AI is here. AI is real.
What does it mean to be a leader and an engineer
in the era of AI?
Be curious. Have empathy. Be the human connection.
I build systems where most people build slides.
I lead engineering teams in security and cloud. Right now at Microsoft, on Microsoft Defender for DevOps — building the platform that watches over how the world’s code actually gets deployed. That question above is the one I’m trying to answer every day.
Before management I wrote software for a living, and I still do, in small, stubborn ways. I’ve been in this long enough to have strong opinions, and still curious enough to be wrong in front of my team when I am.
The short version: I want people who work with me to do the best work of their career, and to feel human while they’re doing it. Everything below is how I try to earn that — in any era, but especially this one.
Six principles.
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01
Empathy is the specification.
Before we ship anything hard, I ask what it will take from the people doing it. If that answer is more than the work is worth, we redesign before we build. Caring about the humans is not separate from caring about the work — it’s where the work starts.
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02
Clarity over consensus.
Teams don’t need everyone to agree. They need to know what’s being decided, who’s deciding it, and why. I write decisions down in the open so the trail is traceable a year later — and so the people who weren’t in the room know exactly what happened.
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03
Coach in the room. Contribute in the work.
A manager who doesn’t review PRs, doesn’t sit in the incident channel, doesn’t know the feature flags isn’t leading — they’re selling. I try to be the first reviewer, not the final approver. The people around me should feel I’m in the trench with them, not above it.
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04
Own the failures. Give away the wins.
When something breaks, I take it on publicly. When something ships, I name the people who built it, loudly and specifically. Trust compounds in the direction of the person who does this consistently.
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05
Systems over heroics.
The team I want to build doesn’t sprint toward fires — it builds the things that make the next fire smaller. Severity models, on-call protocols, decision trails, dashboards. Most of leading is designing the structure that lets the team run without me in the room.
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06
Respect the person before you respect the role.
Titles are bookkeeping. People have bad weeks, full lives, and private battles I will never know about. I lead to the person in front of me first — the org chart second.
How I actually show up.
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1:1s are the work
1:1s are the work, not a detour from it. I try to keep every one, on time, every week. If I have to move one, I reschedule before I cancel. The person I’m meeting with matters more than the meeting that could replace it.
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Decisions in writing
Every decision with context lives in a doc my team can read — forever. If it isn’t written, it didn’t happen, and someone will undo it next quarter wondering why we did it this way.
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Hands in the code
I read PRs. I run the build. I click through the feature before the review meeting. I haven’t unlearned how to read a diff and I don’t plan to.
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Wrong out loud
I’m wrong often. I say so first, in the room, before someone has to correct me. That one habit has done more for the safety of my teams than anything else I’ve tried.
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Skin in the game
I won’t ship an OKR I can’t personally defend on the 2 AM incident call. If a goal is worth committing the team to, it is worth me being accountable for its worst day.
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Celebrate specifically
Vague praise is indistinguishable from flattery. When a teammate ships, I name what they did, what it meant, and why it was hard. Everyone deserves to be seen exactly.
Most of my career has been spent building security where it’s needed — not where it’s seen.
Flowing through time.
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early days
First builds.
I started writing software young. I liked how systems broke, and I liked more how they got defended. Security and the craft of shipping were the two threads from the start.
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~ 2010
Microsoft — cloud platform.
Joined Microsoft working on cloud and data platforms. Learned the product, the customer, and the size of the problem. The transition from writing code to shipping systems that other people’s work depends on.
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2015
Patent — restricted data in the cloud.
US patent on maintaining control over restricted data during cloud deployment. The goal: let teams move fast without giving up the guarantees their compliance officers had already signed for.
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management
Earning the bar.
Grew into engineering leadership. Got the hard lessons in private, earned trust slowly, and tried to fail less on the same ones twice. The bar I hold managers to comes directly from the mistakes I made being one.
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now
Defender for DevOps.
Principal Software Engineering Manager, Microsoft Defender for DevOps. Building security that shows up in the developer’s flow, not on top of it. Shipped to the people who ship the world’s code.
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ahead
Still hiring, still in the room.
Always hiring senior engineers and TPMs around cloud and security. If the principles above land for you, I want to hear from you — even if there isn’t a role with your name on it today.
Want to work together, or just want to talk?
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