Life as a Manager in a Growing Team

I'm a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. I studied Computer Engineering and have always been interested in low-level computing. Straight out of university, I got a job working on a compiler for a custom Java-based language that compiled into VHDL.

After that, I dabbled in C++ and crypto before making a sharp turn into Python and pure backend, working in FinTech and InsurTech companies. During this time, I became interested in DevOps, and eventually my role evolved into a more Platform-oriented one, which is what I've been doing for the past four years.

At Engine, I'm part of the Platform Delivery team, a subteam within the wider Crosscutting Platform Team, focusing on Engine's internal Release Tooling.

When I joined Engine, my plan was always to be part of the Platform team, but I first wanted to gain more knowledge and understanding of the banking side of things. So, for my first six months here, I was part of the one of our Cards teams. This was an incredible learning experience as someone who, prior to joining Engine, had almost no knowledge of how card payments worked behind the scenes – and as a Platform engineer, learning how engineering teams operate at Engine.

Later down the line, I joined the Platform team. Over time, the team grew from seven people to more than twenty, so we decided to split into multiple smaller teams, one of which is Platform Delivery. This is the team I now lead.

As a team, we're fortunate to work on systems that every engineer at Engine uses on a daily basis. This means our work is extremely visible and the feedback loop is very quick.

However, this also means we get a lot of engineers approaching us with great new feature ideas, so one of our biggest challenges is prioritising the right things without disappointing anyone.

The first task for a new joiner is always something simple – usually deleting some unused code. This has proven to be a good introduction, as it gives new joiners insight into how our release process works, without the worry that their change might break something. The first week on a new job is already stressful enough!

The next two tasks are typically fixing a bug and implementing a small feature (we always have plenty to choose from, as mentioned previously!). New joiners are paired with another team member for both of these tasks. After that, there's usually a larger feature planned for each new joiner, spanning a few weeks or months.

Within our team (and the wider Platform team), we foster a culture of proactivity and leaving the code better than we found it. I've found that this encourages new team members to find small tasks for themselves pretty quickly after joining, which helps them gain independence and an understanding of the codebase – something very crucial when starting a new job.

We're currently expanding our team at multiple levels (from Engineer I through to Senior). Our ideal candidates are people who enjoy developing solutions that improve the working lives of their fellow engineers.

Our primary focus, at the moment, is a complete overhaul of our Release process. We're aiming to make it far less manual and much more flexible, allowing greater control over what gets released, when, and how. As we deploy several times a day, with the number of clients and engineers working on our codebase growing rapidly, our existing release approach is reaching its limits. That's why the work being done by the Platform Delivery Team is so important.

We're also tackling the complex challenge of database management at scale – a core concern for any cloud-native business. To address this, we're forming a new team dedicated to building custom tooling in this area. For this initiative, we're looking to hire experienced engineers from Senior up to Principal level.