01
Building engineering organizations
Team topology, hiring bars, career paths and growing engineers and managers — turning a group of engineers into an organization that ships and likes working together.

Sergio Behrends·Director of Engineering, Grover
For 13+ years I’ve turned ideas into digital products people use every day — and built the teams that ship them — from a 12-person agency to the storefront platform behind €200M in annual recurring revenue. I lead engineering the way I learned to design: obsessed with what actually ships and how it feels to use.
01
Team topology, hiring bars, career paths and growing engineers and managers — turning a group of engineers into an organization that ships and likes working together.
02
Digital products where conversion, performance and reliability are the same conversation. Comfortable owning a domain that the business depends on.
03
Developer experience, tooling and automation are what keep teams shipping — and the right architecture is what turns shipped into production-ready.
04
A real interest in great user experience, and the fluency to speak design natively — which is what makes design and engineering work as one team rather than two.
01 / Experience
Developer first, manager by choice. Every role since has been about the same thing: teams that deliver products the business can bet on.
2021 — Present·Berlin, Germany
Director of Engineering
Own the storefront domain end to end — the discovery, checkout and subscription experiences behind €200M in annual recurring revenue. Joined as an Engineering Manager for one storefront team, was promoted to Senior Engineering Manager in 2022 and then Director, now leading multiple teams and their managers. I pair with product and design on strategy, keep the platform fast and reliable, and make sure shipping stays easy as the organization grows.
2018 — 2021·Buenos Aires, Argentina
Engineering Manager
Led a team of 14 engineers building API Manager, a core product of the Anypoint Platform — a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for full life cycle API management. Drove execution and delivery with architects and product owners across several cross-functional teams, while coaching engineers into senior and lead roles.
2014 — 2018·Buenos Aires, Argentina
Director of Engineering
Joined as one of eight employees and grew with the company into its first Director of Engineering. Ran the 12-person development team inside a 42-person digital product agency: technical direction and delivery for every client project, plus the hiring, career paths and engineering culture that made the team work — helping startups and enterprises ship products people actually use.
2016 — Consultant·Berlin, Germany
Technology Consultant
Advised the digital lab of the industrial measurement group on web platform foundations for content and commerce.
2012 — 2013·Buenos Aires, Argentina
Full-stack Developer
Education
Industrial Designer — Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2008–2014)
02 / Endorsements
What the people I’ve built with — product partners, designers and engineers I’ve managed — say about working together.
One of the sharpest people I’ve worked with
Sergio is one of the sharpest people I’ve worked with. He led before anyone gave him the title, and naturally grew into running our entire engineering team and shaping how we build digital products end to end. Easy going, clear communicator, and genuinely easy to work with. If you get the chance to work with him, take it.
With him, the line between design and engineering simply disappeared.
Sergio is one of those rare engineers who understands design from the inside. With him, the line between design and engineering simply disappeared — we’d debate every decision as equals, and the product was always better for it. He’s the kind of person who makes you want to go build something again.
The most complete Engineering Director I’ve had the privilege of partnering with.
During our four years working together at Grover, Sergio consistently proved himself to be the most complete Engineering Director I’ve had the privilege of partnering with. What sets Sergio apart is his versatility: he is an exceptional leader who also stays remarkably connected to the actual work. By deeply understanding both the underlying technology and our core business objectives, he became an indispensable sparring partner for Product and Design. Sergio doesn’t just execute; he understands the strategic context, pushes technical boundaries, and empowers his entire team to thrive. He possesses a rare talent for driving multiple complex projects simultaneously while making it all look easy. Any organization would be incredibly lucky to have him.
One of the most driven people I know
I had the pleasure of working with Sergio at Aerolab, and he is easily one of the most driven people I know. When project turbulence hit, he never wasted energy looking backward or placing blame. Instead, Sergio always kept his eyes on the horizon, focusing entirely on how we could solve the problem and improve moving forward.
03 / Projects
Open source, small tools and the occasional weekend obsession. Leading teams is the job; building things is still the hobby.
React · Node.js · Postgres · GIS
Real-time bus arrival predictions for Buenos Aires, aggregating several bus lines into one map. Featured in La Nación and El Destaque.
04 / Talks & community
Conference talks, teaching and mentoring — the community taught me most of what I know, so I keep paying it back.
2023 — Present
Ad honorem mentor, supporting engineers and engineering managers in their professional growth.
2019Online
Instructor for a recorded full-stack web development career course.
2016Buenos Aires, Argentina
Speaker — “What NOT to do in CSS”.
2015São Paulo, Brazil
Speaker — “The utility belt of devs: a better workflow”.
2015Buenos Aires, Argentina
Speaker — “The utility belt of devs”.
2014Buenos Aires, Argentina
Event staff collaborator. Workshop: building native apps with Node.js and WebKit.
05 / Contact
I’m particularly energized by early-scale product challenges — where the engineering organization needs to grow as fast as the product does.
Always happy to talk engineering organizations, digital products, or the next thing worth building. The fastest way to reach me:
06 / Notes
Short, opinionated notes on engineering leadership and digital products. Written slowly, kept deliberately small.
Latest·Jun 2026
Five principles I keep coming back to when building engineering organizations — on shipping, design, ownership and platforms.
Read the note