PA Leadership Coaching

I help Tech executives and leaders in Engineering and Product upgrade themselves, how they work, serve others, and create value in the world.

Leadership Coach

Inflow

Inflow's mission is to equip people with ADHD with the skills and support they need to reach their full potential.

I coach a number of folks across the org in their leadership development and in expanding their thinking to better cope with the complexity of day to day work.

Resident Leadership Coach

My role as Fractional CTO was focused on helping set Inflow up for success as the company grows: coaching and mentoring talented people, and to setup scalable processes across recruiting, software development process, and continuous improvement.

Fractional CTO

Hotjar

Hotjar is the Product Experience Insights software of choice for small and medium businesses.

I coach a number of engineering, product and UX leaders across the organization to be at their best when their best is needed.

Sharpist

Sharpist is the outcome-driven digital platform for people development that pays in on your KPIs by growing your employees with the power of coaching and personalized learning plans.

VP of Engineering

TourRadar

Reporting to the CEO, responsible for growing and nurturing the Engineering organization, along with its budget planning. Scaling up the company on the back of its series C round.

Doubled the team size within a year, to ~50 engineers, through a systematic, scalable and predictable hiring process, while increasing development and deployment velocity/frequency 3x.

Setting a clear direction and objectives for the team, communicating these effectively, and facilitating collaboration with different stakeholders across departments.

For a period of 4 months, led the Product org in addition to Engineering adopting a more structured, predictable and experimentation-based product development process.

VP of Engineering & Interim VP of Product

HelloFresh

(IPO: Frankfurt Stock Exchange 2017)

Responsible for driving and helping accomplish a long-term technical vision for a number of customer-facing teams. Aligning with the business and product vision of the company, empowering a fantastic and ever-growing group of engineers, and removing impediments to flow.

Heavily involved in engineering hiring, helping teams efficiently onboard new engineers, and coaching engineering managers in growing and nurturing their respective teams and individuals.

Director Of Engineering

Tasked with building a team for supporting and developing internal CRM technology. Being essentially a greenfield space at HelloFresh at the time, it led to the development of a modern event-driven architecture enabling us to tap real-time data fed into our CRM platform.

Engineering Manager

Architecting and develop a new Data Warehousing solution for the growing business. Hadoop, Apache Spark, etc.

Data Engineer

Architecting and developing the payments backend and integration with external payment service providers.

Senior Software Engineer

Sports Interactive

Portuguese localization of the market-leading football management simulation game Football Manager (formerly known as Championship Manager)

Translator

Universidade de Évora

- Backend development and maintenance of the University's Online Information System; 
- Design and implementation of integration mechanisms between the University's Online Information System and its counterpart Financial application;
- Design and implementation of public access APIs to the University's Online Information System, for use by external apps (kiosks, mobile platforms, etc) in different contexts.

Software Developer

LOUD! Magazine

Interviews, feature articles and album reviews for a leading Portuguese widespread metal music magazine.

Writer

InfluAds

Front and backend development of a PHP/Zend Framework based, MySQL/MongoDB driven, web app for use by the Influads network of publishers and advertisers.

Developer

Former VP Eng • Leadership Coach • I help you get in control of your work so it doesn’t control you.

🚀 Coach for tech leaders at all levels looking to step it up, and do well while doing good. If that's you, and you feel like someone who can expand your thinking could be handy, DM me. Let's chat!

🧠 Former engineering executive, manager and software developer, manager. Leadership, management and organizations through the lenses of complexity, systems, and how the brain works.

👹 The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world it’s either people or profit.

Paulo André

The Caring Techie

Founder & CEO - Engineering Leadership Coach

Maven

Learn the mindsets, frameworks, and tools you need to find your voice, make yourself listened to, and have the impact you want at work.

Course Instructor - "Impact through Influence in Engineering Teams"

Mnemonic, Inc

• Bootstrapped the engineering culture and processes
• Managed & coached the early employees
• Partnered with the CEO and Head of Product to create and prioritize the roadmap
• Partnered with the Head of Marketing to define our core value statements
• Delivered key 0 to 1 projects including indexing, data pipelines processing TB of data, high-performing APIs, and billing running on GCP infrastructure

Staff Software Engineer / Engineering Manager

Uber

Feb 2018 - July 2020 Uber Eats - Eater Delivery Experience team
• Led the engineering team responsible with the redesign of the whole delivery experience in the Uber Eats Eater app - project Genie
• Architected a server-driven model-view framework for the delivery experience that provides support for various delivery modalities (over-the-top, pick-up, restaurants providing their couriers)
• Led the cross-organizational effort of integrating maps in the Eater App

Jan 2017 - Feb 2018 Uber Ride Sharing - Marketplace Management
• Led the team that built an event ingestion platform and API to be used for the purpose of Forecasting & Pricing

Staff Software Engineer (former Senior 2) - Tech Lead

Google

Led a cross-organizational team to architect & implement a scalable, server-side dynamic ad insertion engine for MPEG-DASH Linear TV and On-Demand streams for the Google Fiber Mobile TV App (Android and iOS).

Senior Software Engineer - Technical Lead Manager

Google Fiber TV Ads
Developed the distributed backend for dynamic ad insertion on linear TV for Google Fiber Set Top Boxes for serving fully targeted TV ads to Google Fiber customers

Google Fiber Embedded
Developed and troubleshooted embedded software for the in-home routing devices and set top boxes.

AdWords Serving Infrastructure
Features and fixes for live budgeting, experiments and local ad serving.

Software Engineer

Ixia

Developed plug-ins for the IxNetwork product including MLD and IGMP implementations, DHCP server features, and performance improvements.

University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest

Operating Systems Teaching Assistant

Voice System, Romania

Bitdefender

Junior Software Developer (Intern)

I spent the last 14 years of my career in Tech doing hands-on engineering leadership for companies like Google, Uber, and early-stage startups. 

I'm very passionate about helping people shine. Over the last 4 years, I helped hundreds of software engineers and engineering leaders transform their potential into high performance via 1:1 coaching, courses and my writing.

If you're curious about working together, dm me or shoot me an email at thecaringtechie@gmail.com.

Irina Stanescu

If you're a tech lead or staff+ engineer trying to communicate complex ideas more clearly (especially with cross-functional teams) → this story might resonate.

One of my first tech leads at Google had a habit: any time a conversation got confusing, he’d pull us into a room, grab a marker, and start sketching on a whiteboard.

He wasn’t trying to show off, nor to delay us, but to clarify.

Once people could 𝘴𝘦𝘦 the architecture, the blockers, the tradeoffs: the conversation changed. We stopped debating opinions and started solving real problems.

That habit stuck with me, and years later, I still see how rare it is.

Most engineers don’t think diagramming is part of the job. They see it as something for the architecture review, or the engineer with time to spare.

But in practice, the teams that diagram early and often communicate better, onboard faster, and make more confident decisions.

That’s why I love using the Miro workspace! 

With Miro , you can diagram systems collaboratively, layer complexity, auto-generate visuals from docs, and keep everything connected to your existing tools. It becomes part of how the team thinks, not just something you prep for a review.

A picture is worth more than a thousand words. Clear visuals aren’t fluff. They’re the essence of influence.

Try it here: http://miro.pxf.io/LK7n1a 

#MiroPartner 

♻️ Please repost if you found this useful

Staff Software Engineer • Tech Lead Manager • High Performance Career Coach • Ex-Google, Ex-Uber

When my reports were underperforming, I used to assume it was due to lack of skills/competence. It turns out, in 70% percent of cases, the issue was something else.

Yes, they weren’t hitting deadlines. They’d hold back on decisions we’d already aligned on. Sometimes they just wouldn’t submit that damn PR, even though it seemed ready.

I thought they needed clearer direction, more structure, better scoping, and tighter check-ins. None of that really changed anything.

What was actually going on had nothing to do with skill. They were capable. But they didn’t trust themselves to make the call.

And in small ways, I was reinforcing that. I was jumping in too quickly and giving them the answer before they asked.

When I finally changed how I showed up (giving them more space, saying out loud that I trusted their judgment, backing their decisions in front of others), things started to move. They got faster, more decisive, more confident. The performance followed.

Their issue wasn’t competence, it was confidence!

Confidence is built through belief and action. As a manager, you have more influence over both than you might realize. You can inspire belief by cheering people on, and you can create the conditions for action that prove that belief true.

Managers shape confidence more than we think. We can build it & we can also break it, without meaning to.

To learn more about how managers build (or break) their team’s self-confidence (the dos and don'ts), in my latest article:

👉 https://lnkd.in/gb4NCpDf

♻️ Please repost if you found this useful

Open article: How Managers Build (or Break) Their Team’s Confidence by thecaringtechie.com

How Managers Build (or Break) Their Team’s Confidence

“I don’t want to be the middleman.”
One of my clients heard this from their manager, and that changed everything for them.

They were used to managers who handled all the cross-team updates, shielded them from politics, and owned the communication.

But this manager expected the engineer to lead those conversations.

At first, it felt confusing and uncomfortable. They couldn’t tell if their manager was not caring or just being hands-off.

But it wasn’t either. It was their way of saying:
→ I trust you to lead
→ I expect you to communicate
→ I’m here to support, not filter

Good managers don’t want to be the middleman.
They don’t want to forward updates or translate decisions.
They want their ICs to build those muscles themselves.

If you're a manager: step aside. Let them lead. It’s the best way to scale yourself. You grow leaders, not dependencies.

If you're an IC: appreciate your manager for not gatekeeping. It’s an opportunity to lead, to be seen, and to build real influence.

♻️ Please repost if you found this useful

Ever heard "we don't have time to write a design doc, let's just build it"? Such a tempting shortcut. But here's what I've learned from years at Google and Uber:
Skipping it will cost you way more than writing it.

I get it, writing a doc, even a one pager, takes time, and sometimes that's the last thing you want to do.

In my latest article, I call this planning aversion, and I argue it's a terrible idea. The real efficiency bottleneck isn't planning, it's thrash!

Writing a design doc is a form of planning and it's mental hygiene. As long as it doesn't become a monster document delaying actual delivery. 

The point is to gather just enough information to derisk your project, eliminate incorrect assumptions, and make sure the problem and solution make sense.

To read more, head over to: https://lnkd.in/gXYHeNHz

Curious: Do you see this in your team? How much planning is "enough" in your org?

Open article: The real efficiency bottleneck isn’t planning, it’s thrash by thecaringtechie.com

The real efficiency bottleneck isn’t planning, it’s thrash

Is AI actually improving performance?

As we approach the end of Q4, this might be the question of the year for engineering leaders.

The tools are everywhere. 
According to the 2025 State of Engineering Management report, 90% of teams now use AI coding tools - up from 61% last year.

But adoption hasn't been easy. Some teams jumped in early. Others are still figuring out where AI fits.

And even for the early adopters, a new challenge is surfacing: how do we know if it’s working? Are teams using AI shipping better software, collaborating more smoothly, and creating more leverage?

AI changes how engineers write code, but it also changes how leaders need to evaluate impact.

That’s where the newly released 𝟳 𝗔𝗜 𝗞𝗣𝗜𝘀 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 guide from Jellyfish comes in, explaining how to:
• Track adoption with KPIs like Daily Active Users and AI-Generated Code
• Measure productivity via throughput, satisfaction, and code quality
• Connect AI to business outcomes like cost efficiency and growth capacity
• Avoid vanity metrics that distort what success really looks like
  
If you’re planning for 2026 and want to lead with intention, not just follow trends, this is worth your time.

👉 Download the free guide: https://lnkd.in/e9Bt-fUW

♻️ Please repost if you found this useful

taplio

The Battle

Paulo André

Irina Stanescu

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreIrina Stanescu's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Paulo André

Irina Stanescu

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Irina Stanescu's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreIrina Stanescu's LinkedIn Performance