2020-2022
N26 Bank
At N26, I served as the Agile Coach and Product Lead for the Platform Engineering (SRE) group, coaching over 20 engineers as well as technical and product leadership. I introduced agile practices that emphasized customer centricity, continuous improvement, and outcome-driven development to help shift the team's focus from technical outputs to user impact.
Highlighted Outcomes​
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Decreased epic completion times by 20%
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Increaesd developer NPS of the platform from -27 to 8
- Reduced microservice operational costs by 67% per microservice and increased deploymnet time of microservices by 77%
Changing Culture
The platform engineering group was primarily made up of traditional operations engineers who weren’t accustomed to product development methodologies. Their focus had always been on the technology itself, rather than the user experience. By introducing practices that increased transparency and encouraged feedback, like demos, user interviews, and stakeholder surveys, the teams began to shift their mindset. They started asking not just, “Is this good for the system?” but also, “Is this valuable to the people using it?” That change in perspective led to meaningful improvements in the infrastructure experience for all product teams.
Compliance vs Features
One of the biggest challenges in highly regulated industries is striking a balance between maintaining strict controls for ongoing and annual audits while also improving the user experience. In these environments, stakeholders aren’t just the end users, they include security and compliance teams. At first glance, building user-friendly platforms that meet rigorous audit requirements can feel at odds with agile principles. But in reality, compliance is about meeting outcomes, not following prescribed steps. This opens the door for teams to find creative, efficient solutions that both satisfy regulations and enhance operational workflows.
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Our group was able to do just that, we not only met audit requirements but exceeded IT control expectations, all while improving the developer experience. By focusing on automation, clear documentation, and intuitive interfaces, we delivered tools that made it easier for engineers to do their work securely, without adding unnecessary friction.
Managing a product out of your control
With many internal platforms, the teams making improvements aren’t always the ones using the tools day to day. When upgrades or new features are rolled out, product teams across the organization often have to decide whether or not to adopt them. If the value isn’t immediately clear, those changes rarely get prioritized.
As the product manager, I made it a priority to ensure teams understood the “why” behind each upgrade, what pain points it addressed, how it would improve their workflow, and how it tied into larger company goals. Internal users are no different from external ones: if they don’t see the value, they won’t engage. My goal was to bridge that gap and make it easy for teams to say yes to change by showing them exactly how it would benefit them.