What Makes a Great VP of Engineering
Most VPs of Engineering (VPEs) have strong technical backgrounds, having served as engineers before moving up to managerial or directorial roles. The technical aspects of engineering leadership are familiar territory to them, as are the results-focused tasks of team management.
The managing aspect of executive leadership is often less familiar to new and aspiring engineering VPs. These are their employee- and organization-focused responsibilities, and are the duties that distinguish them from employees with more technical roles within the company.
What are the top three priorities for a VP of Engineering?
A VP of Engineering can measure their success by the caliber of their team and the quality of the products they produce. Their job is to ensure that everything runs smoothly, to nurture a culture that rewards motivation and cooperation, and to keep everyone’s eyes on the prize.
Priority #1: Hire and retain the best talent
The VPE’s leadership role is much broader than those of less senior professionals. It’s important for a VPE to be able to delegate, which means that they need to have directors, managers, and engineers that can effectively carry out their required tasks. It falls to the VPE to ensure that the company hires great people to fill those positions.
Hiring
To build a successful team, a VPE must be able to identify critical goals and determine what skills are necessary to achieve those ends. They need to be able to develop an effective team blueprint, and use that model to direct their hiring processes.
VPEs need to be methodical about matching skills with objectives and strategy, but they also need the ability to inspire and excite. Their job is to attract high-caliber professionals and provide them with positions that let them reach their full potential. In turn, those professionals will do the work that will move the company forward.
Retention
Exceptional VPEs understand that hiring isn’t the end of the picture. There is a widespread culture of “job hopping” in the tech industry, partially because talent is in high demand. A tech professional’s day often involves fielding messages from recruiters, and part of the VPE’s role is to retain their employees by ensuring a high level of job satisfaction.
Engineers change jobs so frequently for a number of reasons, one of which is novelty. If a VPE can ensure that their company’s projects are exciting to work on, their engineers won’t need to seek out greener pastures.
It’s also important to create a culture that rewards success. Like everyone, engineers like to be appreciated and rewarded for their good work, both monetarily and otherwise. If a VPE notices a high turnover rate, it may be time to focus less on attracting new people, and invest more in showing their existing employees that the company appreciates them.
Priority #2: Create a culture that keeps everyone at the top of their game
The learning curve for a VPE usually starts with team leadership. New managers generally begin by focusing on their team’s on-schedule production of quality deliverables. When they make the leap into directorial work, they have to learn how to manage multiple teams. They develop the ability to step back from hands-on engineering management and indirectly nurture the teams that do the lower-level work.
A VP needs to take an even broader view. A VP has to be a leader of leaders, and they need to make sure that their directors and managers can guide their teams effectively. To do so, the VP of Engineering has to cultivate a culture that supports productive collaboration and keeps everyone facing in the same direction, aligned under a common philosophy.
By staying in close communication with their teams and monitoring their work environments, the VPE can ensure that their company encourages, rather than hinders, success. If there are conflicts or disconnects in the workflow, the VP must decide when and how to address them. Ultimately, if there is anything getting in the way of their engineering teams doing their best work, it is the VPE’s duty to remove those blocks.
Priority #3: See initiatives through to on-time completion
Being a great engineering leader means learning how to manage long-term workplace culture development without getting sidetracked by individual project goals.
Unlike the work of directors and managers, the VP’s project work happens primarily at the executive level. They maintain lines of communication with C-suite leaders to develop a sense of where the company is going and what its overall goals for the future are. The VPE then takes that knowledge to the floor, ensuring that teams have the resources and understanding they need to move the company forward.
Priority #4: Ensure a high bar for project execution
Organizations usually measure the success of a VPE by the level of productivity that he or she is able to get from a team.
What makes a great engineering leader?
Engineering leadership is both an art and a science, especially at the executive level. A vice president of engineering must understand all aspects of a company’s technical resources. They also need to use that knowledge to direct their resources to achieve the company’s goals. Here are the qualities that a VPE needs to have in order to make that happen:
1. A background in engineering
To lead effectively, a VPE needs to be able to communicate project requirements and product expectations clearly and in detail. This requires a thorough grounding in engineering, ideally with a focus on the type of work that the VP’s company is doing.
A VPE should come to the executive table with these skills already developed. Because a VP must spend so much of their time overseeing multiple projects, there usually isn’t much time available for advancing their technical skills.
2. The ability to inspire and lead others
Laypeople often think of engineers as reclusive or antisocial — which is a damaging stereotype, particularly when applied to those who aspire to executive roles. A VPE must be able to not only develop a technical vision, but then use that vision to inspire others.
Naturally, they must have the ability to explain their goals and requirements in technical terms, but effective leadership requires much more. It demands that the VPE be constantly motivating their teams, making sure that they understand why their work is important, how it contributes to the company, and why they are uniquely positioned to drive those results. Only then can the VPE get excellent work from their teams.
3. The skills to communicate with stakeholders
The same skills that empower VPEs to inspire technical teams also allow them to engage with stakeholders. These conversations tell the VPE what the company’s goals need to be, and how their company can stand out from the competition.
As a liaison between company insiders and investors, influencers, and even high-profile clients, a good VPE will ensure that the company stays in touch with market needs.
4. A focus on execution and a high-quality bar for deliverables
It’s easy to get lost in brainstorming, planning, and discussion. While these processes are critical, it’s the VPE’s responsibility to make sure that their teams shift from planning to execution in a reasonable timeframe.
A VP of Engineering needs to stay focused, making sure that deliverables and the customer experience remain every team’s primary goal. They must make sure that all decisions circle back to optimizing the product and satisfying the company’s clients.
Prioritization is a critical skill for the VP of Engineering. There are always many competing tasks on their plate, and they must be able to identify the ones that will have the greatest impact on the quality of their product.
A Final Word
Every successful VPE needs to stay up to date on developing technologies, market needs, and industry trends. More importantly, they must be able to turn that knowledge into action by communicating it to C-suite leaders, directors, managers, and engineers, clarifying the company’s goals and inspiring their teams to meet and exceed them.
