web properties delivering $45M+ in revenue — and managed the technology integration of five acquisitions.

CTO — Userplane / AOL: July 2008 – May 2009. Ran technology and operations for a SaaS platform serving 300,000+ publisher sites, scaling it from start-up mode to enterprise SLAs and release discipline following AOL’s acquisition.

CTO — Xdrive / AOL: July 2003 – July 2008. Founded and led a first-generation cloud storage service — profitable by 2004 and acquired by AOL in 2005 — inventing much of the core technology (see Patents).

Education

B.S. Chemistry (Nuclear), with minors in Philosophy and Information Technology.

Languages

• Fluent: English
• Elementary: German

Patents

• Digital asset management system (DAMS) — US 9,811,576 B2 · Issued Nov 7, 2017
• Methods and systems for providing file data and metadata — US 9,378,212 B2 · Issued Jun 28, 2016
• Network personal digital video recorder system (npdvr) — US 9,369,770 B2 · Issued Jun 14, 2016
• Shared internet storage resource, user interface system, and method — US 7,496,578 B2 · Issued Feb 4, 2009
• Shared internet storage resource, user interface system, and method — US 7,337,207 B2 · Issued Feb 26, 2008
• Shared internet storage resource, user interface system, and method — US 7,171,472 B2 · Issued Jan 30, 2007
• Shared internet storage resource, user interface system, and method — US 6,985,927 B2 · Issued Jan 10, 2006
• Shared internet storage resource, user interface system, and method — US 6,351,776 B1 · Issued Feb 26, 2002