Coaching

I coach engineers, and people in leadership positions (team leads, tech leads, lead architects, heads of engineering, engineering managers, CxOs) and the engineering teams they run. Typical topics: interviewing, management, organisational structure, leading teams, and career growth.

Why a coach

In business, coaching is still treated as the exception rather than the norm, and for most people it is a personal investment. What it buys you: more self-reliance, more satisfaction in the job, clearer communication, and a better working relationship with your boss, peers, and reports.

About me

I have spent more than twenty years in software across finance, banking, energy, transport, insurance, telco, and product engineering, moving from developer to head of engineering, lead architect, principal consultant, and now CTO. I hold a PhD in Computer Science and have published 20+ papers with 450+ citations.

I am a certified Erickson International High-Performance and Career Coach and a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF). My style is challenging: I stay neutral, and I will push you as hard as I back you. We focus on where you want to be, not where you are.

In March 2025 I spoke at the 8th Regional Erickson Coaching Conference in Belgrade, on coaching as a leadership style in the IT industry.

I also write for 400,000+ engineers, managers, and architects through Tech World With Milan; those posts have been viewed more than 300 million times.

What we can work on

Career. Promotion and growth, career goals and your next move, managing up, communication (writing, email, presenting), personal organisation and delegation, confidence in your skills and decisions.

Organisation. Setting up systems that work for you, building skills around team building, technology, and product strategy, working with different personality types, handling conflict, giving and receiving feedback, motivating people, building a learning organisation, hiring well and keeping the people you hire, coaching your own people.

Other. Becoming visible outside your company, technical topics (architecture, code quality, technical debt, documentation, deployments), and general mentorship where you bring the topics.

Consulting and workshops

Beyond one-to-one coaching, I work with companies in three ways.

Architecture consulting. Architecture audits, design reviews, cloud strategy on Azure, scalability reviews, and a second opinion on the technical decisions that are hard to reverse.

Workshops and training. Sessions for engineering teams on software architecture, engineering standards, code quality, DevOps, and Agile delivery. Masterclasses I run: Engineer to Leader, Technical Leadership, Software Architecture in Practice, Cloud Architecture Fundamentals, and Building a Resilient Engineering Culture.

Fractional CTO and technical advisor. For a small number of companies at a time: technology and product strategy, organisational design, engineering culture, and hiring.

Email me with what you need and I will tell you whether I can help.

How it works

  1. Email me a short bio and the topic you want to work on.
  2. I will tell you whether I think we are a fit.
  3. If yes, you buy a package of six sessions up front.
  4. Sessions are 45 minutes, usually every two weeks.

I reply to every coaching inquiry, usually within a week.

A single hour-long session is also possible if you have one specific problem to solve.