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In our Meet Addepar series, we sit down with the people at the heart of our success — those who enable us to consistently deliver excellent outcomes for our clients. Today, we speak to Rhys McCaig, Principal Enterprise Architect in Addepar's Office of the CTO.
Rhys brings a background in software-as-a-service and telecommunications, and he describes himself as a generalist at heart. His work sits at the intersection of every team building on Addepar's platform — less about writing any one system, and more about making sure everyone building it has what they need to do it well. Below, he talks about what drew him to Addepar, why he thinks the company's architecture might surprise people and why he's not particularly worried about AI taking over the world.
What do you do at Addepar, exactly?
If I had to give myself the most accurate job title, I'd probably say “engineering therapist” — I help people work through their engineering problems. If I were explaining it to a five-year-old, I'd say I talk to a lot of people and then tell other people what they said.
More practically, my job is to talk with people across every level of the organization and help them get the context they need to do their jobs well. I'm not there to do the work for them, instead I help them understand the business need and the broader picture so they can do it better themselves. We have a lot of genuinely smart people here, and my role is mostly about supporting them.
What drew you to Addepar?
What made Addepar interesting to me was the stage the company is at now. Addepar has grown a lot over the last five years, and that growth is creating new challenges to solve as we move into the next phase. It's large enough that there are meaningful, hard problems to work on, but still small enough that nearly everyone here can see and feel the impact of their work. As a senior engineer, that combination is genuinely exciting, and I think it's exciting for the people joining us too.
It's also just a great time to be at Addepar specifically. We're innovating quickly on AI products, the team is growing and there's a lot of interesting work already underway. More broadly, it's an exciting moment for the industry as AI reshapes what's possible, and I think we're well positioned — given the financial institutions we serve — to make a real difference there.
Has Addepar met your expectations for working in technology built for finance?
Not exactly, and in a good way. Before joining, I assumed that working in anything tied to the financial world would mean slow-moving, process-heavy work and a fairly buttoned-up culture. What I found instead were thoughtful, kind and genuinely collaborative people. This is a team that actually gets things done, which wasn't something I was confident I'd find in tech built for the financial industry. It's been a pleasant surprise.
How do you think about building systems that financial institutions can trust while still innovating quickly?
There's a core set of capabilities that are non-negotiable and that’s the foundation that trust is actually built on. We put a lot of effort and thought into making sure those platform capabilities are rock-solid, so that the engineers working on new features and cutting-edge products don't have to reinvent that foundation every time. That gives everyone confidence that the fundamentals work, which in turn frees up time and energy for the more interesting, forward-looking work. We’re figuring out what's next here at Addepar.
What might surprise people about Addepar's architecture?
I think people are often surprised that a company with Addepar's startup roots and rapid growth has architecture this solid. It’s institutional-grade data and portfolio management infrastructure, but also flexible, which allows us to keep building in a way that supports both continued growth and continued innovation at the same time.
What's your take on AI and where it's headed?
I don't think AI is going to destroy the world. I also don't think software engineering is changing as dramatically as people sometimes suggest. Writing code is faster and easier now, certainly, but the core discipline hasn't gone anywhere. We still have to make design decisions, decide what not to build, maintain what we've shipped and think carefully about the product. That part of the job isn't changing.
Personally, I'd call myself a fairly unremarkable user of AI, and I think that's fine. I use it when it helps me get something done, and I don't reach for it when I don't need it. It's a tool, and a genuinely great one. But it's still just a tool.
How would you describe your approach to leadership?
My goal, whether I'm acting as a manager or as an architect, is to give people the tools they need to do their jobs well. It's fundamentally about enabling people and enabling the company's engineering capability more broadly as we scale.
My team's identity really comes down to this: when there's a problem the organization doesn't yet know how to solve, we try to help solve it — and just as importantly, we try to equip the people closest to the problem to solve it themselves.
What's a piece of advice you'd give your younger self?
Sometimes the best thing you can do is quiet down and listen. You're rarely the most knowledgeable person in the room — there's almost always someone you can learn from, and if you listen closely enough for long enough, you might eventually become that person yourself. I'm rarely the smartest person in a room I'm in, and I've come to see my job as learning from the people who are, and then passing that learning along to others.
What do you do to decompress?
I like to garden, honestly anything that gets me looking away from a screen. Some days after work, I'll just go outside, sit in the garden and pick weeds by hand. There's something meditative about it.