![Suhail Patel](https://res.cloudinary.com/leaddev/image/upload/q_100,c_fill,g_auto:classic,e_sharpen,h_100,w_100/prod/sites/default/files//contributors/2024-01/Suhail Patel.png)
Suhail
Patel
Senior Staff Engineer
Monzo
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Get your colleagues together and make it a team day. Last year’s event was a sellout, so don’t miss out!
Welcome to StaffPlus London 2024
A welcome to StaffPlus London 2024 from the host Suhail Patel.
Your host Suhail Patel welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
Suhail is a Senior Staff Engineer at Monzo focused on building the Core Banking and Infrastructure Platform. His role involves serving as a technical authority on Monzo's infrastructure which spans over two thousand microservices and leverages key infrastructure components like Kubernetes, Cassandra, Kafka, Etcd and more. He focuses specifically in investigating deviant behaviour and ensuring services continue to work reliably in the face of a constantly shifting environment in the cloud.
View Suhail's LeadDev articles and talksStaff+ engineers often talk about the struggle of influencing without authority. One less talked about method of influencing is understanding and aligning incentives. In this talk, Joy will go through some of the common incentives and motivators as well as real examples that she has encountered.
Staff+ engineers often talk about the struggle of influencing without authority. One less talked about method of influencing is understanding and aligning incentives.
All of us are motivated by different things, but there is a common set that tends to apply to most people. By understanding which of these are coming into play in a situation and finding ways to align the project, behaviour, or change that you want to see with the incentives people already have, you can find convincing them significantly easier.
In this talk, I will go through some of the common incentives and motivators as well as real examples that I’ve encountered. I will talk through some cases where the incentive structure backfired, cases where we consciously put in place incentives, and cases where we just found better ways to compromise to meet everyone’s goals. Finally, I will talk about my strategies for nudging these incentives to work to my advantage. A lot can be accomplished through a little careful carrot placement.
Joy is a Principal Software Engineer at Split, leading our backend team from a technical perspective. Prior to Split, she worked at Box. As a software engineer and as an employee of Split, Joy has extensive experience with feature flags and experimentation and many of the different use-cases. At both Split and Box, she has led efforts around splitting monoliths into microservices, revamping authorization frameworks, creating REST API standards, audit logging and more. In addition to designing software and writing a lot of code, she also maintains a blog: https://medium.com/@jkebertz. In her free time, she does a lot of travelling, reading, and running ridiculously long distances (mostly on trails).
View Joy's LeadDev articles and talksIn tech, the conventional approach to building systems often assumes planet-scale requirements from the outset, often resulting in architectures that might scale up smoothly but can often burden organisations with unnecessary complexity and costs from the get-go regardless of whether the anticipated user scale materialises or not. In this talk, Viktor challenges this approach by advocating for adaptability and a return to basics in system design.
In tech, the conventional approach to building systems often assumes planet-scale requirements from the outset, often resulting in architectures that might scale up smoothly but can often burden organisations with unnecessary complexity and costs from the get-go regardless of whether the anticipated user scale materialises or not.
In this talk, Viktor challenges this approach by advocating for adaptability and a return to basics in system design. Drawing from his experiences, he explores the pitfalls of over-engineering and the importance of simplicity and evolvability in scalable architectures. Through concrete examples, including challenges faced at Personio, Viktor will discuss the need to prioritise correctness, ease of reasoning, and understanding of trade-offs when architecting systems for sustainable growth.
Takeaways:
How to optimise systems not just for technology but also for real-world understanding, enabling smoother onboarding of new team members and scalable growth.
Viktor Orekoya is a software engineer with experience building software solutions across multiple business domains. Over the years that has included healthcare, education, energy and Fintech. Before Personio, he worked on Money Movement at Stripe and Customer Verification at WorldPay. He considers himself a tinkerer and loves to learn new things. His approach to building software is Correctness -> Reliable -> Scalable. Outside of work, he enjoys cycling in the countryside and playing Chess.
View Segun's LeadDev articles and talksAnnie delves into how Staff+ Engineers can embody Deming's timeless wisdom to enhance quality, productivity, and both employee and customer satisfaction within the modern engineering landscape.
W. Edwards Deming was a visionary whose profound insights into quality, systems thinking, and the psychology of human behaviour have significantly shaped management practices for over seven decades.
In this talk, we'll delve into how Staff+ Engineers can embody Deming's timeless wisdom to enhance quality, productivity, and both employee and customer satisfaction within the modern engineering landscape.
Prepare to dive into Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, focusing on the aspects that are most relevant and impactful in today's engineering organisations. We will learn how to interpret Deming’s 14 Points for Management as a framework to optimise modern engineering work and discuss actionable strategies for weaving Deming's philosophy into your daily work by exploring real-world examples that bring these concepts to life.
By the conclusion of this talk, you will leave with a richer understanding of Deming's legacy and practical insights on how to implement his principles for improved outcomes. I aim to equip Staff+ Engineers with the tools and knowledge to drive significant process enhancements, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and excellence in their organisations.
Annie Vella is a lifelong computer enthusiast with two decades of experience in software engineering and technical leadership, having honed her craft across various industries in four countries. She has recently returned to an engineering role after her second stint in engineering management, now holding the title of Distinguished Engineer at Westpac NZ. She enjoys designing resilient systems, unearthing opportunities across the organisation, and driving process improvements while emphasising quality from the outset. Passionate about cultivating a culture of curiosity and continuous learning, Annie inspires engineers to work smarter, not harder, fostering an environment where technical brilliance thrives.
View Annie's LeadDev articles and talksChat with the speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.
Join facilitated group conversations with other leaders on:
Join facilitated group conversations with other leaders on:
Inspired by Lara Hogan’s Manager Voltron, build your personal network at StaffPlus London.
In this talk, Sami and Guillaume detail their experiences as Staff Engineers functioning as Tech Leads, Glues and Facilitators in a leaderless role. They will discuss the real-world problems they faced, their solutions, and the lessons learned which allowed them to grow as leaders and as an organization.
As a Staff Engineer, you may find yourself in a large scope where a high-level manager, such as a Director or VP of Engineering, is absent, and where several gaps need to be filled.
While strong leadership, organisational awareness, and versatility are typical traits of a good Staff Engineer, exercising them effectively, in the right places and at the right times can become critical to the survival of the group.
At Back Market, a few of us Staff Engineers found ourselves in this situation over multiple quarters. The absence of a leader manifested at times through missed target dates, teams struggling with alignment and collaboration, organisational restructures being delayed, a general decrease in morale and more. All the while, high-value projects and migrations were ongoing and failure was not an option.
While our technical expertise and ability to contribute more directly to architecture and technical initiatives is what differentiates us from our manager peers, the gaping management hole forced us to sharpen our organisational skills and focus more on the "Tech Lead" and (paradoxically) "Right Hand" archetypes, than on the "Architect" and "Solver" ones. While previously we would jump in to help teams “solve” their issues, we found ourselves unable to take our eye off the day-to-day operations of the whole group and, at times, consciously steered clear of tackling emerging fires to maintain our focus on the group as a whole.
In this talk, we will detail our experiences as Staff Engineers functioning as Tech Leads, Glues and Facilitators in a leaderless role. We’ll discuss the real-world problems we faced, our solutions, and the lessons learned that allowed us to grow as leaders and as an organisation.
Sami Farhat is a Senior Staff Engineer at Back Market, a French unicorn promoting the circular economy through the resale of second-hand products. Growing through the ranks, he has taken on increasing responsibilities and cross-functional roles, notably by leading the implementation of Platform Engineering through Backstage, coordinating both a Cloud migration and the backend's extraction to a microservices architecture. Lately, he has been focusing on growing the Staff Engineering community both at Back Market and in french tech ecosystem.
View Sami's LeadDev articles and talksGuillaume is a Staff Engineer at Back Market with a passion for optimizing distributed systems and organizational efficiency. With a strong bias towards action, he loves in turning ideas into outcomes, particularly keeping low-level system design in mind. As a Rust enthusiast, Guillaume has always a particular attention to performance and safety in software engineering, topics that he continuously championed at Back Market.
View Guillaume's LeadDev articles and talksJoin James Ford for a talk on the importance of saying "No" in your career. Learn why you shouldn't always take on "the most important thing" and how doing so can prevent you from focusing on your critical IC Leadership responsibilities. Discover strategies to delegate effectively and avoid burnout, especially in times of change.
We get into our roles and progress in our careers by sampling a little of everything, by being adaptable and capable of understanding and doing many things.
But sometimes “the most important thing” isn’t the thing that you should be doing - you’re a part of a broader team, remember! And maybe, just maybe, someone else should be doing the thing instead. It’s especially tough to remember this when companies and teams are changing, but it’s a slippery slope to ending up doing the things which are essential, but not your responsibility, and never being able to find time for the critical IC Leadership stuff that only you can provide.
This talk is little about why you need to say No to people more, and how things can go wrong when you don’t learn to do it enough.
James is a Staff Engineer at Compare the Market. Back in school he said he wanted to do "something with art and computers" and that's translated into a career making websites, and ensuring that they look pretty, are usable and accessible. As a Staff Engineer he works to ensure that the output of multiple teams is of the highest quality and efficiency.
View James 's LeadDev articles and talksI’m an engineering leader with a few years experience of providing technical leadership to multiple teams, and my biggest weakness is a tendency to evangelise my great ideas to teams before they’ve even had a chance to consider the problem I’m trying to solve. This talk will explain why this is generally a pretty bad idea; it won’t surface the best ideas and it doesn’t let more junior engineers develop their skills. Instead, there are steps you can take to make sure that the idea adopted to solve a problem is the best idea available, even if you aren’t the one who came up with it.
You have made it to a position of engineering leadership for a host of reasons. Chief amongst them is, no doubt, your ability to come up with good ideas; so you should continue being the one who comes up with the great ideas now you’re in a leadership role. Well - maybe sometimes, but generally not.
I’m an engineering leader with a few years experience of providing technical leadership to multiple teams, and my biggest weakness is a tendency to evangelise my great ideas to teams before they’ve even had a chance to consider the problem I’m trying to solve.
In my talk I will explain that this is generally a pretty bad idea; it won’t surface the best ideas and it doesn’t let more junior engineers develop their skills. Instead, I introduce some steps you can take to make sure that the idea adopted to solve a problem is the best idea available, even if you aren’t the one who came up with it. Perhaps counter-intuitively I will show how this increases your influence in your organisation and sets everyone up for success.
You will come away from this talk aware of some natural behaviours that you may not even be aware that you are doing that, rather than bringing out the best ideas, unconsciously serves to suppress them by biasing people to your solution.
Tristan is a Principal Software Engineer for Eventbrite and has a passion for finding simplicity in complexity. He has recently spearheaded the Unified Modules initiative that aims to significantly improve the experience of developers working in the front end when making changes that impacts functionality core to all products and platforms. In his spare time (when there is some), Tristan likes to fly planes and socialise with friends (although not usually at the same time).
View Tristan's LeadDev articles and talksLet's talk about migration, especially the less spotlighted part: the process of dismantling the legacy system. How do you go about it? How did others approach it? In this talk, Dianing will share the strategies used to disassemble Shopify legacy data pipelines responsible for managing merchant eligibility on the Shop apps.
Let's talk about migration, especially the less spotlighted part: the process of dismantling the legacy system. How do you go about it? How did others approach it?
In this talk, I'll share the strategies used to disassemble our legacy data pipelines responsible for managing merchant eligibility on the Shop apps. Join me on a journey through our successes, challenges, and invaluable learnings in the meticulous orchestration of terminating our legacy data pipelines.
Dianing Yudono has over a decade of software engineering experience in different products, teams and cultures. She is currently at Shopify, a global company with a platform built for independent business owners to start and scale their businesses online, in-store, and everywhere in between.
View Dianing's LeadDev articles and talksChat with the speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.
Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for:
Join facilitated conversations on:
Join facilitated conversations on:
Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Bring a book and get it signed - or just have a chat.
In this talk, Mahmut shares his journey of deciding on an effective mode of operation when engaging with complex projects.
In this talk, I share my journey of deciding on an effective mode of operation when engaging with complex projects.
Join me as I discuss the importance of finding a balance between assertiveness and adaptability of your interactions in these projects. This talk offers practical insights for fostering better team dynamics.
Mahmut has a proven track record in scaling SaaS platforms, building startups, and serving big retailers in the UK and US. Mahmut has experience in delivering software solutions for users across global markets in e-commerce, search, e-learning, finance, gaming and public cloud verticals. Currently a Principal Engineer at Microsoft, Mahmut is a respected mentor and leader, guiding teams to tackle complex technical challenges for the leading global companies and nonprofits.
View Mahmut's LeadDev articles and talksUnexpected issues often arise when interacting with production systems. Comprehensive dashboards that capture the entire system and link to monitoring can help. In this talk, Rita explores examples of these dashboards and their benefits.
All too often our interactions with production (roll out a config change, turn down an old job, etc.), are met with unexpected, disastrous, reactions.
We revise our mental models of how the system works, repair the outage if one occurs, and pick up with our change where we left off.
One useful tool can be a dashboard that captures the scope of the whole system, with links to monitoring and other information about each component. This becomes the interactive blueprint model for the system, reducing confusion, cognitive load and improving the success rate of interactions with the system. The jumping-off point for all debugging and change planning.
This talk will look at some examples of these dashboards that represent the scopes of the system. Highlight how navigating between related scopes, or components, can be more powerful than standard documentation. Finally, will end with some discussion on challenges particular to multi-tenant systems.
Rita is an SRE at Google in Workspace. She has a breadth of engineering experience including over 10 years at Google, in both Seattle and Zurich, in Cloud, Ads, Monitoring, and Workspace. Ranging from work focused on critical data processing systems (Google Analytics) to traffic routing infrastructure for data partitioning (Google Workspace). A mom of four kids, in her free time enjoys camping and e-cargo-biking with family. Gets excited about cool applications of technology and making things less confusing.
View Rita's LeadDev articles and talksKatie shares eight prompting techniques designed to leverage LLMs towards crafting first drafts that meet the quality of Financial Times journalism.
Can you prompt a Large Language Model to write like an FT Journalist?
This talk ventures beyond the surface to offer you a compelling deep dive into the nuances of working with large language models (LLMs). In this presentation, I will share prompting techniques designed to leverage LLMs towards creating and remixing content that could go some way to meeting the quality of a journalist's first draft but would not, as things stand, be enough to reach the final draft form to the standards the FT expects.
Katie is a Principal Engineer at the Financial Times. She transitioned from Makers Academy to become a Tech Leader. Katie excels in building innovative internal products and values collaboration with colleagues as stakeholders. Beyond code, Katie enjoys spinning and running after her one year old!
View Katie's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for:
Work together to find ways of solving a common problem posed by our moderator.
Join facilitated conversations on how to interpret engineering data in a holistic way.
Join facilitated conversations on how you can maintain a healthy culture even under high pressure.
Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Bring a book and get it signed - or just have a chat.
Glen shares some of his experiences from moving to a smaller company with his Staff+ experience, sharing some of the things that are very effective but only really possible at a smaller scale.
I’ll save you from Betteridge’s law of headlines right off the bat, my answer is “It Depends”.
In Staff+ circles and conferences like this, you’ll hear a lot about scaling up, handling large numbers of people, and expanding influence - all important skills at large enterprises. But what about scaling down? Are Staff Engineers still useful on a smaller scale? How and where can the same sorts of skills be applied when there are only 10-50 total engineers?
In this post-zero-interest-rate world perhaps there’ll be more organisations not getting on the hyper-growth train and sticking to a more modest headcount - will there still be room for people at those companies to grow into Staff and beyond?
I’ll share some of my experiences from moving to a much smaller company and taking my Staff+ experience with me and share some of the things which are very effective but only possible at a smaller scale.
Glen has been doing what we now call Staff engineering for about a decade, preferring to work close enough to the ground to get stuff done, but high enough to the top to influence the company and strategy. He was able to gather a wide variety of experiences in a short space of time by working as a consultant and then took up a Staff engineering role at CircleCI. For the last few years, he's taken those experiences to a much smaller company called Geckoboard
View Glen's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Bijan shows the different ways fitness functions are employed at Jimdo to keep track of the state of over 200 services.
As Staff+ Engineers, we are often asked to come up with general guidelines for engineering teams to follow. While these are powerful tools for aligning teams and building a good engineering culture, they don't ensure consistent adoption.
Fitness functions are a way to codify these guidelines into a set of automated tests that can be run against your services.
In this talk, I will show the different ways we employ fitness functions at Jimdo to keep track of the state of our over 200 services. I will talk about the technical aspects as well as the organisational challenges we faced. I'll also provide insights on how you can implement fitness functions in your own organisations to improve consistency, non-functional requirements and developer experience.
Bijan Chokoufe Nejad is a Staff Engineer at Jimdo, a leading website builder for small businesses. With over a decade of experience in software engineering, he has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the field. At Jimdo, he works on a broad range of topics that impact all engineering teams, leveraging his expertise to drive improvements and innovation. Before working in the private sector, Bijan pursued a PhD in theoretical physics, a journey that sparked his passion for building software products. Outside of work, he enjoys exploring new areas such as game development and spending time with his three children.
View Bijan 's LeadDev articles and talksAs software engineers, we’re reluctant to build short-term tactical solutions that subsequently need to be torn down and replaced with a ‘proper’ solution. The short-term solution is often heavily criticised (and often rightly so) because of the pain of the migration and cleanup. This talk will explore how tactical tech has an important part to play and can inform much bigger and more expensive decisions. A ‘hacky’ solution can mean you’re getting data from real customers much sooner and unearthing details would have otherwise remained unknown.
Waterloo International station was opened in 1994 serving Eurostar trains through the channel tunnel to France. The station cost £130 million to build and won the EU prize for contemporary architecture but closed just 13 years later in 2007.
What happened?
Waterloo was just a temporary solution for a cash-strapped British Rail looking to provide an international service. The government had made it clear they would not pay for a dedicated new railway line and Waterloo could connect to existing lines into Kent and accommodate the extra trains and platforms.
It was a far from ideal solution, but it allowed Eurostar trains to start running with the opening of the channel tunnel. Eurostar proved to be a massive success and later on, the case for building a proper high-speed line was successfully made. This came at a cost of over £7.5 billion.
As software engineers, we’re reluctant to build short-term tactical solutions that subsequently need to be torn down and replaced with a ‘proper’ solution. The short-term solution is often heavily criticised (and often rightly so) because of the pain of the migration and cleanup. However tactical tech has an important part to play and can inform much bigger and more expensive decisions. A ‘hacky’ solution can mean you’re getting data from real customers much sooner and unearthing details would have otherwise remained unknown.
Amir is a Staff Software Engineer at Google managing a team developing products to help business owners build their online presence and connect with customers.When not working Amir is mostly wrangling his two toddlers. In his (very little) free time Amir enjoys cycling and running long distances as well as baking and eating cakes.
View Amir's LeadDev articles and talksClosing session
Suhail is a Senior Staff Engineer at Monzo focused on building the Core Banking and Infrastructure Platform. His role involves serving as a technical authority on Monzo's infrastructure which spans over two thousand microservices and leverages key infrastructure components like Kubernetes, Cassandra, Kafka, Etcd and more. He focuses specifically in investigating deviant behaviour and ensuring services continue to work reliably in the face of a constantly shifting environment in the cloud.
View Suhail's LeadDev articles and talksHear from technology leaders at the highest level of engineering. Find out what the CTOs of top organisations need from their teams and what their focus is for 2024 and beyond.
Hear from the LeadDev content team on the secrets of crafting winning speaker submissions, effective article proposals and how to get involved with the community.
Chat with the speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.
Join facilitated conversations on:
Welcome to StaffPlus London 2024
A welcome to StaffPlus London 2024 from the host Suhail Patel.
Your host Suhail Patel welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
Suhail is a Senior Staff Engineer at Monzo focused on building the Core Banking and Infrastructure Platform. His role involves serving as a technical authority on Monzo's infrastructure which spans over two thousand microservices and leverages key infrastructure components like Kubernetes, Cassandra, Kafka, Etcd and more. He focuses specifically in investigating deviant behaviour and ensuring services continue to work reliably in the face of a constantly shifting environment in the cloud.
View Suhail's LeadDev articles and talksSome bugs haunt the team for weeks. Recurring, hard-to-track, embarrassing. They ruin the road maps, kill morale and undermine stakeholders' trust. If you ever seen them, you know the nightmare. In this talk, share how you can enhance your programming toolbox for the hardest bugs. Not only this - but you'll see how to scale effective debugging to the entire team and leave with a set of habits to share with your fellow engineers to help them step up their debugging game.
Some bugs haunt the team for weeks. Recurring, hard-to-track, embarrassing. They ruin the road maps, kill morale and undermine stakeholders' trust. If you ever seen them, you know the nightmare.
Don't despair - I've found a way to deal with them efficiently. A mix of methods and habits used by scientists is the way out of debugging horror. It's a loop of observation, hypotheses and experiments, enhanced with practices used by scholars. It makes debugging more predictable, less frustrating and much faster. I'll share how they helped me in three case studies: fixing a non-deterministic test, stabilising CI infrastructure and resolving a recurring production downtime.
This talk will enhance your programming toolbox for the hardest bugs. Not only this - but you'll see how to scale effective debugging to the entire team. Last but not least - you'll leave with a set of habits to share with your fellow engineers to help them step up their debugging game.
Software engineer with 10+ years of experience. He started applications from scratch, dealt with legacy, extracted services from a monolith and led teams. Strong proponent of diving deep into black boxes, he focuses on distributed systems and database internals. Has a strange hobby of writing regular expressions by hand and discussing their performance. Knowledge-sharing advocate: after work, he's a university instructor, public speaker and meetup organiser. Bookworm, hiker and history buff (ask him about Napoleon!).
View Maciej's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk Michael will talk through lessons and tips he's learnt when working on a project that pushed him outside of his comfort zone, and how you can effectively utilise the skills and knowledge of those around you to build alignment when leading across a broad set of teams who are often using very different technologies.
We've all heard of T-shaped engineers: engineers who have deep skills in one area, as well as a broader set of skills in others.
The term normally refers to technical skills, but a lot of comparisons can be made with leadership skills in a Staff+ role: you'll normally know one area, and the people within it, very well, but you often have to adapt and work outside of this depending on what the situation requires.
In this talk Michael will talk through lessons and tips he's learnt when working on a project that pushed him outside of his comfort zone, and how you can effectively utilise the skills and knowledge of those around you to build alignment when leading across a broad set of teams who are often using very different technologies.
Michael is currently a Principal Software Engineer at Skyscanner where he is responsible for leading their Mobile Platform squads. He also has a keen interest in Mobile Observability and Data Production, and is helping drive Skyscanner's long-term vision in these areas.
View Michael 's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Tom offers the perspective of a Staff Technical Program manager as the first one hired in a company, deconstructing the evolutionary journey that paved the way for hiring more of them. Explore the essential elements in crafting your leadership journey incrementally, culminating in the ability to influence at scale without formal authority. The talk will feature practical tips and tricks gleaned from Tom's two-year experience at Back Market.
Embarking on a mission to drive organisational change, and introducing and scaling new practices in a long-established environment can be a significant challenge.
This becomes even more complex when you find yourself as the only one with your role, that your role has a transversal exposure and is unknown by most: Staff Technical Program Manager.
Lucky Staff Engineers have benchmarks and expectations outlined in recognised books, aligning with well-established practices in software engineering. However, in the realm of Program Management, we find ourselves in a stage where the function varies significantly across companies, with diverse approaches and operational methods from one organisation to another.
One challenge faced by Technical Program Managers in the industry is to convince the value they bring to their roles, inherently positioned cross-functionally to ensure successful delivery and goal attainment. Staff Engineers contend with comparable ambiguities in their daily tasks, resulting in a convergence of job title trajectories.
This talk offers the perspective of a Staff Technical Program manager as the first one hired in a company, deconstructing the evolutionary journey that paved the way for hiring more of them. This provides an opportunity to explore the essential elements in crafting your leadership journey incrementally, culminating in the ability to influence at scale without formal authority. The format will feature practical tips and tricks gleaned from a two-year experience at Back Market.
Tom thrives on collaborating with cross-functional teams daily, solving problems and absorbing knowledge from diverse perspectives. With a business background and a passion for technology, Tom made his way as Back Market's inaugural TPM (Technical Program Manager), streamlining technical initiatives management. He is dedicated to ensuring the company's sustained growth is intricately linked to the predictable delivery of technical debt. As Back Market expands its TPM team, TPM responsibilities now extend across a broader spectrum, influencing various business and product features the company aims to deliver. Beyond his professional endeavours, Tom embodies a team player spirit. He enjoys playing basketball and cherishing moments with friends and family
View Tom's LeadDev articles and talksChat with the speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.
Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career on:
Work together to find ways of solving a common problem posed by our moderator.
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Join facilitated conversations on how to keep learning even when you're short on time.
Join facilitated conversations on how to have meaningful progression conversations with your team.
Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Communicating software architecture is a crucial aspect of being a successful software architect, however, this is a skill you don't get taught. Learning by trial and error is not ideal, so how do you create inclusive diagrams and visuals that successfully communicate to your audience? In this talk, learn from a hands-on solution architect - and thought leader in communication design and documentation - on how to tailor your visuals to your audience, choose the most appropriate standards (or not) and level of detail, and apply patterns to improve accessibility for all audiences.
Communicating software architecture is a crucial aspect of being a successful software architect, however, this is a skill you don't get taught.
Learning by trial and error is not ideal, so how do you create inclusive diagrams and visuals that successfully communicate to your audience?
Apply communication design patterns and recognise antipatterns.
The purpose of a diagram is to successfully communicate with the audience, which sounds deceptively simple. Communication design patterns can be applied to guide you towards this ultimate goal of successful communication, and maximum inclusion for your audience.
In this session, learn from a hands-on solution architect - and thought leader in communication design and documentation - how to tailor your visuals to your audience, choose the most appropriate standards (or not) and level of detail, and apply patterns to improve accessibility for all audiences.
Jacqui Read is an internationally-recognised solution and enterprise architect, and author of Communication Patterns: A Guide for Developers and Architects. She teaches public and private workshops and speaks at international conferences on topics such as architecture practices, technical communication, and systems design. Jacqui specialises in untangling and extracting value from data and knowledge, helping businesses determine direction in complex environments. Her professional interests include collaborative modelling, knowledge management, Domain-Driven Design, sociotechnical architecture, and modernising enterprise architecture practices. Outside of work she enjoys gardening and strumming her ukulele while singing at the same time.
View Jacqui's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Lukas will share different techniques that help you grow your colleagues to a level where they can do a part of your job. He will explain the difference between delegating, mentoring, and teaching, demonstrating with examples how little effort it takes to turn your everyday tasks into teaching moments, improving your understanding of your own skills in the process.
The most common archetype that new Staff Engineers are likely to adopt is that of the Tech Lead.
Typically, there is an abundance of issues, projects, and people that ask for and benefit from technical leadership. At first, this is exciting, opportunities are everywhere. But as you grow in your role, your exposure increases, but your time does not. How can you avoid turning into a bottleneck? This is the time when you need to scale yourself. But scaling yourself goes beyond delegating tasks to others. To multiply yourself effectively, you have to teach your skills to others, turning your colleagues into technical leaders themselves.
In this talk, I will share different techniques that help you grow your colleagues to a level where they can do a part of your job. I will explain the difference between delegating, mentoring, and teaching, and demonstrate with examples how little effort it takes to turn your everyday tasks into teaching moments, improving your understanding of your own skills in the process.
Passing on your skills and knowledge might be the biggest long-term impact you can have. And most of all, it is a win-win-win situation: your company benefits, your colleagues grow, and you gain the capacity to take the next step yourself.
Lukas still has his first book on coding “Java 2 in 21 Days” on his bookshelf, but he never planned to be a Software Engineer. After concluding his academic career with a PhD in Mathematics at Humboldt University Berlin, he joined Zalando, a European fashion e-commerce company, as a Product Manager right at the start of its rapid expansion in 2012. After a few years, Lukas seized the opportunity to transition into Software Engineering and to this day considers this the best decision of his career. In this role, he worked in Logistics, Recommendations, and Fulfillment systems, gaining experience with algorithmic optimization, modelling of highly stateful systems, high-throughput systems, and data pipelines. Currently, he works as a Principal Engineer, focused on SRE practices, simplifying architecture, and growing his fellow Senior Engineers.
View Lukas's LeadDev articles and talksJoin Christina on a journey to dissect the anatomy of innovation, uncover strategies to unlock the full potential of ideas, and transform them into impactful realities. Build a strong culture of innovation, and make sure that it is not just a buzzword but a tangible outcome.
Innovation is one of the key cornerstones of a successful company. So why do so many new inventions get stuck in backlog graveyards never to see the light of day? How can we go from idea to innovation faster?
To me, innovation is the process of creating novel meaningful impact through intentional learning. In this talk, I will share this model of the innovation pipeline and strategies I developed to classify and efficiently scale up innovations.
I'll start by introducing three types of innovations: disruptovations, sustainovations, and maintainovations. Each has its playbook for how to get it off the ground and prioritize it. I'll also share examples from my own experiences, both the wins and the losses, and the takeaways you can grab from them. Finally, I'll dive into a few projects that started as a passion project and grew into major patented initiatives stretching across multiple teams and domains.
Join me as we embark on a journey to dissect the anatomy of innovation, uncover strategies to unlock the full potential of ideas, and transform them into impactful realities. Let's build a strong culture of innovation, and make sure that it is not just a buzzword but a tangible outcome.
Christina Kayastha is a Principal Software Engineer with nearly a decade of industry experience. Originally from Nepal, she is currently working in Boston, USA as a Domain Architect leading innovation initiatives at Vista. Christina is an inventor on 11 patents, has given 50+ conference talks, and won 13 hackathon competitions. In her free time, she loves nerding out about emerging tech, building interactive art installations, and is an active leader in her local cultural and tech communities.
View Christina 's LeadDev articles and talksChat with the speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.
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Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Feeling burnt out from the push for IPv6? Anna Wilson explores the current state of our dual-stack world, reflects on why the original end-to-end vision didn't fully materialise, and discusses the lessons learned for tackling large-scale changes in the future.
Look, ok, I'm burnt out too. After years of pushing IPv6, we are where we are. But - where is that?
The original impetus behind IPv6 was to maintain the end-to-end principle, to allow clients and servers to directly address each other, if not communicate without mediation. But that's not the internet we built.
We're not at the stage many of us predicted in the 1990s or early 2000s where we might turn off IPv4 one day. A large number of mobile clients have IPv6; a large number of desktops and laptops don't; the backbone has been humming along for almost twenty years; and, on the server end, what was once a single machine is now often an SSL terminating load balancer.
We are, unquestionably, in a dual-stack world, and it looks like we've settled into that mode for a long, long time. So what are the rules now? And, next time we have to undertake such a large change, what should we do differently?
Anna is a technical architect at HEAnet, the Irish network for research and education. She started with WAN networking and got jealous of all the tools software developers had, so decided to become one for a while.
View Anna's LeadDev articles and talksAs a Staff Engineer, delegating work is essential to getting things done and empowering colleagues. Without direct authority, you must rely on trust, vision, clear communication, and finding the right people. In this talk, Ziad shares tips on influencing and inspiring fellow engineers to collaborate effectively.
In an individual contributor position, there is always a lot to do and very little time. Our impact backlog is always full.
It is important for a Staff Engineer to delegate some of the work to fellow engineers. Not only to get stuff done but also to empower and elevate our colleagues.
This is easier said than done. Without direct authority, you need to rely on trust, vision, clear communication and finding the right people. You also want to make sure, you delegate authority and make sure fellow engineers feel ownership.
In my talk, I will explore this common challenge and share some of the tips I find useful in my day-to-day to help influence and inspire fellow engineers to get stuff done together.
Ziad is a Staff engineer at Adyen. He is passionate about scaling distributed systems. Recently he is building Adyen's Data and ML platforms.
View Ziad's LeadDev articles and talksIn this case study, Ben will walk you through the technical journey of building Atlas - the first open-source, cloud-hosted, genetic matching algorithm - comparing the genetics of patients and donors, and returning a list of donors who could be a match for transplantation.
Every 14 minutes, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer. With a stem cell transplant from a matching donor, their life can be saved. Anthony Nolan, the first stem cell donor register, facilitates around 1300 life-saving transplants a year - and there are over 100 other such registers worldwide. But what does it take to be a match?
In this case study, I will walk you through the technical journey of building Atlas - the first open-source, cloud-hosted, genetic matching algorithm - comparing the genetics of patients and donors, and returning a list of donors who could be a match for transplantation.
We’ll take a brief tour of the history of matching stem cell donors, and walk through the algorithm that uses genes to determine the best genetic match between a patient with blood cancer and a stem cell donor. Then we’ll analyse the technical challenges that come with taking that to a global scale:
Whether or not lives are on the line when developing software, domain expertise is essential. Without it, you can never be sure if your next best step is actually a technical optimisation, or whether you weren’t asking the right question all along.
Ben is a Senior Technical Lead at Softwire, where he has worked for 10 years since graduating in Chemistry (and deciding that software was a stronger calling than lab work). He’s led teams on a variety of domains and technical challenges, ranging from genetic matching algorithms to certifying televisions for BBC iPlayer. Ben’s passion is ensuring work is an experience you relish, and focuses on building teams where everyone can bring their whole self to work and have a great time. Outside work, you’ll likely find him jamming on one of the 26 instruments gradually filling up his spare bedroom…
View Ben's LeadDev articles and talksChat with the speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.
Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for:
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Work together to find ways of solving a common problem posed by our moderator:
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Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Connect with other leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences to you, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.
Bring a book and get it signed - or just have a chat
Invisible biases can hinder senior ICs from advancing, especially to Staff+ roles. Oussama highlights the bias that mobile app engineering is less complex than backend or infrastructure engineering, helping individuals recognise and address this bias, and encouraging a fair evaluation of skills and contributions in all engineering disciplines.
The more senior ICs are or want to be, the more impact any invisible bias would have on their ability to access next levels in their careers especially Staff+ roles.
This talk will put the spotlight on one of those biases which is the assumption that software engineering around making mobile apps is less complicated or has a smaller scale in comparison to backend or infra engineering. This is now limiting mobile app engineers from unlocking staff+ roles and also major leadership roles even after 17 years since the first modern smartphones were announced!
This talk will help both, people carrying this bias to gracefully discover its root cause and pragmatically decide whether to keep it or not - hopefully not! Also, people suffering from the impact of this bias to break free from it once and for all, and also help others break free ideally!
Oussama is a Staff Software Engineer at Trainline, he is part of the mobile platform engineering team with a focus on Android. He started his career in tech 10 years ago as a freelancer straight out of university then joined fintech to work mainly on major French mobile banking apps before joining Trainline. He is also a co-organiser in the Paris Android Users Group. In addition to cats, Oussama loves putting a graphical UI on top of abstract topics that are not part of mainstream tech discussions but can have a great impact on people’s careers.
View Oussama's LeadDev articles and talksIs beauty truly in the eye of the human beholder, or can we teach machines to appreciate aesthetics just like humans do? Chanuki explores the captivating journey of using computer vision to train computers to recognise and evaluate beauty in various environments.
Is beauty truly in the eye of the human beholder, or can we teach machines to appreciate aesthetics just like humans do?
In this talk, I will explore the captivating journey of using computer vision to train computers to recognise and evaluate beauty in various environments.
By leveraging deep learning techniques and vast online datasets, we have developed a model that can identify and measure aesthetic qualities traditionally thought to be subjective. This process involves teaching neural networks to discern patterns and features associated with scenic beauty, challenging the notion that aesthetics are uniquely human.
Join me as we uncover the methodology behind this research and discuss how we plan to use it to help people connect with beauty around them, wherever they are in the world.
Dr. Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe is the Chief Data and Technology Officer at Boon and co-founder of Beautifulplaces.ai, which uses crowdsourced data and AI to map beautiful places worldwide. She holds a PhD in Data Science from the University of Warwick, where her research focused on the impact of environmental aesthetics on human well-being. Her research work has been highlighted in The Economist, Wired, The Times, BBC, Spiegel Online, Guardian, Telegraph, Scientific American, Newsweek, and MIT Technology Review.
View Chanuki's LeadDev articles and talksBusywork hasn’t gone away, our systems are stretched so thin any disturbance destabilises them, our people are burning out, and IT consumes more resources than ever before. What’s going on? Holly explores if efficiency is the wrong goal, or if we are just doing it wrong.
We live in a golden age of efficiency.
Our modern cloud native applications have tiny footprints. Our infrastructure is now code. Everything is automated, even creative endeavours like writing and artwork. And yet. Despite all the optimisation, despite all the automation, many of us feel unproductive - and it’s worse than that. Busywork hasn’t gone away, our systems are stretched so thin any disturbance destabilises them, our people are burning out, and IT consumes more resources than ever before. What’s going on? Was efficiency the wrong goal, or are we just doing it wrong?
Holly Cummins is a Senior Principal Software Engineer on the Red Hat Quarkus team and a Java Champion. Over her career, Holly has been a full-stack javascript developer, a WebSphere Liberty build architect, a client-facing consultant, a JVM performance engineer, and an innovation leader. Holly has led projects to understand climate risks, count fish, help a blind athlete run ultra-marathons in the desert solo, and invent stories (although not at all the same time). She gets worked up about sustainability, technical empathy, extreme programming, the importance of proper testing, and automating all the things.
View Holly's LeadDev articles and talksClosing session
Suhail is a Senior Staff Engineer at Monzo focused on building the Core Banking and Infrastructure Platform. His role involves serving as a technical authority on Monzo's infrastructure which spans over two thousand microservices and leverages key infrastructure components like Kubernetes, Cassandra, Kafka, Etcd and more. He focuses specifically in investigating deviant behaviour and ensuring services continue to work reliably in the face of a constantly shifting environment in the cloud.
View Suhail's LeadDev articles and talksThis workshop dives deep into DORA, showing you exactly how to apply data-driven insights in your real-world environment to identify bottlenecks, measure progress, and drive continuous improvement. From selecting key performance indicators to fostering a culture of learning, you'll walk away with actionable strategies to boost your team's velocity, reduce time to market, and achieve your goals.
As engineering leaders, your success is the success of your teams. While success can take many forms, a key indicator is how effectively and quickly your team can deliver on its goals and ship software.
But with so many variables that contribute to how successful a team is - how can you work out what to change to move the needle? And what should you be measuring in the first place?
Ready to go beyond theory and get practical? This workshop dives deep into DORA, showing you exactly how to apply data-driven insights in your real-world environment to identify bottlenecks, measure progress, and drive continuous improvement. From selecting key performance indicators to fostering a culture of learning, you'll walk away with actionable strategies to boost your team's velocity, reduce time to market, and achieve your goals.
Work: Finn leads the EMEA Transformation Practice within Google Cloud Consulting. His team works with Google Cloud's largest customers to kickstart their cloud transformation and optimise their operating model. He's also a contributor to the DORA State of DevOps research program. Play: Keen, if inconsistent, golfer. Advocate for better mental health at work.
View Finn's LeadDev articles and talksRob Edwards, DevOps Technology Practice Lead at Google, helps teams unlock their software delivery, reliability engineering, and platform engineering potential.Drawing on two decades of experience working with amazing teams, he takes a human-centric approach to solving complex technical challenges and transformations. With a coffee often in hand he loves chatting with leaders and practitioners alike sharing stories about his passions in technology, developer experience and the human aspects of technology adoption and transformation.He is part of the Google Cloud DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) team and contributed to the 2022 and 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps Reports.
View Rob's LeadDev articles and talksn this workshop, we’ll take a look at how you can help yourself and your teams to adopt AI-assisted tools and practices in a human-centered, evidence-based way. We’ll give you an assessment that will allow you to benchmark your AI adoption readiness and respond appropriately to it with strategies that allow you to effectively surface and address worries head-on. By the end of the session, you’ll walk away with a toolkit for understanding how to best guide your engineers and organization through this change.
Generative AI is about to cause a monumental change to the role of the software engineer - in truth, it’s already started.
However many developers are feeling fear and anxiety over the adoption of AI tools in their day-to-day development process. And as leaders, we’re expected to be able to guide our teams in how to adopt generative AI, while managing our anxieties and worries about our ability to successfully adapt to this change.
In this workshop, we’ll take a look at how you can help yourself and your teams to adopt AI-assisted tools and practices in a human-centred, evidence-based way. We’ll give you an assessment that will allow you to benchmark your AI adoption readiness and respond appropriately to it with strategies that allow you to effectively surface and address worries head-on. By the end of the session, you’ll walk away with a toolkit for understanding how to best guide your engineers and organization through this change.
As a Principal Research Scientist in the Developer Success Lab, Carol leverages her expertise in mental health and thoughtful measurement to study how developers cope and thrive through stressful circumstances. Carol has over a decade of experience leading academic and industry research in clinical health, measurement, and human behavior. Carol serves as a research fellow at the Integrated Behavioral Health Research Institute and as a clinical science advisor for Bravely Mental Health. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UMass Boston.
View Carol's LeadDev articles and talksKristen Foster-Marks is passionate about applying evidence-based science to help software teams learn, work, and thrive. She combines eight years in software development and engineering leadership with extensive knowledge in learning science, pedagogy, and classroom-based research to develop innovative workshops, interventions, and curricula that promote effective behavior change on software teams. Kristen actively contributes to the engineering community by writing articles and giving conference talks, aiming to demystify empirical research on software teams for those best equipped to utilize its insights.
View Kristen's LeadDev articles and talksIn this mini workshop we'll talk about the difference between each of these skills and how to know when to use them. You'll learn three key coaching skills and have the opportunity practice deciding which modality to use. You'll walk away more confident in your ability to lead others.
Being an engineering leader requires many skills.
We have to know how to prioritize, manage work to deadlines and perhaps the hardest - lead others. Our role means a shift from doing to guiding and supporting. We must know when to manage, mentor or coach. When we use these modalities well we build capacity in the team, increasing our ability to meet organisational goals. Along with it, people feel valued, we strengthen our culture and create a workplace where people want to come to work.
In this mini-workshop, we'll talk about the difference between each of these skills and how to know when to use them. You'll learn three key coaching skills and have the opportunity to practice deciding which modality to use. You'll walk away more confident in your ability to lead others.
Suzan Bond is an executive coach and organizational strategist. A former COO for Travis CI, she coaches technology leaders. You can find Suzan on Twitter and at SuzanBond.com.
View Suzan's LeadDev articles and talksStay up-to-date on everything that's happening at StaffPlus London.