Becoming an engineering leader is not about suddenly becoming a hands-on architect or writing code full-time again. It is about progressively reshaping how you think, lead, and engage with engineering work. Think of this as a ladder with five levels. Each level strengthens your foundation, deepens your technical judgment, and expands your leadership influence, while still honoring your strengths as a delivery manager.
You don't need to race through them. Aim for 1 level
every 1–2 months, and build real habits at each stage before climbing up.
Level 1: The Observer
Goal: Build awareness of how engineering actually works
in your projects/programs.
Mindset Shift: From “tasks and timelines” ➜
to “systems and people who build them.”
Key Practices:
- Attend architecture reviews, design discussions, and tech planning meetings
- Shadow engineers during deployments, incident triage, or feature builds
- Map your tech stack, learn what systems exist, what they depend on, and who owns them
- Read postmortems from the past 6–12 months and note recurring issues
What to Look For:
- How decisions are made and debated
- Where the biggest friction or tech debt lies
- Where your team is silently firefighting
Milestone: You can describe your team’s, architecture
and main pain points in plain language.
Level 2: The Questioner
Goal: Start influencing quality of thinking without
dictating solutions.
Mindset Shift: From “Are we on schedule?” ➜
to “Are we building this the right way?”
Key Practices:
- Ask scaling questions: “What if traffic doubles?” “What happens if this fails?”
- Ask maintainability questions: “Can a new engineer understand this easily?”
- Ask people questions: “Who is learning something from this work?”
- Introduce a lightweight design review checklist before large changes ship
- Create safe space for tech debates during planning
What to Look For:
- How teams justify decisions
- Whether short-term tradeoffs are logged as tech debt
- If engineers feel heard and empowered
Milestone: Engineers see you as a thoughtful
reviewer, not just a task tracker.
Level 3: The Enabler
Goal: Create space and systems for better engineering
decisions.
Mindset Shift: From “managing delivery” ➜
to “enabling sustainable delivery.”
Key Practices:
- Allocate engineering investment time (refactoring, tech debt paydown) in your plans
- Push for documentation, onboarding guides, and internal tech talks
- Start mentoring senior ICs (individual contributors) to become tech leads
- Encourage teams to run internal design spikes or proof-of-concepts before committing
What to Look For:
- Teams feel less rushed
- Tech debt stops growing silently
- Knowledge becomes more widely shared
Milestone: You have created conditions where good
engineering naturally happens.
Level 4: The Technical Partner
Goal: Become a trusted co-pilot for engineering
decisions.
Mindset Shift: From “observer of tech” ➜
to “participant in tech strategy.”
Key Practices:
- Co-create long-term technical roadmaps with your tech leads
- Tie tech improvements to business outcomes (faster time-to-market, reliability, lower cost)
- Push for metrics that matter, reliability, performance, developer experience
- Join incident reviews and architecture boards as an equal voice
What to Look For:
- Product managers seek your input on technical feasibility
- Engineers bring you in early on complex designs
- You can defend technical investments to leadership
Milestone: You shape engineering direction, not just
support it.
Level 5: The Engineering Leader
Goal: Lead through technical vision, cultural
stewardship, and strategic clarity.
Mindset Shift: From “delivering work” ➜
to “building an enduring engineering
organization.”
Key Practices:
- Champion a clear technical vision aligned to business goals
- Build a culture of Engineering, learning, and innovation
- Sponsor staff-level growth paths for engineers and architects
- Balance speed with sustainability as a core leadership principle
- Continuously assess org design, ownership boundaries, and platform strategy
What to Look For:
- Engineering quality is now part of your leadership DNA
- Teams deliver faster because they are building on strong foundations
- You have become a magnet for talent
Milestone: You are no longer a delivery manager who
understands engineering, You are an engineering leader who can deliver at
scale.
How to Use This Framework
- Treat it like a training roadmap, one level at a time
- Journal your progress every month (I will try to define a checklist in Chapter 4)
- Get a mentor or peer buddy to review your growth at each level
- Use it to guide 1:1 conversations and personal development plans
Apart from all of this, start reading/learning the fundamentals of system design, patterns, DevOps etc., from the day one ( I mean when ever you start), and be up-to-date with new technology trends in the industry, It should be a mandatory exercise for the rest of our IT life.
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