Lead high-trust engineering organizations.
With radical empathy and deep technical reality.
Strategic 1:1 sparring for Engineering Managers, Staff+ Engineers, Directors, and TPMs. A confidential sounding board to navigate complex transitions, master influence without authority, and scale resilient teams in an AI-accelerated era.
Konrad Walzer
Dr.-Ing. • Director of Engineering & Coach
Is This Where You Are?
Leadership in modern tech organizations comes with unique tensions that generic corporate coaches cannot grasp. You might recognize these moments:
The Firefighting EM Sandwich
Your calendar is 80% reactive meetings. Caught between executive delivery pressure from above and team anxiety from below, you struggle to step back from the code, delegate effectively, and find space for strategic leverage.
Driving Technical Consensus Without Authority
You need autonomous, skeptical engineering squads to align on critical architecture and RFCs. You must master executive storytelling, diplomacy, and informal influence without direct line management.
The AI-Native PDLC Shift
Leadership expects AI-accelerated developer velocity yesterday. You must cut through the hype, integrate agentic AI workflows into the PDLC, and safeguard release compliance without burning out your teams.
Carrying the Emotional Load in Isolation
Behind a calm executive facade, you absorb organizational politics, team anxiety, and shifting priorities. You are running on empty with no confidential sounding board to recharge your leadership stamina.
Coaching by Default. Mentoring on Demand.
Technical friction is rarely just a technical problem. We apply systemic inquiry and the "5 Whys" to uncover unstated fears, power dynamics, and trust deficits beneath the surface. My default is coaching—because self-discovered solutions actually stick. When you need battle-tested practices from 18+ years in engineering leadership, I switch to direct mentoring.
Two Focused Engagement Tracks
Structured, high-trust 1:1 sparring designed around your inflection point.
1:1 Tech Leadership & Executive Sparring
For Engineering Managers, Staff+ Leaders, Directors & Lead TPMs
A confidential sounding board for modern engineering leaders. We tackle the transition from coder to multiplier, managing managers, leading multi-team orgs, Staff+ and TPM influence without formal authority, and sustainable burnout prevention.
- Bi-weekly 60-minute deep sparring sessions + async Signal/Slack access
- Delegation, difficult performance reviews, and cultivating high-trust, blameless team cultures
- Matrix leadership: cross-squad dependency alignment, consensus without authority, and C-level storytelling
- Managing managers, scaling multi-team departments, and protecting leadership stamina
AI-Native PDLC & Modern DevEx Advisory
For VPs of Engineering, Heads of Platform, Directors & Tech Executives
Cut through the noise of AI hype. Learn how to transform your product development lifecycle into an AI-native workflow while maintaining strict enterprise compliance and developer joy.
- Designing an AI-augmented developer experience (DevEx) & agentic workflows
- AI-native release compliance, security guardrails, and quality gates
- Pragmatic DORA metrics and product analytics that drive organizational leverage
What Leaders Say
Insights from engineering managers, staff engineers, and directors who transformed their leadership practice.
"Konrad helped me make the difficult mental leap from writing code to multiplying team leverage. His guidance on 1-on-1s and difficult feedback conversations changed how my entire team operates."
Engineering Manager
European FinTech Scale-Up
"As a Principal Engineer, I struggled to align multiple autonomous squads on our architecture. Konrad coached me on informal influence, executive storytelling, and meeting facilitation. It completely unlocked my impact."
Staff / Principal Engineer
B2B SaaS Platform
"Having a sounding board who understands both modern DevEx, DORA metrics, and human psychology is incredibly rare. Konrad helped me navigate my transition into a Director role with total confidence."
Director of Engineering
Global Enterprise Tech Org
In the Trenches, Not the Ivory Tower
I do not coach from textbook theories. I have spent over 18 years in the trenches at enterprise scale, hyper-scale, and high-growth unicorns.
I’m Konrad Walzer, Dr.-Ing. — currently active as Director of Engineering at SAP LeanIX, leading Developer Experience (DevEx), the group-wide transition to an AI-native PDLC, AI release compliance, and product analytics.
Over the past 18+ years, I’ve led product enablement and scaled teams across Pleo (180 engineers with DORA metrics), guided distributed architectures at Twitter at global hyper-scale, and engineered database engines at SAP HANA. I hold a doctorate in Computer Science (Dr.-Ing.) from Technische Universität Dresden, researching graph algorithms and model-driven architectures.
Whether you are stepping into management or leading a multi-team department, you never have to translate your technical reality for me. We start right where the friction is.
Ready to Elevate Your Engineering Leadership?
Book a free 30-minute chemistry call. Zero sales pitch, 100% confidential. We discuss your current challenges and explore whether we are a mutual fit.
Prefer email first? Drop me a note at konrad.walzer@gmail.com
💼 Engagements are structured as monthly retainers or focused sprints. Frequently funded via company L&D or executive development budgets. Invoicing available.
Available remotely worldwide • In-person sessions in Berlin / Munich by arrangement