Why you need to become a Modern Engineering Leader in 2025
To thrive in 2025 and beyond, you cannot just stay in the technology lane. Of course, mastery of the software engineering aspect is a necessity for any engineer.
But in today’s reality, you must also expand your horizon in a few more directions. The pressure of the rapid advancements in AI, the tough market for developers, and at the same time, the end of the Zero Interest Rate Era created a significant challenge for most software engineers and their careers. Being comfortable wearing multiple hats will not be optional - it will become a standard.
At the same time, it’s an amazing opportunity for those who are willing to accept reality, go the extra mile, and learn the critical skills of a modern engineering leader.
Which option do you choose?
To thrive in 2025 and beyond, you must focus on the following aspects:
Tech Leadership
Leadership is a universal skill that will always significantly impact your career, regardless of the circumstances. And fortunately, this is a learnable skill.
And no, you don’t need to have an explicit leadership position to be a leader. Leadership is about what you do and your mindset, not the title. And the sooner you start displaying these traits, the better odds in your favour to become that team leader, engineering manager or staff engineer.
Staying Closer to the Business and the Product
Being a Product Engineer who is not just a “doer” but someone who understands the business and can speak with customers, collaborate smoothly with a Product Manager and a Designer is a superpower that has been growing in popularity in the last months. And for some very good reasons!
It doesn’t mean that you need to become an expert in Product Management, but understanding what you build from the business perspective and knowing the customers of the Product you build makes a massive difference.
Also, understanding practices and frameworks that are the bread and butter for Product Managers can help you big time.
Getting Comfortable with Management
While full-time management is not something everyone will enjoy, Individual Contributors will be expected to take more management responsibilities with more hybrid roles, like a Tech Leader for example, who also manages small teams of 3 to 5 engineers. All this is on top of the Individual Contributor role.
The tricky part is that management is difficult. Even most managers are not great at their job. However, avoiding common mistakes and focusing on the right things will take you far already.
Making the most of the generative AI
While the current generation of LLMs is nowhere close to replacing software engineers, there is no doubt that they are already capable of making skilled engineers even more productive.
And code suggestions via GitHub Copilot in your IDE are probably the least impactful parts of AI. The true productivity boosters are :
getting more insights about your codebase
quickly explore your ideas with ChatGPT/Claude or Perplexity
generating quick scripts
getting quickly into new technologies (frameworks, programming languages)
writing documentation
making the most of the automation.
If you don’t leverage AI in your everyday work, you might eventually be replaced by someone who does.
Classic Productivity
If getting a productivity boost by 10% or 20% from AI sounds like a great opportunity, then “classic” productivity techniques should be equally well understood.
During challenging days, something so simple as the Pomodoro Technique or Eating a Frog can make a dramatic difference, so having these techniques readily available in your toolset is essential.
Remote work
While working in the office is perfectly fine if that’s your thing, it's essential to be aware of the opportunities, especially as a modern engineering leader, and the massive impact remote work can have on your personal life.
At the same time, remote work is not going anywhere, despite so many RTO mandates. Yes, for Big Tech companies, remote work might no longer be an option, but it’s still popular for smaller companies. If you don’t know how to work efficiently with fully remote/distributed teams, you might find it very challenging while doing the transition so you’d better be prepared for that in advance.
And getting back to the impact on your personal life - would you earn a Big Tech salary in the city with a huge cost of living and commuting every day to the office or earning a bit less (but still a lot) in a place with low cost of living and having a freedom to travel whenever you like to or be able to spend more time with your family and achieve work-life integration instead of settling down for work-life balance?
Communication, writing well, and personal branding
While this could be a surprising point, communication is an essential skill. The stereotype of a software engineer who never talks to anyone couldn’t be further from the truth, especially in 2025! In fact, software engineering has become one of the most collaborative areas.
However, communication is neglected way too often. How many engineers do you know who prioritized getting better at communication over learning a new framework? Probably not that many.
The truth is that improving communication is one of the simpler and at the same time one of the highest ROI investments you can make as a modern engineering leader!
And so is writing well. While AI can help here a lot, it won’t work everywhere - especially when you want to communicate something genuine or important, not just a bunch of facts with some “glue” structure.
While we are on writing well - it’s just a step from personal branding that is heavily based on written content. The market for developers has been especially tough since 2023 and while 2025 might be slightly better than the last 2 years, the reality is that we are not getting back to the golden years of 2021 and 2022 with the best market ever for software engineers. The new era means that you can forget about a classic definition of job security. The new “job security” is your personal brand and network, which has a massive impact on how fast you might be able to land a new position.
Wrapping up
The combination of advancements in AI and the end of the Zero Interest Rate Era accelerated changes in the software engineering industry creating significant challenges for many engineers. But at the same time, this is going to be a great time for Modern Engineering Leaders who are ready to wear multiple hats and go beyond what has been usually expected from being “just a developer”.
Contact
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