Chapter 4 — Key roles in our Product & Engineering organization
Previous chapters: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
After reading the first three chapters, you should now understand the differences between a Spaceport and Society, how we use Missions to achieve our objectives, and also know the crucial role of the Ground Crew.
Now it’s time to take a look at the most important roles so you have a good idea about the responsibilities and characteristics of each role that’s part of SpaceUP.
Spaceport Leader
A Spaceport Leader must be a strong visionary that can identify the biggest opportunities on the market and define a clear strategy for the Spaceport based on those inputs. It’s important for this person to be a team player, as we need all Spaceport Leaders to work closely together and define a strategy not only for their individual Spaceports, but for the entire Ataccama ONE platform.
Also, they have to be a natural leader who’s able to motivate people, bring them into the team and create an environment where they feel empowered and understand their purpose. The leader must also be an excellent communicator because it’s essential to be able to communicate the visions clearly both internally to the whole company, and externally to the market.
Last but not least, this person must have a strong focus on execution, making sure that everything the Spaceport is on the right path to fulfill the vision. Let me break down the responsibilities in greater detail:
Product
- Co-defining product vision with the rest of the Headquarters team and defining the vision for their Spaceport
- Defining Spaceport objectives for the next 12–18 months
- Constantly flying Missions that help us achieve our objectives
- Setting high standards for our product quality
- Overseeing the quality of the resources (e.g. documentation, training materials, etc.) we provide together with the product
People
- Staffing the Spaceport, hiring the best talent we can find
- Building our team culture, making sure people are happy and enjoy being part of this team
Organization
- Make collaboration within the Spaceport seamless and as effective as possible
- Set the processes and ceremonies according to our current needs (e.g. growing team size, intense collaboration with other Spaceports, etc.)
Communication
- Be the public face of our product, including public speaking, interactions with analysts, partners, etc.
- Define clear communication strategy with sales and marketing teams
- Internal evangelism so the whole company knows what’s happening with our product
Sounds like too many responsibilities for one person? Sure, of course it’s impossible for one person to do all of this alone. That’s why the Spaceport Leaders rely on a small Spaceport Core team that consists of Society representatives and selected Tech leads, PMs, and Engineering managers. They help them to achieve everything I wrote above. In other words, while the Spaceport Leader is formally the one responsible for all those things, it’s the responsibility of the whole team and they work on it together.
Is the Spaceport Leader the ultimate manager?
You might think that all those 20–45 people in the Spaceport report to the Spaceport Leader, but it’s actually the opposite. The leader has zero reports — ZERO. And honestly, from the feedback we gathered so far, it’s the best decision we could have made.
It’s impossible to imagine the leader would be able to find time for all the things described above and at the same time focus on people, having all those 1on1s, preparing individual plans, being there for them 24/7. It’s just not possible to do all of it. The leader would have to do one at the expense of another, which would be a ticking bomb that wouldn’t work in the long run. So we were looking for a different solution.
People in the Spaceport are reporting to a Society Representative (either Product or Engineering Representative). They are the ones that have the final say regarding hire/termination competencies, they’re responsible for salaries, approving personal absences, or preparing individual plans for people so they know what they should focus on. But it’s done based on mutual discussion between both — they regularly talk about the performance of each individual in the team, their motivation and future career path, and try to align it with the needs of the Spaceport.
So while the leaders don’t have the formal reporting power and can’t fire anyone, or give them a raise, they actually have all the means they need and discuss all important decisions with their Society Representatives. Given the culture we have at Ataccama we’re always able to quickly come to a mutual agreement.
Mission Commander
Each Mission has a leader who’s responsible for its end-to-end execution. It can be anyone, not only a PM or Engineering manager, and it’s rather a role than a position. The best definition for this role is it must be someone with the mindset to get things done, a systematic and organized person that can bring the team together and always finds a way to overcome the issues that will surely appear during the Mission.
The Commander needs to make sure the Mission Crew is aligned and working together as a team, refinements are leading to a good solution, development is going well, testing is done properly, we are regularly validating the output with relevant stakeholders, etc. Commanders work with Spaceport Leaders all the time, as they need to know how things are going and whether there are some issues that they should know about or can help with.
Just to make sure it’s clear, the Mission Commander is not a manager of the Mission Crew. The main and only responsibility is the successful execution of the Mission, not people management.
Ground Crew Leader
There are so many things happening on the ground that it’s essential to have someone overseeing all of this, helping with the organization, making sure support is provided to other teams as quickly as possible, and also helping the Ground Crew with actively planning bigger improvements we want to focus on.
What qualities form a good Ground Crew Leader? It must again be a systematic person and a problem solver. Someone that can be the primary point of contact for other teams within the company, someone calm who can track and process all the requests coming in, and help the Ground Crew manage it with ease.
To give you a better idea about their responsibilities, here’s what a Ground Crew Leader manages:
- The incoming requests from professional services in Slack & Jira
- Facilitating task distribution (bug fixing, minor technical debt, or other types of unplanned work)
- Releasing co-ordination and test execution by the Ground Crew
- Selecting the main focus for the Ground Crew (test automation, UX improvements, focus on creating resources, supporting knowledge sharing, etc.)
- Communicating with other Spaceport’s Ground Crews
There are many similarities with the Mission Commander role. It’s a dynamic role, so we are rotating Ground Crew Leaders over time. The people in the Ground Crew don’t report to this person, and Spaceport Leaders regularly talk with their Ground Crew Leaders so they can discuss the progress, critical issues, and long-term focus.
Society Representative
Now, we get to the Society Representative role. As you know by now, we have 2 societies, Product & Engineering, and each Society has one representative in every Spaceport. A Society representative is a person that helps Spaceport Leaders in 3 main areas:
- Make sure we have the best subject experts in the Spaceport and also propagate things defined on a Society level (e.g. development best practices, some engineering-wide standards, etc.) into our Spaceport.
- Continuously improve our ability to deliver a great product, both in terms of speed and quality. They are helping with defining the processes, getting rid of roadblocks, and making the execution seamless.
- Make sure people in the Spaceport have all the support they need. This goes from mentoring them and helping them prepare their individual growth plans to also helping them overcome their personal challenges.
Their official job title is Director (e.g. Director of Engineering — Data Governance) so this might help you imagine what exactly they do and what their responsibilities are. It fits the traditional description of this role well. They work closely with Spaceport Leaders, they are the right hand person the leaders couldn’t live without. A common setup is to have regular weekly syncs and many ad-hoc conversations throughout the week. And as mentioned above, they play a crucial part in the Spaceport Core team.
They also work closely with their Society Leader (they are reporting to them). Together with the other representatives, they discuss the engineering-wide initiatives and what are the specific areas we’ll focus on, both long and short term.
A good Society Representative must put people above everything else. They must be empathic and trustworthy, so people can open up to them. They must be reliable so people can count on them and know they always have someone they can rely on.
Society Leader
The biggest challenge a Society Leader has is to create an environment that allows the Spaceport to be as independent as possible but at the same time make sure we are developing ONE platform. It can’t be complete anarchy where each Spaceport is doing things completely differently. The Society Leaders set some basic rules and boundaries that have to be respected across the whole Product & Engineering team, in order to keep the tech stack and developer experience sane.
So in short, everything described above regarding Society Representative responsibilities applies to the Society Leader as well, with the difference that the Society Leader is responsible for this globally, for all the Spaceports. The Society Representatives take care of execution in each Spaceport.
This also highlights the most important quality we need from the Society Leader — they must think globally. It’s important that they create an environment that will allow Ataccama to scale and prosper in the long term. They always have to be a few steps ahead and look for solutions to problems that are hidden around the corner.
Chief Product & Technical Officer
The last role I haven’t talked about is the most important one. 🎉 💪 We have a new man in charge, Martin Zahumensky, and he is THE main commander of our whole space shuttle. 🚀 He already talked about why we introduced this role in the first chapter, the motivation behind it and the expectations, so definitely check it out if you missed it.
Headquarters team
I know this is not a role but I believe it’s crucial to mention it as well, otherwise it might sound like the Spaceport Leaders don’t actually work together. It’s in fact the opposite. The HQ team meets multiple times a week so things like operational issues, but also long-term strategy and the product vision, can be discussed.
We have all the Spaceport Leaders and Society Leaders there, and obviously the CPTO that’s leading this team. 💪 So while each of the HQ members are responsible for “their own thing,” it’s just a piece of something much bigger — our ONE unified platform. And the HQ team is the mechanism that allows us to achieve this. SpaceUp would not work without it.
We briefly mentioned who is reporting to whom but I expect you still have many questions about the reporting structure. We will cover it in detail in the next article, together with a detailed description of the Societies & Circles. Stay tuned. 🍿
Would you like to know more about the specifics of one of these roles? Which one? Let me know in the comments! 📣 I would be happy to follow up with something like a “Day in the life” article to provide you with even more insights.
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