Engineering Leadership Excellence Podcast

In this episode, Robin talks with Vinay Ram, VP of Product Engineering at Productboard, about leading high-performing teams, building trust fast, and driving a product-first mindset across engineering.
They cover what makes product engineers different, how to balance speed with stability, why staff+ engineers are critical to scale, and how guilds, prototyping, and smart build-vs-buy decisions shape modern engineering culture.
Plus, Vinay shares how taking real breaks and even building a cabin helps him lead with clarity and energy.
Interested in joining our growing team at Productboard? Well, we’re hiring across the board! Check out our careers page for the latest vacancies. We’d love to hear from you!

In this episode, Robin interviews Žilvinas Girėnas, a Senior Engineering Manager at Productboard.
 
They dive into Žilvinas’ experience leading a machine learning team focused on building Productboard AI. The discussion covers the team’s unique approach to working with AI, the challenges and strategies in hiring ML engineers, and their transition to building an internal AI platform. 

Žilvinas also shares insights on shaping the team’s delivery process with the Shape Up methodology, how ML engineers need both technical and product knowledge, and the importance of balancing leadership and engineering skills in their roles.

Interested in joining our growing team at Productboard? Well, we’re hiring across the board! Check out our careers page for the latest vacancies. We’d love to hear from you!

In this episode, we examine how mastering multiple programming languages is a huge advantage in today’s rapidly evolving tech environment. Jany Koščo, Senior Staff Engineer at Productboard, explains that as a generalist not only can you better solve coding problems and meet customer needs, but you will also have more opportunities to advance your career. 
Jany shares his approach to tackling new languages and why it’s more important to have a thorough understanding of the complexities of the ecosystem you’re working in rather than the language itself. We also discuss Productboard’s code base and why we are working with two main tech stacks – Ruby on Rails and Kotlin/Spring Boot.

Jany, who went from IC to management before returning to the IC track and incorporating the best of both roles in his current position, talks about how being able to move seamlessly between multiple languages allows him to do his job more effectively. 

Interested in joining our growing team at Productboard? Well, we’re hiring across the board! Check out our careers page for the latest vacancies. We’d love to hear from you!

In the fourth episode of Season 2, we sit down with Claudiu Andrei, Site Tech Lead at Productboard’s San Francisco office, who’s in the process of building up two new teams to better serve our enterprise customers. We talk to Claudiu about what he considers when hiring staff and senior staff engineers, and what makes a candidate CV stand out. He walks us through the key steps of our interview process and discusses how to make an early impact when joining a company as a staff engineer. 
Claudiu, whose career path included stints at Meta and DocuSign as well as founding a couple of his own companies, also offers some sound advice for engineers looking to move up the ladder. We also explore how candidates can assess whether they are more of a staff or senior staff fit, and what it means to be a product engineer these days.   

Interested in joining our growing team at Productboard? Well, we’re hiring across the board! Check out our careers page for the latest vacancies. We’d love to hear from you!

Our third episode of Season 2 was a special live recording from this year’s WebExpo conference in Prague, where we discussed what it takes to become a Staff+ Engineer. We sat down with a trio of experts in the field – Alice Rum, Staff Software Engineer at SentinelOne, Dmitry Belyaev, Principal Frontend Engineer at Booking.com, and Tomáš Růžička, Staff Engineer at Productboard – to get their insights and advice on how to advance in today’s fast-paced tech environment.
The talk is geared toward those looking to take a step up the career ladder or simply to better understand the day-to-day of Staff+ Engineers. The panelists explain the skills and traits needed to be successful in this role, including technical expertise, leadership, and communication skills, as well as what kinds of projects will help you land that golden promotion. In addition to sharing their own career journeys, Alice, Dmitry, and Tomáš also highlight the books, podcasts and social media they turn to for the latest tech and engineering leadership trends.
After listening to the episode, be sure to read the reading and listening recommendations from our guests:
Readings:
Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track
The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
Boring Tech Club
The Staff Engineer's Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change
The Effective Manager
Podcasts:
Soft skills engineering
Thoughtworks Technology Podcast
Software engineering daily
Interested in joining our growing team at Productboard? Well, we’re hiring across the board! Check out our careers page for the latest vacancies. We’d love to hear from you!