Umbraco Accelerates Global Growth with New Melbourne Office, Appoints Emmanuel Tissera Head of APAC

Umbraco is opening a new gift in this post-holiday season: a new office in Melbourne, Australia.

This is just the latest in the open source CMS vendor’s global ambitions, beginning with the opening of a US office in Charlotte back in August of 2020. Since then, the company has expanded its regional hosting for Umbraco Cloud users in both Australia and Canada – and most recently established a UK office in September of 2025.

This is another big move, demonstrating Umbraco’s confidence as it looks to grow across multiple markets in the Asia-Pacific region. To get the job done, the company has tapped Emmanuel Tissera to create and lead a team of dedicated professionals tasked with supporting Umbraco’s partners and enterprise customers in Australia, New Zealand, and the APAC territory.

Umbraco's Head of APAC Emmanuel Tissera. Source: Umbraco

Tissera comes from solid Umbraco stock. As the previous Technical Director at Luminary, the first of three digital agencies in Australia to achieve Umbraco Platinum Partner status, he led and grew a team of developers building digital experiences for enterprise clients. He was also instrumental in establishing Umbraco’s regional hosting in 2023 to provide data residency for Umbraco Cloud users in Australia and New Zealand.

“I’m genuinely excited about taking on this new role, which is the culmination of fifteen years working with the Umbraco CMS on both the client and agency side,” Tissera said. 

As the company framed in its announcement, a growing number of APAC partners are building highly scalable digital experiences on the Umbraco CMS platform for a wide range of organizations with enterprise-grade requirements. This includes Zoos Victoria (which serves 2.25 million visitors a year), Australia for UNHCR, and ReMade in Australia. To provide partners with essential local support for RFPs, technical demos, and PoCs, Umbraco decided to open an office in Melbourne's central business district.

According to CEO Mats Persson, the addition of Tissera is a key part of the success quotient, providing seasoned leadership and broad industry expertise – all underscored by a strong Umbraco foundation.

“We are thrilled to have someone with Emmanuel’s depth of technical expertise, business acumen, community involvement, and interpersonal skills to lead, grow, and strengthen the Umbraco APAC team,” Persson said. “He brings more than two decades’ experience of guiding strategy, implementing technology, and shaping solutions architecture for leading enterprises. Clients, colleagues and the community can be reassured that they are in safe hands.

A deep heritage of CMS expertise

As a member of Umbraco's Management team reporting directly to Persson, Tissera will lead the strategy and execution for growing the Umbraco footprint across the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on the development of high-value relationships with partners, clients, and the open-source community. 

Leveraging his breadth of hands-on experience – crystallized by earning Umbraco MVP status six years in a row – Tissera plans to demonstrate the power of Umbraco as a scalable, performant, and friendly CMS for businesses and developers in the region. 

During his decade-long tenure at Luminary, he built enterprise-scale websites for leading Australian brands, including Snooze, Metricon, and the Melbourne Airport. He also provided solutions architecture for Schneider Electric and Netwealth, and led discovery projects for the New South Wales Government and UNICEF.

Tissera brings proven insight to this new role. For the last 23 years, he has worked as a software engineer, building experience across the market’s leading content management systems. From the client perspective, he has worked with a bevy of notable organizations, including Emirates in Dubai and the Australian Associated Press. 

Tissera’s success is built on a solid Umbraco foundation, and he credits the company for helping to unlock his personal journey into the development field. He continues to pay that forward as a highly regarded contributor to the open source community, organizing regular meetups with fellow Umbraco developers across the APAC region. 

“My Umbraco expertise helped me to land my first web developer role in Australia, and I’ve been organizing developer meetups for the past eight years,” Tissera said. “The opening of the Melbourne office demonstrates Umbraco HQ’s commitment to APAC. I’m proud to be leading and growing the team to provide boots on the ground for Umbraco partners, enterprise customers, and the wider Umbraco community in Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia-Pacific region.”

The verdict 

Umbraco is opening 2026 with a strong commitment to its global strategy, building methodically and mindfully. By tapping a proven talent with Tissera, the company is leaning on a local expert with a worldwide reputation – someone who can help frame the benefits of the open source platform and its roadmap as it edges further into AI, orchestration, MCP, and other initiatives. 

There’s wind in Umbraco’s sails, and for good reason. In my previous conversations with Persson – including a recent webinar we co-hosted on the future of composability – the company is harnessing its differentiated value to enable enterprises with a complete ecosystem of capabilities. 

Much of the innovation and traction is coming from its highly engaged community of more than 250,000 open-source contributors and an international network of digital agency partners, with trust being reinforced by the Umbraco commercial organization – which ensures the platform remains supported, updated, and resilient.

As 2026 blossoms, agentic AI will undoubtedly be a critical requirement for enterprises. But it must demonstrate value. Umbraco’s roadmap continues to drive innovation in key areas, and its open source posture gives it a unique angle when it comes to customization and experimentation. Further, as digital sovereignty becomes a more central topic for organizations, having options for localized cloud hosting provides an added dimension of confidence and trust. These are all points in its value equation. 

Umbraco has always been smart, patient, and intentional with its strategy, and this latest expansion demonstrates an intelligent focus on reinforcing support for people and partnerships – which is always the best place to activate growth.

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