After three years coaching engineers and leaders on mindset and wellbeing, I’m now combining that experience with my deep software engineering background as a Software Engineering Manager at OVO Energy.

Our work empowers customers to transition to greener energy by guiding them through the process of selecting and installing EV chargers. With ChargeAnytime, they benefit from cheaper, smarter charging, and through partnerships with industry leaders like Volvo and VWG, we extend this even further—offering new EV owners thousands of free miles alongside ongoing cost savings on their EV charging.

I work closely with my head of engineering to help shape our engineering strategy and model architecture. Through continuous improvement and a strong engineering culture, we continue to move toward our vision.

I’ve grown my fully remote team from four to ten engineers. This involved hiring and onboarding top talent and ensuring the right balance of technical expertise, mindset, and collaboration. 

I employ strategies such as dysfunction mapping to highlight areas for improvement within my teams. We also hold weekly continuous improvement sessions to provide feedback, engage team members, and track progress toward our technical and behavioural goals.

I focus on a coaching approach for my engineers, encourage taking responsibility and insist on fostering a psychologically safe environment were we can give and receive feedback, talk about mistakes and learn from them without the blame and judgement.

I work closely with nearshore partners, seamlessly integrating them into our work processes to extend our capabilities.

I recently represented OVO at Volvo’s Stockholm HQ, taking part in a two-day kickoff workshop for a multi-business collaboration project.

Contributed to ISO acreditation process for ChargeAnytime.

Software Engineering Manager

RD Coached Ltd

As the director of RD Coached Ltd, I provide mindset workshops and talks to software development teams and I provide 1-2-1 coaching to software developers and software development leaders.

Delivered a 2-hour workshop and delivered a talk on the main track at the C3 Dev Festival 2024 held in Amsterdam and the TechLead Conference 2024.

I also provide software development consultancy services via outside IR35 Contracts.

As part of my role, I continue to build automation systems to streamline my business, including integrating Notion and LinkedIn to save time scheduling and posting social media content.

I've also built a wellbeing hub for software developers and leaders with tools to help with mental and physical wellbeing. One of my tools integrates with the OpenAI Api.

Key technical skills:
C# Net 7, .Net Core, EF, ASP.NET, MVC, WebAPI, Microservices, HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, Azure DevOps, Azure Services, Docker, SCRUM, Agile, Apps Script, SQL Server, coaching, training, speaking

Director

Mindspan

As a Peak Performance Mindset Coach, I delivered Talks, Workshops and 1-2-1 coaching based on Mindspan's Peak Performance Mind Programme.

Peak Performance Mindeset Coach

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) 

During my time with BEIS, I wrote a support application in React to streamline queries from the Government's Help To Grow programme, often reducing the effort from hours to minutes.

I saved the department nearly £20k by reviewing their caching strategy of the main Help to Grow system and providing feedback.

I later moved to the initial stages of the government's Energy Support scheme, in which I communicated with cross-functional teams to solidify the team's understanding of requirements as well as guided those less technical teams on the art of the possible, given the requirements and the time pressures we were under.

I onboarded and mentored new team members and took an active role in ensuring everyone had a voice in our meetings.

Senior Software Engineer

Aviva

Technical:
As part of a small team of software architects, I was responsible for overseeing the work of up to 200 developers who delivered our suite of digital online applications globally. 

I introduced consistent patterns and practices to ensure efficient and consistent development across our teams. 

I defined and implemented coding standards, peer reviews and integrated new technologies into the ecosystem.

Key projects include:
Migration to .NET Core and a containerized, cloud-based architecture.

Migration of our source control and build system from Atlassian Stash and Jenkins to Microsoft Azure DevOps, introducing comprehensive CI/CD processes

Developed and maintained a microservice-based API layer using .Net Core 3.1/Net 5.

Full re-write of a legacy payment application into .NET Core 3.1.

Key Skills:
C# Net 5, .Net Core, ASP.NET, MVC, HTML, CSS, Accessibility, Javascript, JQuery, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, Azure DevOps, Docker, SCRUM, Agile

Thoughts:
I recognised the struggles I'd had during my career, in the developers I worked with, and started to think in terms of positively impacting those around me.

I realised that mindset and mental health were being overlooked, and companies didn't seem to be aware of the specific challenges developers face on a daily basis. 

I wanted to change this. It started with the impact that technical decisions could have and later moved into a focus on mindset, wellbeing and engineering excellence.

Software Architect

Technical:
Many developers and BAs were just starting an agile transformation and struggled to grasp the benefits. 

By building trust and showing rather than telling, I brought them along on our agile journey.

A big turning point was gaining the trust of the Product Owner, who had been very sceptical under the previous leadership. 

The team was growing fast, which meant I had to improve at delegating and trusting my team, too.

With so many engineering teams across the organisation, communication was a struggle. 

To improve the situation, I arranged a bi-weekly meeting for team leads to discuss upcoming work and share technical best practices or concerns.

The result was improved communication and collaboration across teams, better reuse of code and designs, a more consistent code base, and improved knowledge sharing.

Key skills
C#, ASP.NET MVC, JQuery, HTML, CSS, Accessibility, SQL Server 2012, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, TDD, Moq, LINQ, Structure Map, BDD, Selenium, SCRUM, Agile, Javascript, Knockout, CSS

Thoughts:
Having recently been made redundant, I struggled with my self-belief and confidence when I started this role. I felt like I bundled my way through the interview, and when I actually started my role, I had massive feelings of imposter syndrome. 

I doubled down on areas of mindset and mental health to improve self-belief and confidence. Very quickly I was leading by example and driving the team to the successful completion of two major projects.

Team Lead

BGO Studios

Technical:
As a Senior Software Engineer at BGO Studios, I was the lead server developer on the Remote Gaming Server (RGS) project.  

The team: 3 server-side developers, 2 mathematicians and 4 front end developers based in London. 

My responsibilities:
• Design and implement the Remote Gaming Server roadmap
• Report project status to senior management 
• Distribution of development tasks 
• Interpret complex math models and create server-side implementation
• Integrate with an admin system to view spin data
• Create simulation programs to spin the slot machine up to 500 million times to generate statistics 
• Liaise with internal and external QA teams
• Expose a REST API to be consumed by Flash/HTML5 client
• Consume REST services of gambling platform to provide user account and wallet facilities.

Games released to live::
•	Jurassic Island 
•	Jungle Trouble 
•	Satsumos Revenge 
•	Murder Mystery 
•	Aladdin and The Wild Genie
•	Jekyll & Hyde 

* Slots engine was subsequently sold.

Key skills
HTML, CSS, C#, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server 2014, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, DDD, SOA, WCF Services (REST/Soap), Test Driven Development, Rhino Mocks, LINQ, Structure Map

Thoughts:
In this role, I was once again tested from a mental strength and mindset perspective. It was both very stressful and extremely technical. I key part of dealing with the pressure and stress of this role was prioritising my physical health and really leaning on my mindset.

This helped me massively in dealing with what started out as some quite challenging relationships. I gained a great appreciation for the importance of relationships in work and also in my personal life.

Proteo

Technical:
I was responsible for delivering the product road map, defining product architecture and the functional design of new product capabilities. 

I produced technical specifications, development estimates and participated in implementation, overseeing the work of the team. 

Key skills included object-oriented design, asynchronous programming, design patterns and database design. 

I also got involved in pre-sales by providing product demonstrations to potential new clients.

Key skills
C#, ASP.NET Webforms/MVC, JQuery, SQL Server 2012, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, SOA, WCF Services (REST/Soap), Entity Framework, LINQ, Bing Maps/Virtual Earth, Active Reports.NET, Telerik controls and reporting, Silverlight, MVVM, JavaScript

Thoughts:
I was the  Team Lead/Architect of the Proteo product development team. 

This was the first time I had led a team and I really started to see the importance of patience, support and the massive significance of mindset and mental health. 

This was both from my own perspective and from the perspective of my team members too. 

Leaning on my mentors, I started to develop my leadership style but more importantly, I started to develop my self-belief, confidence and communication skills.

Team Lead / Architect

Tournament.com

Technical:
Tournament.com was an online gaming site where customers paid to compete and potentially win money based on their performance in the game. 

As a software engineer, I was responsible for the full development life cycle of the Tournament.com client, a downloadable windows forms application. The purpose of the application was to register and launch third party games. It also provided a wealth of information to customers about services available including promotions, offers and tournaments. It allowed users to chat and join scheduled tournaments for their chosen game.  My key responsibilities were:

Producing technical specifications for the Tournament.com client.
Designing and implementing a multi-threaded application.
Usage of design patterns.
Usage of object oriented design to streamline the application code and ensure that it was concise and maintainable.
Release management.

Key skills 
C#, Winforms, ASP.NET, SQL Server, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, Multi-threading

Thoughts:
This role turned out to be a technically challenging and high pressure job. I learnt a lot about how not to achieve work/life balance. Luckily, the work was really interesting and the people were good fun.

Software Engineer

Homeserve

Reward Scheme project

Key skills 
VB.NET, Winforms, ASP.NET, SQL Server, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns

The aim of this project was to motivate engineers to reduce remedial call outs by awarding\deducting points which translated into a regular bonus. This saved the company significant costs and increased productivity in 75% of the depots up and down the country. Key aspects of my role were:

Object orientated programming, n-tier architecture.
Adhering to strict coding standards, participating in peer code reviews.
Transformation of functional requirement documents into technical specifications and designs.
Accurate time keeping as all time was logged to monitor costs of different projects.
Communicating effectively with depot users, other developers and senior management.
To provide regular statistical analysis of the performance of all aspects of the job tracking system.

IT Systems Developer

💚 Helping Developers & Leaders Balance Wellbeing and Success 🚀 | Software Developer | Leader | Mindset Coach | Personal Trainer | Mental Health First Aider

With over 24 years of software engineering experience and 3 years spent coaching software engineers and software engineering leaders on their mindset and wellbeing, I'm currently combining this skill set as a Software Engineering Manager.

I aim to positively impact the Software Engineering industry by highlighting the importance of mindset, mental health and wellbeing within high-performing teams.

My ambition is to run the software engineering function for a huge company so that I can shape the culture and ways of working on a large scale and hopefully gain wider traction across the industry.

I've spoken at an international tech conference about the importance of mindset, wellbeing and mental health in the software engineering industry.

In my teams:

I value great communication, collaboration and empathy.

A growth mindset, a positive attitude, and a thirst for continuous improvement are key qualities I look for.

Taking responsibility for our thoughts as well as our actions is extremely important.

I encourage my team to prioritise their wellbeing and their physical and mental health.

We focus on what we CAN do, not what we can't...

We focus on small individual habits...

And small team-level habits...

That compound over time...

The direction of travel is the most important thing. 
Always improving, even by the smallest amount. 
The speed at which we improve can vary massively, but we consistently move in the right direction.

Richard Donovan

Engineering Leadership

Writing one of the fastest growing newsletters for engineers and managers. The goal is to help everyone to become great engineering leaders.

Become a subscriber:

Founder & Author

Maven

Teaching a highly-rated (4.9) top engineering course. 

In the course, we particularly focus on the development of much needed people / communication and leadership skills in order to grow from engineer to leader.

You can join here:

Course Instructor - "Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role"

gregorojstersek.com

I mostly work with startups and scale-ups to build up great engineering organizations, build MVPs or scale the engineering org. My expertise is in aligning the business vision with technical solutions and building a high-performing engineering org.

Here are all the options to work with me:

Fractional / Interim CTO and Tech Advisor

Zorion

Leading the Software Development of the Fintech product from idea to the launch and growth to 10k+ users. Managing a fully remote Agile cross-functional team in various different time zones. Managing the tech direction, culture, setting the right processes and continuously improving them. Aligning all of the tech initiatives with org-level (business) goals.

Chief Technology Officer

Streamlined the software development process from sporadic to highly efficient, aligned with business goals. Led the transformation of the Technology department with a clear definition of roles and responsibilities. In charge of hiring and building up the tech department for the business needs. Technologies: React, React Native, Python, FastApi, Hasura, PostgreSQL, AWS.

VP of Engineering

ready2order

Managing fully remote Agile teams that are responsible for different products including the core POS application as well as internal middlewares for business processes. Responsible for Engineers, QA, DevOps as well as Delivery Managers. In charge of hiring and building up the teams. Coordinating with key stakeholders for different projects. Providing coaching and mentoring to direct reports.

Head of Engineering

ZenGRC

Managing fully remote scrum teams located on various different time zones and 20+ direct and indirect reports. Managing the direction, culture, setting right processes and improving them. In charge of growth of the teams and hiring. Working directly with team leads - providing coaching and mentoring. Coordinate deliveries across different departments.

Engineering Manager

Building features on the Risk and Compliance Management platform used by enterprise companies worldwide with technologies such as Vue, React, Python, Node.js to name a few. Leading a fully remote scrum team on building next-gen products. Coach and mentor engineers on the team. Managing the direction of the team and improving processes to optimise deliveries.

Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead

Sibit d.o.o.

Building web applications, e-commerce and other web solutions with technologies such as HTML, CSS, SCSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, PHP, MySQL, C#, ASP.NET CORE, SQL Server.

GO Solutions

Providing services in regards to web, mobile and desktop solutions with different technologies such as SCSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, React, Vue, Ionic, PHP, MySQL, Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB to name a few. Hiring external experts for the need of particular projects in different fields including Development, Project Management, Marketing, Sales and Copywriting.

Harvey Norman

Web solutions from design phase and all the way to finished developed phase with technologies such as HTML, CSS, SCSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP.

Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Working on different web solutions with technologies such as HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, jQuery, PHP.

CTO | Author of Engineering Leadership newsletter (65k+ subscribers) - Helping you become a great engineering leader!

I am an engineering leader with a passion for solving complicated problems with innovative concepts. I love learning about new technologies, sharing my knowledge and teaching others. 

I have a proven record of successfully managing Agile teams, setting the correct direction and culture as well as creating right processes and continuously improving them. I have overseen hiring and building up the teams as well as have strong emphasis on coaching and mentoring to direct reports.

You can reach me at info@gregorojstersek.com.

Gregor Ojstersek

PM: “Can we get a timeline?”
Senior engineer: “Time is… a spectrum" :)

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

CTO | Founder of Engineering Leadership newsletter (175k+ subscribers) - Helping you become a great engineering leader!

There are 3 main routes when it comes to Engineering Leadership:
- Management (Team Lead or Engineering Manager)
- IC (Tech Lead or Staff Engineer)
- Architecture (Software Architect)

I consider these to be starting engineering leadership roles, where people in such roles are expected to be multipliers for others and not primarily contributing by finishing assigned tasks.

And these are the skills you need to develop:
- System Design
- Leadership
- Management (for management path)
- Technical details
- Product/Business
- Communication/Influence

The level of depth you need to go in each depends on which path you take.

To help you with this.

Here are 200+ resources to get better at any skills mentioned above: https://lnkd.in/eRMgZ9Ee

What do I look for in a Senior Software Engineer as a manager?

There are so many different things that make a senior engineer. If I can sum all of them in 1 sentence, that would be:

A senior engineer should be able to independently understand the problem and find the right solution to it.

I am not just talking about technical solutions here. I mean solutions across different areas including communication, collaboration, mentoring and helping others.

And by no means do I mean that you need to have the right answers on the spot. A senior engineer is able to find and gather solutions from various of different sources.

Software engineering is too broad of a field to be an expert in everything or to know everything upfront.

As a manager, I wish to rely on a senior to make good decisions, do the right things and inspire others to do the same.

Learn more how to become a Senior Software Engineer here: https://lnkd.in/dUeAbHqD

This is how I do a full engineering org audit.

As a Fractional CTO and advisor, one of the common things that I did a couple of times this year was an engineering organizational audit.

I use the same approach as I would use in the first 90 days if I were to start a new full-time engineering leadership role.

1. The first thing I do is to really understand the pain points
In some cases, they have secured new funding and would like to scale and focus on hiring. Another reason may be that the CTO has left the company, and they would like to do a good overview of the current org before making any decisions.

2. The second thing I do is have 1:1s with the relevant people
The 3 main questions I normally ask here are:
- How are you feeling about your current work and projects?
- What do you believe is going well, and what could be improved?
- How can I support and help you?

3. Following, I go through all the relevant parts of the engineering org
I normally combine the second and this step together, as I am able to ask much better questions if I understand certain parts much better. I go through the documentation, check the codebase, overall architecture, and also assess all of the different parts:
- Hiring
- Culture
- Continuous growth
- Knowledge sharing
- Planning and alignment
- Onboarding process
- Release process
- Development process
- Incident management process
- Security

4. Provide suggestions for improvements and present the findings
I make sure I note all the important info in the board and finish by providing my suggestions for improvements. After I have everything prepared, I present my findings together with my suggestions.

To learn more, read my latest article: https://lnkd.in/e35MCdPx

Included in the article:
🎁 Checklist For a Great Engineering Organization
🎁 Board For a Great Engineering Organization

I've checked OpenAI's report on the state of enterprise AI.

They surveyed over 9000 people from various fields in 100+ enterprise companies. Plus, they shared the data on the usage of their services.

Some interesting insights:

- Users report saving 40–60 minutes per day using AI tools

- Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, France, and Canada are above the global average in the number of paying business customers of OpenAI (Australia by far in the first place)

- ChatGPT message volume grew 8x and API token consumption per organization increased 320x year-over-year (from November 2024)

To learn more, tomorrow, I'll be sending out my full thoughts and insights on the report.

To not miss it, join 175k+ engineering leaders here: https://lnkd.in/eNSKBMUf

taplio

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Richard Donovan

Gregor Ojstersek

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