Coaches and Mentors for Engineering Managers and Engineering Leaders

I sometimes get asked if I do mentoring of engineering leaders - managers, directors or senior+ engineers. While my weekly newsletter covers topics relevant for these folks, I have little no further bandwidth for one-on-one mentoring.

Luckily, I both know several people who specialize in this type of coaching. I also asked around for more recommendations:

Below is a list of paid coaches for engineering leaders who come recommended - either by myself, or from other people I trust. As an engineering leader, investing in an external coach is a high ROI investment for your company to make. If you don't have access to experienced mentors or coaches within your company, I suggest you make the case for an external engineering coach to maximise your growth and impact.

A word of advice: finding a coach who "clicks" won't happen without talking to a few people. In the past, I've recommended coaches who worked wonderfully for some people, but there was no "chemistry" with others. Do an intro call, and if you feel you're getting on the same wavelength: this is a good sign. If not: it's not a big deal, and talk to someone else.

My recommendations

These are people I either personally know, or people I know well shared good experiences with.

• Anton Drukh - formerly VP of Engineering, mentor to several tech executives. Based in Israel.
• Paulo André - formerly VP of Engineering and HelloFresh alumni. Mentoring engineering leaders at all levels. Based in Germany (Berlin).
• Lara Hogan - formerly VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, author of the book Resilient Management. Engineering manager coaching - more details. Based in the US.
• Lena Reinhard - engineering executive turned coach for engineering leaders and managers. Formerly VP Engineering at CircleCI and TravisCI. Based in Germany (Berlin).
• Pat Kua - formerly CTO of N26, author of Level Up Engineering newsletter, creator of Tech Lead Academy. Coaches VP/Director levels. Based in Germany (Berlin).
• Colin Howe - startup CTO. Based in the UK (London).

Further vetted recommendations

• Alvaro Moya - experienced CTO, founder of tech leadership training LIDR. Based in Spain (Barcelona).
• Aviv Ben-Yosef - mentoring CTOs and VPEs globally for several years. Based in Israel.
• Cate Huston - engineering director at DuckDuckG, formerly at Google. Coaches managers. Based in Ireland/remote.
• Esther Derby - coach and consultant. Based in the US (Minnesota).
• Félix López - VP Engineering, formerly at Eventbrite and Google. Based in Spain.
• Jason Wong - leadership coach, formerly at Sr Director of Engineering at Etsy. Based in the US (NYC).
• Joel Chippindale - CTO coach. Based in the UK (London).
• Keith Adams - formerly chief architect at Slack, engineer at Facebook, senior staff engineer at VMWare. Based in the US (San Francisco)
• Kirsten Clacey - faciliator coach at Automattic. Based in South Africa (Cape Town).
• Rod Begbie - engineering leadership coach, formerly senior EM at Dropbox. Based in Spain (Barcelona).
• Saurya Velagapudi - engineering leadership coach, formerly tech lead manager at Google. Based in Singapore.
• Tony Piper. Mental fitness coach, formerly having worked in the tech industry. Based in the UK (London).

Coaching lists and groups

• A list of women in tech coaches curated by coach Lulu Cheng
• Best Practicer. 1:1 coaching from domain experts.
• CTO Craft. CTO coaching and mentoring.
• LIDR - a mentoring program and community.
• VPE Coach. Leadership coaching for engineers, by engineers.

Newsletter

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter for advice, observations and inspiration across the software engineering industry. Especially relevant for those in big tech and at high-growth startups.

Engineering Manager learning circles

An alternative to one-on-one coaching is joining a learning circle for engineering managers. Here are ones I know of, and can recommend:

• VPE Learning Circle organized by Will Larson and Uma Chingunde
• Down Left organized by Oren Ellenbogen
• CTO Craft learning circles

Other places to find mentorship

You can find free or paid mentors on sites listed in these mentoring resources.

Missing someone from these lists? Reply to this thread on Twitter - I update the list based on it.

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