Engineering Manager
Coaching was my first profession and engineering came second. Leading engineers since 2020, owning technical direction and delivery as a part-time CTO, and still close enough to the code to keep a team's trust.
Why Engineering Manager, why now
Engineering Manager is where my two careers meet. I coached professionally for five years before software paid me anything, and I have spent the 12 years since building it. Management has been the thread through every engineering role I have had, from training juniors to owning delivery as a part-time CTO. This role makes that the job rather than the part I fit around the code.
Concretely: I've led and grown developers, run code reviews and retros, contributed to hiring, and owned the technical direction and delivery of production systems as a part-time CTO. The move into EM makes the people-and-delivery half of that work the centre of the role, while staying close enough to the code to keep a team's trust.
An EM builds a team that ships and keeps it healthy, while staying technically credible enough that the team listens. Those are the two things I have spent longest doing: leading engineering work, and coaching people to be better at theirs.
Five years of it professionally before I was a developer, and an ICI Advanced Practitioner of Executive and Leadership Coaching. The 1:1s, the honest feedback and the career conversations are the work I trained in, now pointed at engineers.
Lead Full-stack Developer at iGoMoon, where I ran code reviews and retros, trained junior developers, and contributed to hiring, including the coding task used to screen candidates. At National Auto Service I brought in, managed and trained a small dev team through larger builds.
Part-time CTO at National Auto Service for four years. Owned architecture, security, sprint delivery and product strategy for a platform now used across ~90% of Australia. I set the direction and stayed accountable for what shipped, not just for my own diffs.
12 years multi-stack across Laravel, Vue, React and Astro, most recently Senior Software Engineer at SAVR. Claude Code daily, and agents I built and run in production. I lead from technical credibility, and I know where AI helps a team ship and where it does not.
What translates into engineering management
- Five years as a professional coach before I wrote code → growing individuals through 1:1s, feedback and career development.
- Trained juniors and built the hiring screen at iGoMoon → hiring, onboarding, and raising the bar of a team.
- Part-time CTO owning delivery at National Auto Service → owning a team's priorities, delivery health and technical direction.
- Brought in and managed a temporary dev team through larger builds → coordinating and unblocking engineers to hit a deadline.
- 12 years building multi-stack code → the technical credibility to lead engineers and earn their trust.
This page is curated for the Engineering Manager role specifically.
Please note, this is only a summarised version of my full CV. For the full picture, the complete CV is one click away.
What I bring → What this role needs
Each line connects something I have done to something this role asks for.
Ran code reviews and retros, trained junior developers, and contributed to hiring, including the coding task used to screen candidates.
The 1:1s, feedback and career-growth work an EM lives on is my original profession.
Set architecture, security and product strategy and stayed accountable for delivery on a platform now used across ~90% of Australia.
I can run an architecture discussion and review at a high bar, which is what earns a strong team's trust.
First-hand practice with agentic coding tools, which is what the AI-forward EM roles are asking a leader to bring.
Engagements, start to finish
The problem, what I did about it, and what came of it.
National Auto Service
- Problem
- Asset management workflows ran on paper and spreadsheets, forcing manual coordination between the internal team, contractors, and customers - and slowing cashflow.
- Solution
- A purpose-built internal platform with customer + contractor interaction layers, replacing the legacy workflow.
- Build
- Designed, built, and operated the system as part-time CTO since 2022 - full ownership of architecture, security, sprint delivery, and product strategy. Brought in a small temporary dev team for larger features.
- Outcome
- Cashflow improved, in the CEO's words. Customer relationship maintained over the full engagement.
SAVR - Operability Tools
- Problem
- Operability gaps for the data and customer-service teams - no usable internal tooling for managing platform data, leaving non-engineering teams blocked on routine workflows.
- Solution
- Three admin panels, two of them FilamentPHP, for the data service, customer service and analyst teams.
- Build
- Spear-headed admin panel work from a paired exploration in my first month at SAVR into three production tools across the engagement.
- Outcome
- Three production operability tools shipped. Non-engineering teams (data, customer service, analytics) unblocked on workflows that previously required engineering involvement.
What carries over from everything else
The half of the job that is not code, and where I learnt it.
- Customer
- Customer-facing and pre-sales
- Architecture
- Owning the architecture
- Enterprise
- Architecture at enterprise scale
- Agentic AI
- Agentic AI in production
- Hands-on
- Hands-on engineering
- Leading
- Leading and coaching engineers
- Coaching Skills
5+ years guiding individuals and business owners to expand their internal map and drive performance through communication.
- Ability to Lead
Bridging cross-functional teams and motivating people to do their best work, informed by years of coaching.
- Project Management
Goal-based delivery on time and budget - clear goals, accurate estimates, agile iteration, reusable foundations.
- Team Player
Adaptability, trust and shared goals - leading developers while collaborating with sales and design under deadline pressure.
National Auto Service
An internal asset-management platform for vehicle lifecycle tracking - customer portals, contractor coordination, and cashflow workflow automation. Built with Laravel and VueJS.
SAVR - Operability Tools
Three production admin panels at SAVR (Stockholm fintech), two of them FilamentPHP, for the data service, customer service and analyst teams.
AI Skill: Create MVP
Productized my consulting methodology as a Claude Code skill - discovery → planning → implementation, resumable across sessions.
Advanced Practitioner of Executive and Leadership CoachingThe International Coaching Institute (ICI)- Certificate IV in Life CoachingThe International Coaching Institute (ICI)
TestDome· Top 10%- TestDome· Top 10%
- TestDome· Top 10%
The technologies this role names
Cut down from the full list to what the job ads for this role ask for.
- Laravel
- PHP
- VueJS
- TypeScript
- AWS
- Docker
- Claude
- REST API
- PostgreSQL
- FilamentPHP