The Three Kinds of Leadership Every Engineering Team Needs
A great lesson I’ve learned this quarter is that building a successful engineering team isn’t just about hiring smart engineers or shipping features fast. It’s about leadership—and not the one-size-fits-all kind. In fact, I’ve come to believe that every great engineering team needs three distinct kinds of leadership to thrive.
The Managerial Leader
This is the person who makes sure the machine runs. They coordinate work, remove blockers, and ensure the team’s energy flows where it matters most. Without them, projects stall, priorities blur, and small problems snowball into crises.
The Creative Leader
This leader doesn’t just work in the present—they live in the future. Their gift is vision: seeing where the team could go and making that future feel tangible. Just as important, they know how to communicate that vision so the team not only understands it but rallies around it.
The Rigorous Leader
Where the creative lives in the future, the rigorous lives in the past—tracking, measuring, and learning from what’s been done to better inform today’s choices. They bring discipline and accountability, making sure progress is real, not just aspirational.
Why All Three Must Be Engineers
Here’s the catch: these roles can’t just be filled by generic managers. They need to be engineers. People who understand the code, the systems, and the trade-offs firsthand. Otherwise, the leadership becomes abstract and loses credibility with the team.
Equally important: no one should accumulate multiple hats. The creative shouldn’t try to micromanage execution. The managerial shouldn’t dictate the vision. The rigorous shouldn’t override momentum with endless analysis. Each role has its own value and alignment comes when they respect those boundaries.
The Hidden Ingredient: Sponsorship
Even with these three leaders, success isn’t automatic. There’s one more factor: sponsorship. A sponsor is someone with influence who believes in the vision and is willing to back it—giving the team the space, resources, and political cover it needs to execute. Without that belief from above, even the best-structured team risks stalling.
It’s about balance. A team that has managerial clarity, creative vision, and rigorous accountability—supported by a sponsor—has the foundation to not just deliver, but to endure.