Skills you need to become a well-rounded engineering manager

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

With org structures ever-fluctuating, and “lean” orgs on the rise, here are some areas you can focus on to become a more well-rounded engineering manager.

Throughout your career, you’ll come across leaders who seem to effortlessly navigate various environments, thrive across different organizations, and adapt effortlessly to organizational or team changes. What makes them successful? 

While attributes like mental agility, drive, and emotional intelligence definitely play a critical role, this effectiveness often stems from a diverse and robust skill set; or, well-rounded engineering managers (WREM). In today’s landscape, where companies are transitioning toward flatter organizational charts, WREMs are crucial cogs that can lead teams to success. 

A WREM’s core areas of expertise

To understand what makes an engineering manager well-rounded, it’s essential to decompose their expertise into four core areas. 

• Product management: engineering managers share the responsibility of defining a roadmap that aligns with broader business goals and also influencing the business’s roadmap to some extent. This requires having good product sense and the skill set to create a roadmap that delivers meaningful value to customers and businesses. 
• Project management: engineering managers are responsible for defining ambitious but achievable goals that deliver value to customers. They are expected to identify risks proactively, recommend mitigations, and deliver projects with the highest quality. Aligning and communicating with stakeholders and leadership also plays a vital role here. 
• People management: engineering managers are people managers first. Unlike product management, project management, and technical leadership, this is the one area where managers can’t rely on others for help. These individuals hire, retain, and grow talent; build great teams that deliver value; motivate teams; and coach employees. 
• Technical leadership: engineering managers must possess enough technical knowledge to guide the team, oversee architectural decision-making, and provide feedback when necessary. They should also be able to understand the quality and complexity of the code and systems their team is building. 

A key characteristic of WREMs is how each of the four skill areas feeds into and strengthens the others. For instance, a strong product sense enables WREMs to make informed technical decisions, allowing a team to deliver features that balance customer value and engineering complexity. When these competencies work in tandem, the synergy leads to higher efficiency, better stakeholder alignment, and increased delivery speed. 

This interconnected skill set forms the foundation of a holistic leadership style, equipping WREMs to thrive in diverse challenges and organizational dynamics.

How can you become a WREM?

Understand your strengths and growth areas: engineering managers often begin their careers as individual contributors in product, project, or technology departments before transitioning into management. That original domain remains their strongest area; for instance, someone who served as a technical lead prior to becoming an EM may be highly confident in technical leadership skills but may need to develop project or product management capabilities. Recognizing both strengths and gaps helps chart a clear path toward becoming a well-rounded engineering manager.

Delegation: delegating strategically means assigning tasks to the right people. Awareness of a report’s career aspirations, skill levels, and growth areas informs them of whether certain tasks can be passed down to them. Use 1:1s, team meetings, and career conversations to inform your understanding of your team members’s aspirations. However, make sure you’re prepared for any eventuality, as when specialized skills are unavailable for product, project, or technical tracks, WREMs should be ready to assume multiple roles.

Mentorship and coaching: connect with mentors who excel in the areas you want to strengthen. Learning from seasoned leaders in product, project, people, or technical domains can accelerate your growth.

Targeted learning: seek out projects or roles that stretch your less-developed areas. For example, if you’re a former technical lead, volunteer to write product roadmaps, or attend meetings with customers to hone your product management skills. Similarly, for developing project-management skills, seek projects that require driving cross-functional initiatives to build pertinent capabilities.

Continuous learning: invest in resources such as books, courses, and workshops to deepen your knowledge across key areas. For people management, books like The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, and Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson et, al. are highly recommended. For product management, consider The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and Principles of Product Management by Peter Yang. In the realm of project management, The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun and Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber are excellent guides. For technical leadership, titles like Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann, Clean Code by Robert C Martin, and Clean Architecture by Robert C Martin provide valuable insights.

Additionally, platforms like Maven offer focused, high-impact courses taught by industry experts to enhance your skills in people, project, and product management.

Thriving in different organizational models

Not all companies operate the same way or face the same challenges. Below are three broad archetypes and how WREMs can adapt to each:

• Product-heavy organizations: in product-centric environments, the customer experience is of paramount importance as it significantly impacts business. Here, robust product management skills help WREMs collaborate closely with product managers to design and deliver customer-focused solutions. Balancing customer experience and technical complexity is key to building successful, user-centric products. They can prioritize features to meet customer needs while keeping technical constraints in check.
• Tech-heavy environments: in organizations that develop fundamental technical platforms or infrastructure (e.g., Amazon S3 or Google Kubernetes Engine), technical leadership is vital. As these platforms and infrastructure are used on a large scale, it is important that the right architectural decisions are made. While people management and project management remain important, a solid technical understanding ensures sound architectural decisions, leading to scalable and maintainable systems.
• Project-heavy environments: organizations that frequently engage in large-scale, cross-functional projects, such as leading company-wide goals to deprecate technologies, benefit from WREMs with strong project-management acumen. These leaders excel at anticipating risks, coordinating multiple teams, and setting up effective communication channels. Identifying early warning signs and promptly adjusting processes can significantly impact the success or failure of major initiatives.

In all cases, people management remains a constant priority. Motivating and coaching teams effectively is crucial, even if the emphasis shifts across different arenas. 

WREMs in the era of lean organizations

Many companies, including major tech firms like Meta, and Google are embracing leaner organizational models by reducing the number of management layers. This shift toward flatter structures creates two primary challenges for engineering managers.

• Less hierarchical support: engineering managers in lean organizations are expected to oversee larger teams and manage multiple functions. With fewer layers of leadership, responsibilities traditionally handled by managers may fall directly on senior managers, such as closely overseeing technical architecture. WREMS navigate this effectively by leveraging their technical expertise. Engineering managers may also find themselves managing project and product managers directly instead of relying on dedicated leaders for those roles.
• Limited dedicated specialists: with fewer subject matter specialists, engineering managers might muck in on product manager tasks like roadmap definition and strategic planning for specific areas. They may lead one or two projects while project managers concentrate on other priorities. Similarly, engineering managers might assume technical leadership roles for certain projects, allowing senior or principal engineers to focus on other high-impact initiatives. Well-rounded engineering managers are uniquely equipped to succeed in these environments. Their versatile skill set enables them to balance diverse responsibilities without compromising team morale or performance. 

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London • June 16 & 17, 2025

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Final thoughts 

In an era where companies are flattening their structures and demanding higher efficiency, well-rounded engineering managers stand out as vital leaders. 

By proactively developing competencies across all four pillars, managers can become invaluable assets in any setting. Organizations would do well to recognize and cultivate such balanced leaders, integrating well-rounded criteria into hiring, training, and promotion processes. Ultimately, well-rounded managers aren’t merely nice-to-haves in organizations; they’re the linchpin that keeps teams aligned and thriving.