Staying Technical as a Leader: Practical Strategies

Learn practical strategies for engineering leaders to stay technical while balancing leadership responsibilities. Stay relevant, lead effectively!

In my previous article, I explained how ‘being technical’ evolves as you move into engineering leadership. You do little to no hands-on coding, attend way more meetings, and focus on empowering others rather than building things yourself! But here’s a paradox: as an engineering leader, you now need to be even more technically credible than before, not just maintaining your expertise but growing and thriving in your technical depth. That’s why it is critical for technical leaders to continuously strengthen their technical capabilities even as their leadership responsibilities grow.

Over the last 5 years as an engineering leader, I’ve walked this path myself and watched many great technical leaders around me. And you know what I’ve noticed? The leaders who stay sharp technically while being great at leading their teams aren’t doing it by accident. They all share some key habits and approaches that really work.

I want to share what’s actually worked for me and other leaders I know. These are real, practical approaches we’ve used to find that sweet spot between being technical and being a great leader. Whether you just got your first engineering management role or you’ve been leading teams for years, I hope you’ll find these strategies helpful in staying on top of your technical game while growing as a leader!

I’ve split these strategies into two parts. First, I’ll cover the fundamental strategies that you can (and should) fit into your regular workday. Then, I’ll share some differentiation strategies that needs more time and effort beyond your day job. The fundamentals will keep you solid as a technical leader, and the differentiation strategies can help you stand out and make an even bigger impact!

Core vs. Differentiating Strategies (Infographic by Rahul Suresh)

The Core Fundamentals: Your Technical Leadership Foundation

Let’s start with the fundamentals. These are the must-have strategies that’ll keep you technically effective, unless you’re planning to move completely away from technical leadership. They’ll help you stay connected to your organization’s technical core and continue making meaningful contributions as a technical leader.

Learn from the People Around You

We spend our days in 1:1s, tracking progress, handling admin work, and jumping between endless contexts, and sometimes forget our best resource for learning is sitting right next to us — our people!

I’ve learned so much technically throughout my software career, and it’s mostly come from the amazing people around me. This has been especially true since I stepped into management at Amazon in 2019. When you spend most of your day talking with different teams and stakeholders, you realize just how much you can learn from these conversations! Everyone brings their own unique perspective to the table. Our researchers have opened my eyes to new possibilities I hadn’t even considered. Engineers have taught me clever ways to implement solutions. Product managers have shown me how to connect technical decisions back to user needs. Some of the most eye-opening moments came when business leaders asked those seemingly straightforward questions that made us made us step back and rethink our entire technical approach!

Let me share some practical tips that have helped me make the most of these learning opportunities:

Join technical discussions, but make sure you’re creating space for others too. It’s all about finding that balance between sharing your thoughts and really listening to what others bring to the table.
Don’t skip those team presentations and lunch-and-learns, even if they seem unrelated to your current work — you might be surprised what you learn!
Talk to business leaders. Their practical questions can really shift your technical thinking in new directions.
Schedule one-on-one deep-dive sessions with subject matter experts when ramping up on new projects. These focused conversations can fast-track your understanding way better than trying to figure things out on your own!

And here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: if you think you’ll only learn from the technical experts, you’re missing out on so much! Junior team members have often brought fresh eyes to old problems. Similarly, the way business leaders cut through complexity with simple questions has deeply influenced my technical leadership style!

Master Your Team’s Technical Landscape

Getting a deep grasp of your team’s technical landscape isn’t just nice to have, it’s the foundation everything else builds on! For front-line engineering managers, this means knowing your team’s architecture, systems, and technical debts inside and out. For senior leaders managing multiple teams, it about understanding how these different systems interact and align with your organizational goals.

Leading multiple teams across R&D, backend, frontend, and QA in my current role at Amazon’s Beauty Tech organization has taught me something important — you can’t (and shouldn’t!) know every detail, but you absolutely need to be involved in the complex, risky areas where your guidance matters most. Being part of architecture reviews, science reviews, and those intense whiteboarding sessions where we figure out tough problems together are often the most enjoyable parts of my job!

Here are some practical steps that have really worked for me:

Make reviewing architecture documents and system designs a regular habit.
Jump into those post-mortem discussions as there’s nothing quite like learning from when things didn’t go as planned.
Keep close track of technical debt and really understand how it impacts the business.
Stay involved in major technical decisions, even if you’re not the one making the final call — your perspective as a leader matters.
Really get to know how different systems, both within your org and across sister orgs, interact with each other. My current role has thought me that those connection points are often where the most interesting challenges pop up!

Own Your Organization’s Technical Strategy

Technical strategy isn’t just about understanding what we have today — it’s about shaping where we’re headed tomorrow. While knowing your team’s technical landscape tells you where you are, owning the strategy is all about figuring out where you need to go and why. It’s about connecting technical capabilities with business opportunities, defining your team’s technical vision, and charting a path to get there.

Leading technical strategies has been one of the most rewarding parts of leadership. It’s where we get to shape the future while keeping our technical skills sharp! Here are some approaches that have really made a difference:

Create regular forums where your teams can talk about technical direction or roadmap. These conversations often surface insights you wouldn’t get any other ways.
Build strong partnerships with your product teams — some of our best technical decisions came from really understanding what they were trying to achieve.
Set up clear criteria to evaluate technical investments. These guidelines become invaluable when making tough roadmap prioritization decisions.
Make room for innovation while allocating enough bandwidth for addressing technical debts and maintaining operational excellence. Finding this balance is challenging but essential for long-term success.
Get comfortable sharing your strategy with different audiences. The ability to effectively communicate technical decisions to both engineers and business stakeholders is invaluable skill for a technical leader!

Setting Yourself Apart: Going Beyond the Day Job

If you’ve been following along, you’ve nailed down the fundamental strategies — learning from your team, knowing your technical landscape, and owning your strategy. These fundamentals keep you credible, engaged, and well-informed. However, if you are ready to move beyond mere competence and aim for genuine technical leadership, let us shift gears and talk about how you can elevate your impact even further.

I know how hard it can be to find time for extra technical growth beyond your day-to-day responsibilities. Between work, family life, and trying to maintain some kind of balance, it’s tough! And you know what? That’s completely okay. You can absolutely be an effective engineering leader by focusing on the fundamentals we’ve talked about.

But if you do manage to carve out some extra time (even just a little), we’ll walk through some strategies that can help you really stand out. These aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re the kind of things that can set you apart in your organization and your career.

Consciously Build Your Domain Expertise

Over my decade-long journey as an ML practitioner, I’ve learned that keeping your technical edge and domain expertise requires deliberate effort. Moving into management doesn’t halt your technical growth. It simply means you need to be more intentional about it. I’ve seen this firsthand while launching and leading diverse ML products, from on-device solutions to real-time inference systems and offline pipelines. My work has spanned specialized areas like Computer Vision, NLP, and Recommendation Systems, across mobile computing, SaaS, IoT, and ecommerce applications. Beyond just keeping up with AI and ML breakthroughs, I’ve also had to build deep expertise in the underlying systems, software infrastructure, frameworks, and tools needed to deploy these solutions at scale.

As an IC, you often have ongoing opportunities to sharpen your domain expertise. It happens organically when you’re building new features, debugging that tricky production issue, or trying out the latest frameworks. But here’s the thing about moving into management. Suddenly your day fills up with meetings, program management, handling escalations, and all those administrative tasks that keep the team running. Before you know it, those technical skills that were once razor-sharp start feeling a bit dull.

Perhaps you are a game developer, a front-end specialist, a data engineer, or a security expert. Whatever your domain, you know how fast things change. New best practices pop up, tools evolve, and methodologies shift. Keeping up takes real effort and and your packed calendar as a manager doesn’t always make that easy.

But here’s something I’ve learned that might help: you don’t need to be an expert in everything. The key is to figure out where you can bring unique value to your organization. Focus your energy there and make dedicated time to stay sharp in those areas. And if you’re passionate about something outside your team’s immediate needs? That’s what evenings and weekends are for, in case you can spare them! Trust me, this focused approach works much better than trying to keep up with everything!

Here are some tips that have helped me personally to grow my domain expertise:

Schedule dedicated weekly time for technical reading. Dive into research papers, blogs, and whitepapers to stay current.
Attend key technical conferences and workshops. These venues offer unique opportunities for learning and building professional connections.
Follow thought leaders in your domain. Their perspectives often provide early insights into emerging industry trends.
Stay current with tech news. Understanding industry movements helps you make better technical decisions.
Experiment with new tools and technologies firsthand. Personal experience provides understanding that you can’t get any other way.

Keep Your Coding Skills Alive

This animation was created using an AI tool (Sora) for visualization purposes.

Maintaining your coding skills as a technical leader isn’t about competing with your ICs or trying to be the best programmer in the room. It’s about staying fluent in the language of technology and keeping those problem-solving muscles strong.

These days, my coding looks very different than when I was shipping production code every day. But you know what? That’s okay! While I used to code in multiple languages, I now focus solely on Python for building quick prototypes and proof-of-concepts. This helps me validate technical directions, understand implementation challenges, and support my team better!

Here are some practical approaches that I have found immensely useful:

Set up a personal development environment where you can experiment freely.
Focus on just 1–2 languages. While I used to code in many languages, I now mainly stick to Python.
Join your team’s hackathons. These events are great for staying connected to the coding experience.
Build quick proofs-of-concept when exploring new ideas.
Try out new frameworks and tools. This hands-on experience helps you understand what your teams are working with.
Review code regularly. This practice keeps you familiar with modern patterns and approaches.

And here’s a final thought: if you love coding, keep your personal projects going! It’s more than just a hobby for me — it’s a great way to stay technically sharp while having lots of fun along the way!

Invest in Structured Learning

Most of us who’ve transitioned to engineering management already have degrees in CS or related fields. Many have Masters, and research/applied scientists often have PhDs. So you might wonder why we’d even think about more formal education. I’ve walked this path myself, holding two master’s degrees, and I can tell you it’s been worth every minute.

Here’s the reality I’ve discovered. That ML course you took 10 years ago? It probably wrapped up at Random Forests and SVMs. Our field moves incredibly fast. Technologies that were cutting-edge just a few years ago are now considered basic foundations. Think about it. LLMs weren’t even on most ML practitioners’ radar five years ago. Now they’re transforming how we approach NLP tasks. The same goes for advancements in computer vision, reinforcement learning, and ML infrastructure. Whether you’re a hands-on engineer or leading engineering teams, staying current through structured learning can be a game-changer. It helps you understand not just the what but the why behind new developments, making you a more effective technical decision-maker.

Let me share some practical ways to approach this:

Enroll in online courses focused on emerging technologies. These can fill knowledge gaps quickly and effectively.
Take graduate-level classes in your domain. Even with advanced degrees, there’s always new ground to cover.
Join technical workshops or pursue certifications. These provide focused, practical knowledge.
Connect with study groups or learning communities. The collaborative learning experience is invaluable.
Leverage your company’s learning programs. Many organizations offer excellent educational resources.

A note of caution: If you’re aiming to transition into AI and ML without a research-focused master’s, PhD, or at least five years of hands-on ML experience, I strongly recommend taking graduate-level courses in ML foundations and deep learning. You might also want to explore specialized domains like NLP, computer vision, or recommendation systems. With AI shaping our future, these foundational courses aren’t just nice-to-have. They’re essential investments that help you understand rapid innovations and build genuine expertise.

Closing Thoughts

Throughout my journey in technical leadership, one thing has become crystal clear. Your technical growth needs to serve both your career aspirations and your organization’s needs. Focus on one while ignoring the other, and you’ll find yourself hitting walls in your growth and effectiveness.

Your time is limited, and extremely valuable! As your leadership responsibilities grow, make deliberate choices about where you invest your time, especially if you aspire to remain technical. I’ve found using a Time Investment Matrix really helps me prioritize activities based on their leadership and technical impact. Activities that score high on both dimensions, like technical strategy and architecture reviews, deserve your focused attention. For high leadership but lower technical impact activities, create efficient systems rather than handling everything personally. Be selective about technical deep-dives and code reviews, participating strategically rather than exhaustively. And wherever possible, minimize time spent on low-impact routine meetings and status reports.

About the article

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in my articles are my own and do not represent those of my current or past employers, or any other affiliations.

Publication Note:

This article was originally published on my Medium publication on Dec 21, 2024. I’ve republished it here as part of my ongoing effort to centralize my insights

For the original post and additional context, please visit the original article.

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