Sergio Visinoni

I provide you with better Engineering Leadership via the following services:

* Fractional CTO
* Technical Advisory
* Leadership Mentoring and Coaching

Founder

Pullpo (PV 23-1)

Helping Pullpo build better products for engineering teams, one conversation at a time.

Member of the Technical Advisory Board

Volumio

I'm supporting Volumio as a Fractional CTO.
We have something big cooking, stay tuned

Fractional CTO

Grupo OLX

I'm having a blast working closely with the CEO and the tech leadership team to help Grupo OLX succeed during a critical transition period.

Tech Advisor and Coach

Lidr.co | Training great Tech Leaders

I'm a Mentor for LIDR, where I share my experience with aspiring, new and current Engineering Leaders that are looking to level up their professional skills.

Mentor

Nansen

I advise the newly minted VP of Engineering at Nansen

Technical Advisor

Aa VP of Engineering for Nansen since October 2023 I managed to achieve the following results:

* We launched Nansen 2 which improves dashboard load time by a factor of 10x to 100x, while significantly reducing costs
* Despite going through a layoff of 30% of the staff in June 2023, productivity has improved by all visible measures
* Introduced engineering metrics that are helping all our Engineering Managers have insights on potential areas for improvement in their teams
* Introduced the notion of SLOs and therefore improved reliability of our systems.
* Improved security by establishing stronger controls and processes to proactively handle vulnerabilities
* Reduced the overall cloud bill by approximately 30% when comparing the same month YoY.
* Set up an organisation that is in a much better position to deliver the next years of value thanks to better clarity in roles, responsibilities and processes
* Managed to identify and groom a successor that will take over from me starting from January 2024

VP of Engineering

NA-KD.com

With the exit of the former Chief Growth Officer who was leading the Product organisation, I was asked to take on the CPTO role. It was my decision to take this role on an interim bases since we were and are in the process of reviewing the overall company strategy, and I wanted to make sure we had clear expectations for the role(s) in Product and Engineering once that will be completed.

The key focus in the first few months is and will be around:
* Establishing clear career ladders for Product Managers and Product Designers, replicating the work done with the Engineering organisation in the previous months (WIP)
* Make sure the Product Strategy and tactics are fully aligned with the most pressing business needs that have arisen in the past few months, following significant changes in the organisation
* Focus on improving our approach around experimentation and validating hypothesis, that will ideally lead us to implement a framework such as ICE to structure our prioritisation process and discussions (WIP)

Interim Chief Product and Technology Officer

NA-KD is a direct to consumer online fashion brand that leverages technology to fuel its impressive growth. I joined NA-KD as CTO and during the first 6 months in office I focused on the following areas:

* Establish clear expectations for members of the engineering organisation by implementing an engineering career ladder framework. This framework is used to align expectation with current team members, develop personalised development plans and hire the right skills for the right job
* Develop and socialise the first ever NA-KD Tech Strategy, helping the team going from a reactive mindset of "build what you're told" to proactively manage the evolution of the tech stack
* Introduced concepts around the accelerate metrics, and helped reduce significantly Change Fail Rate in an attempt to create a stable base to then increase deployment frequency and reduce lead time for change
* Established structured processes around OKRs, goal settings and follow-up with all our empowered teams to enable autonomy within the boundaries of clearly set priorities

Chief Technology Officer

willhaben internet service GmbH & Co KG

As a board member for Willhaben I played a key role to make sure that key topics such as investment in technical capabilities and resources were deeply understood and appreciated for their strategic element in the board and in the management team.
That being my key focus, I took part to all conversations about how the overall business is operated. All in all this has been a greatly formative experience to learn how a board operates, how partners sometimes fight and often cooperate, and how the board should be there to support the Management team and not only to make unreasonable requests :)

Board Member

Adevinta

At some point I was offered to take on the responsibility of Product in addition to Engineering.

In this position, I've added the following key focus areas to my role, while delegating most of the engineering specific topics to my Director of Engineering:

* Ensure that our CPOs in each of our markets had support in defining and executing their product strategy, acting as both a sounding board and facilitator whenever such discussions required additional budget or a significant change of priorities

* Build and leverage a small team of strong product leaders that were deployed to work in collaboration with our marketplaces, helping them in two main ways: product leadership to deliver key initiatives, such as the transactional transition in Subito.it, and/or support on improving practices around product development, with a strong focus in balancing delivery with discovery work, outcome focused initiatives and the use of data for prioritising and deciding on investments.

VP of Product and Engineering for Global Markets and New Models

After the spinoff of Adevinta from Schibsted my role continued, and I was able to add more engineering resources to the team to offer dedicated support to our markets in terms of competent teams and resources deployed to help them "do the right thing".

These teams focused on two main areas:

* Backend refactoring, helping our markets moving towards an event driven architecture with a key focus around the "ad management" domain
* Frontend Enablers that helped some of our markets moving towards a modern frontend stack leveraging advanced frameworks (React, NextJS) and modern architectural patterns such as micro-frontends

All this while continuing all of the initiatives started previously

VP of Engineering for Global Markets and New Models

Schibsted Media Group

After an internal reorganisation, Growth Markets became Global Markets, with the addition of all small to medium sized markets across the Schibsted portfolio. This included Italy, Hungary, Austria and Colombia.

With the increase in size and the portfolio I started to scale up a team of experts reporting directly to me to support me run some key initiatives around the following areas:

* Tech Maturity: We developed, deployed and managed a framework aimed at assessing the maturity of each one of our assets. This was heavily influenced by the work done by the DORA institute and the Accelerate books around key tech metrics. The program was extremely successful in creating awareness around the need to invest in technology and engineering capabilities in most of our markets, with some of them - namely Subito.it in Italy and Willhaben.at in Austria - making significant improvements towards becoming High Performing organisations

* Data Convergence: we led a program so start collecting data from all our assets in a central platform that served multiple purposes, ranging from executive reporting to providing a data platform to small markets to easing the integration with smart components built centrally that needed to leverage data in order to train customised models

All this with continuing the initiatives that started with Growth Markets

VP of Engineering for Global Markets and New Models at Schibsted Marketplaces

As VP of Engineering for Global Markets and New Models in Adevinta I had focus my energy and contributions around the following areas:

* Supporting the CTOs of all the Growth Markets, which included Mexico, Chile, Morocco, Belarus, Tunisia and Dominican Republic as well as our Shpock app operating across multiple countries in Europe. The support was focused on helping them define a clear direction and strategy as well as supporting them on daily challenges
* Participate in the overall decisions regarding the business direction of the entire portfolio
* Support the New Models branch to run due diligence on prospect investments in the tech / marketplace space

VP of Engineering for Growth Marketplaces and New Models at Schibsted Marketplaces

This has been very much a one of a kind experience.
At the time when I was offered the role Schibsted was heavily investing in building up central product and tech capabilities, in a company that had historically been focused on having local teams only.
The push towards centralisation was driven by a need to increase efficiency, remove duplication of work and provide more sophisticated capabilities that would need teams of deeply specialised talents to be achieved.

During the transition, it was identified the need to setup an internal "DevRel" function to help smoothen the interactions between central teams that were building services and APIs and local teams that were supposed to leverage them within their products and brands. This represented a very unique challenge given that typical DevRel functions are outward facing and interact with the public developer community.

The role has been both challenging and rewarding, despite the fact that it disappeared one year later due to a further reorganisation in Schibsted.

The key achievement during that period was something we called "The Reboarding Program". This is a program I designed, implemented and executed with the support of many members of the organisation as well as external consultants.

The program consisted of a one week of intense sessions held in one of our offices in Barcelona. The target population were all the Engineers, Designers and Product Managers coming from our "Emerging Markets". These markets where the fist wave of companies that were supposed to adopt a new marketplace platform that was being built in our tech hubs across Europe. This represented a total population of about 250 employees and was executed in less than 6 months, leading to great results.

Engagement metrics were super high, and I got plenty of reports from local leaders on the lasting impact that the training had on the people that went through it.

Director of Engineering - Developer Relations

I help companies and individual improving the ROI of their engineering teams.

These are the problems I will help you with:

❌ Lack of strong leadership in the engineering team
❌ Unclear structures and roles in your team
❌ Unclear strategy and direction for your engineering team
❌ Lack of business alignment
❌ Low productivity
❌ High Technical debt 
❌ Lots of incidents and outages
❌ Frictions between the engineering team and other areas
❌ Lack of clear career paths for members of your team
❌ Need for mentoring and coaching of individuals in the management and leadership journey.

As I've been in the tech industry for more than 20+, 15 of which in leadership positions, I've learnt a great deal about how to solve such common problems in engineering teams in both big and small companies.

I offer my services as:

✅ Business minded Technical Advisor 
✅ Consultant on specific projects
✅ Fractional CTO for companies in need for a part-time expert
✅ Coach for individual leaders who want to accelerate their career growth

I can work both with companies that need help to improve the value generated by their engineering teams as well as individuals that want to become better leaders and managers.

📝 I share generously my expertise both via LinkedIn and via my newsletter "Sudo Make Me a CTO" that invite you to join.

📲 If you have problems with your engineering teams, or with your own career journey please reach out.

📅 I'd be delighted to have an initial complimentary 30 minutes call to get a better understanding of your situation and come up with a tailored offer to help you see visible improvements in a reasonable time frame.

🤝 Let's connect!

I finally sat down and tried something I’d been avoiding for far too long: creating my first real 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗹𝗲𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗽.

I wasn’t expecting it to teach me so much, not just about the technique, but about my own business. And honestly, if you’ve been curious about 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗹𝗲𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 but never dared to start, this might be exactly what you need.

I just published a new article where I share 𝗺𝘆 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 into Wardley Mapping, not the polished, theoretical version you see everywhere, but the actual process I followed to understand it, mistakes and all.

👉 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲: https://lnkd.in/dHz4DdRw

This whole journey started thanks to Susanne Kaiser’s latest book, Architecture for Flow, which introduced me to the approach.

From there, I jumped into the work of Simon Wardley, watched his excellent intro videos, and explored the practical angle through Ben Mosior’s “Minimum Viable Map” perspective.

𝗜𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲, 𝗜 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻:
 ✨ the resources that genuinely helped me progress
 🛠️ how I moved from “I should try this one day” to actually drawing my first maps
 🔍 why mapping my own business revealed things I didn’t expect
 ➡️ what I’m planning to explore next with this practice

If you're curious about strategy or want a behind-the-scenes look at someone learning in public, this one might resonate with you.

And if you already practice Wardley Mapping, I’d genuinely love your thoughts.

#wardleymaps #strategy #learninginpublic #systemsthinking #productleadership

(Thanks Susanne Kaiser, Simon Wardley, Ben Mosior for the insights and inspiration.)

CTO | Tech Advisor | Mentor | Newsletter Author

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.

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.

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.

Senior Software Engineer

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.

Software Engineer

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

Engineers must become multipliers in the AI-era.

The reason?

As tools for development have gotten better, the desired skills for engineers have moved from just pure knowing programming languages and frameworks (expected) to problem-solving abilities and people skills.

But what does it actually mean to be an engineering multiplier?

Being an engineering multiplier means being someone who amplifies the productivity and effectiveness of the engineers around them, not just focusing on their own output, but elevating the entire team.

An engineering multiplier doesn’t just ask, “What can I build?”, they ask, “How can I make everyone around me more effective?”.

And this is what multipliers are doing. They are:
- Improving team efficiency
- Sharing knowledge
- Raising the quality bar
- Enabling better decisions
- Mentoring and empowering others

To learn more, read this article: https://lnkd.in/ezWydu8T

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

Do enterprise companies even use AI?

This was the question that came up frequently in some of the conversations I had with engineers and engineering leaders across the industry.

Ever since the increase in popularity of AI tools → many people have been doubtful regarding security, sharing sensitive data, and overall compliance factors regarding the usage of such tools.

This has been especially prevalent in enterprise companies, as many have previously chosen to restrict such tools.

But now OpenAI has published their report on the state of enterprise AI, and one thing is clear to me:

A lot more enterprise companies are using AI tools these days -> there has been quite a big increase in usage in the last 12 months.

Learn about the state of enterprise AI in my latest article: https://lnkd.in/eJ7BBsa5

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