Lead high-trust engineering organizations.
With radical empathy and deep technical reality.
Strategic 1:1 sparring for Engineering Managers, Directors, Staff+ Engineers, and TPMs. A confidential partner in your corner: we untangle the friction between people and orgs, build real influence without authority, and protect your energy in leadership.
Does This Sound Familiar?
Leadership in tech organizations brings unique frictions that traditional corporate coaches often cannot grasp. You might recognize yourself in these moments:
Firefighting Mode
Your calendar is bursting at the seams, rushing from meeting to meeting and putting out fires. Squeezed between delivery pressure from above and the uncertainties of your team, you wonder how to lead effectively—without wearing yourself out.
Influence Without Authority
You need to align autonomous, often skeptical squads on shared architecture and RFCs. This does not happen through directives, but through diplomatic craft, compelling storytelling, and genuine trust across team boundaries.
The AI Shift in the Team
Management expects leaps in developer velocity through AI. Your challenge: separating hype from real value, meaningfully integrating new workflows into the development lifecycle, and bringing your team along rather than overwhelming them.
Constant Pressure & Running on Empty
You absorb pressure from above, buffer anxiety from below, and have everyone’s back. But who has your back? Without a confidential sounding board to talk openly about doubts and boundaries, your own energy burns out.
Coaching by Default. Mentoring on Demand.
At the end of the day, it is all about the people. Technical friction is rarely just a technical problem. Through systemic inquiry and the "5 Whys", we look right where the friction truly lies: unstated fears, trust deficits, or misaligned expectations. My default is coaching—because only solutions you develop yourself truly stick in day-to-day practice. And when you need concrete guidance or proven, real-world practices from 18+ years in tech leadership, we switch to direct mentoring.
Two Dedicated Pathways
Structured, high-trust 1:1 sparring—tailored precisely to your role and your current inflection point.
1:1 People & Engineering Leadership
For Engineering Managers, Directors & Heads of Engineering
Bi-weekly 60-min Sessions • Ongoing or Focused Sprint
A confidential partner for modern tech leadership. We bring clarity to the critical transitions: from coder to multiplier, managing managers, and building a genuine high-trust culture—without burning out in the process.
- › Bi-weekly 60-minute deep sparring sessions + async support via Signal/Slack
- › Effective delegation, 1-on-1s, and difficult feedback conversations
- › Cultivating psychological safety and blameless, high-trust team cultures
- › Managing managers, scaling departments, setting boundaries, and avoiding burnout
1:1 Staff+ & Strategic Technical Influence
For Staff & Principal Engineers, Lead Architects & Senior TPMs
Bi-weekly 60-min Sessions • Ongoing or Focused Sprint
Dedicated sparring for technical multipliers and matrix leaders. We focus on what truly counts at the Staff+ level: building sustainable architectural consensus without formal authority, cross-organizational alignment, and high-impact communication with executive leadership.
- › Bi-weekly 60-minute deep sparring sessions + async support via Signal/Slack
- › Driving sustainable architecture and RFC consensus across autonomous squads
- › Matrix leadership: resolving cross-organizational dependencies without direct authority
- › Strategic storytelling: translating complex technical vision into tangible business value
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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Real-World Practice, Not the Ivory Tower
I do not coach from textbook theories. I have spent over 18 years building, scaling, and leading engineering teams 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.
My coaching approach is rooted in authentic leadership, deep empathy, and genuine human connection. Having lived through hyper-growth, reorganizations, and intense delivery pressure, I know that sustainable peak performance only thrives where leaders cultivate psychological safety and genuine trust.
Over the past 18+ years, I’ve led Product Development Enablement at Pleo (180 engineers with DORA metrics), shaped QA strategy, TDD rollouts, and developer insights within Twitter’s Quality Engineering department, and engineered core 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 stepping into a management role or scaling entire departments: you never have to translate your technical reality for me. We start right where the leverage is.
Ready for Your Next Step in 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.
Let’s talk confidentially.
Zero sales pitch, 100% confidential. We unpack your current challenges and explore whether we are a mutual fit.
Company L&D / Sponsorship: Engagements are structured as ongoing monthly partnerships or focused sprints. Frequently funded via company L&D or executive development budgets. Invoicing available.