Poland
With over 15 years of engineering leadership experience, I currently serve as an Engineering Manager within Netflix's Java Platform and Engineering Productivity organization, leading two critical infrastructure teams: Java Lite and Framework Lifecycle Management (FLM). My teams are tackling two of the most complex platform engineering challenges at Netflix scale: eliminating framework overhead for extreme-scale infrastructure, and driving developer upgrade toil to absolute zero. 🔹 Java Lite: We are decoupling Netflix’s core platform primitives (configuration, discovery, observability, and more!). We build standalone, ultra-lightweight, constructible libraries that power Netflix's core services, OSS infrastructure (Kafka, Cassandra), and high-performance sidecars. Our work directly targets massive efficiency savings by reducing memory footprints from gigabytes to megabytes and slashing platform migration toil. 🔹 Framework Lifecycle Management: We are pioneering a fully-managed Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for Netflix's paved path architecture. My team builds the robust integration testing frameworks and automation tooling required to execute seamless, zero-disruption platform upgrades for thousands of engineers. Our KPI is simple: keep Netflix engineers on the cutting edge of technology with zero adoption effort. Leadership Background: Throughout my 18+ year career progressing from Java Developer to Head of Engineering across four diverse industries, my true calling has been turning ambitious technical visions into high-performing organizations. From scaling tech centers from scratch to 80+ engineers, to delivering massive cost optimizations and pioneering AI-driven development practices, my focus is always on the intersection of human leadership and scalable technological innovation.
Java Lite (Lightweight Platform Primitives): - Decoupling the Platform: Driving the architectural strategy to extract core Netflix primitives (networking, metrics, configuration, etc.) from our Spring Boot framework into standalone, constructible libraries. - Massive Scale & Efficiency: Building the foundational libraries that power Netflix's core services (representing 55% of total Netflix compute), OSS data stores (Kafka, Cassandra), and thick client libraries. - Performance Optimization: Engineering solutions for sidecars and thin containers that require <50MB heap and lightning-fast startup times, driving significant annual savings in excess compute and reducing migration toil. Framework Lifecycle Management (Platform SDLC & Automation): - Zero-Toil Upgrades: Leading the team responsible for Netflix's fully-managed platform SDLC, with a north star of zero customer disruption during framework and library upgrades. - Paved Path Tooling: Architecting the end-to-end integration testing frameworks, PR linting, and deployment automation required to support Netflix's "Archetypes" (curated, highly-opinionated software templates). - Ecosystem Reliability: Ensuring critical integrations work seamlessly out-of-the-box for thousands of Netflix developers, removing the burden of dependency and upgrade management from product teams.
- Responsible for leading operations across engineering, data, QA, SRE and application support teams, overseeing a total organization of 20+ engineers - Reduced manual testing efforts with introducing no-code test automation frameworks. Eliminated the need of spending 2-3 hours to do complete smoke tests - Developed customized java-based process automation systems to increase testing efficiency and improve release confidence. Resulted in reducing test times from hours to minutes. - Evaluated new technologies and tools to enhance overall system performance, stability, and security. - Implemented cost-saving measures by centralizing multiple infrastructure platforms into Datadog resulting in approximate 40% cost reduction - Spearheaded our "technical excellence" initiative by introducing SLOs, synthetics testing and monitoring to proactively deal with issues
- Steered a team of up to 5 engineering leads, application support and QA, collectively managing 35+ engineers - Improved project efficiency with strategic planning, resource allocation, and time management practices. Enabled the teams to deliver at minimum 2-3 key features on a month by month basis - Improved incident management workflows and introduced PagerDuty to support on-call rotation - Developed high-performing teams by providing mentorship, guidance, and opportunities for professional growth, resulting in 60% improvement in delivery velocity and 40% reduction in time-to-market - Enhanced team collaboration through regular communication, goal setting, and performance evaluations. - Established a culture of continuous improvement by fostering open communication channels and empowering employees to voice their ideas. - Cultivated a positive work environment that increased employee tenure 8 out of 10 staying longer than 2 years and reduced time-to-hire from 4-5 months down to 1-2. - Implemented innovative java based solutions to simplify and automate completely tracking end-to-end, resulting in increased productivity and streamlined operations. Reduced story tracking from 1-2 hours down to 0 since everything was automated from first commit to production deployment
- Headed a small team of back-end and front-end, provided technical guidance on projects, scaled delivery throughput and increased development efficiency. - Tailored the engineering process, introduced agile ceremonies, whilst improving the overall quality of shipped deliverables - Defined the overall team structure and product roadmap, which accelerated the delivery process - Introduced monday.com to accurately track status of what is worked on, going from no visibility to full visibility and eliminating team status update meetings
- Engineering Manager for a leading online and mobile food-ordering and delivery marketplace, with the largest and most comprehensive network of restaurant partners, as well as 32 million active diners. - Constructed a ‘Delivery Flaw Finder’ service which provided guardrails across high transactional data such as courier location pings, delivery updates, etc.. which was equivalent to millions of events during rush hour. It resulted in significantly reducing the company’s operational costs, reduced manual labour by more than 80% equivalent to approximately $20m per annum. Led employee relations through effective communication, coaching, training, and development. - Conducted regular performance reviews, providing constructive feedback and coaching to facilitate continuous improvement among employees. - Enhanced team productivity by implementing efficient workflow processes and setting clear performance expectations. - Ensured seamless integration of Java-based applications with databases, APIs, and other systems. - Developed team members' skills through targeted coaching sessions, resulting in improved individual performance. - Set performance expectations for the team, monitoring progress towards goals and providing constructive feedback as needed. - Exemplified commitment to excellence and professionalism, inspiring the team consistently.
- Established and scaled new technology center in Amsterdam from ground up, growing from 1 to 80+ engineers in 12 months while maintaining high quality standards and delivery velocity. - Led key architectural decisions for livejasmin.com a top 50 visited website according to Alexa rankings with 80+ million unique monthly visitors. - Built a digital fingerprint service handling approximately 60-80m transactions per day, ensuring data integrity and compliance. - Coordinated with the executive team to develop and implement strategic office plans, oversaw daily office operations. - Directed large-scale projects from inception to completion on time/budget with strict adherence to quality standards. - Fostered an inclusive work environment by championing diversity initiatives and empowering employees at all levels as well as providing technical leadership. - Improved engineering processes by streamlining workflows and implementing efficient project management techniques. - Reduced project completion times by effectively prioritizing tasks and resource allocation. - Cultivated a strong organizational culture built on integrity accountability teamwork which resulted in higher retention rates among staff. - Increased overall company performance by implementing strategic management initiatives and streamlining operations.