Engineering Leadership
Engineering Manager
The first time you see a software team ship something hard on time, with everyone still talking to each other, you realize how much craft sits in engineering management. The role exists to make a team of engineers more effective than they would be alone, through coaching, planning, removing obstacles, and shaping the technical direction without doing all the coding yourself.
Students who eventually want this path usually start as strong engineers and discover they care about people as much as code. A good manager can run a useful 1:1, defend a roadmap, and notice when an engineer is quietly burning out.
You grow into it by leading projects first, then taking on direct reports once the technical instincts are solid.
Skills you'll need
- DesignBeginnerNew
Establish IT Governance for a Hyper-Growth Consultancy
Analyze 18 months of SaaS expense data and the failed client-audit report to identify the top 5 governance gaps. Design a framework covering: SaaS procurement (who approves what…
- It Governance
- Saas Management
- Access Management
IT Management and Governance - StrategyIntermediateNew
Risk Register and Budget for a Regulated Mobile Banking Launch
Read the launch brief (28 pages) and the regulatory inventory (12 obligations). Build a top-25 risk register categorized (technical, security, regulatory, vendor, operational) w…
- Risk Management
- Regulatory Planning
- Scheduling
Software Project Management - AnalysisIntermediateNew
IT Consulting Engagement: Cost-Out Diagnostic for a Logistics Group
Receive an anonymized spend cube (vendor, category, country, contract end date), an infra utilization extract (compute, storage, network), and the application portfolio. Conduct…
- It Consulting
- Cost Analysis
- Vendor Management
IT Management and Governance - AnalysisIntermediateNew
Continuous Delivery Maturity Audit for a Fintech Backend
Collect 8 weeks of deployment data (lead time for changes, deployment frequency, change-failure rate, mean time to restore) per team using their GitHub Actions + Jira + PagerDut…
- Continuous Delivery
- Dora Metrics
- Ci Cd
Agile Methods and Practices Practice your coursework on real scenarios.
Every challenge is shaped from real-world context — not generic exercises. The work mirrors what your degree prepares you for.
Why Ewance
- DesignBeginnerNew
Organize a Distributed Team Across 4 Timezones
Audit the current state via 8 interviews (4 in SF, 2 in Warsaw, 2 in Bangalore). Design 4-5 squads each owning a domain end-to-end (not split across timezones for handoff). Buil…
- Team Management
- Distributed Teams
- Communication Design
Software Project Management - StrategyIntermediateNew
Roll Out an Advanced Process Model (LeSS) to 6 Product Teams
Read the LeSS framework (Larman + Vodde) and audit the 6 teams' current Scrum practice (anonymized data + 4 hours of recorded ceremonies). Author a 10-page rollout design coveri…
- Advanced Process Models
- Scaling Agile
- Less
Advanced Software Engineering - StrategyIntermediateNew
CMMI Level 3 Process-Improvement Roadmap for a Defense Subcontractor
Read the company's current process documentation + recent CMMI Level 2 appraisal report. Run a gap analysis against the 11 additional Level 3 process areas (Requirements Develop…
- Cmmi
- Process Improvement
- Process Models
Software Quality and Process Improvement - AnalysisIntermediateNew
Defect-Trend Analysis and Quality Action Plan for an EV Charging Platform
Pull 18 months of defect data from Jira + the field-incident system + customer-service tickets. Categorize defects by component, severity, and root-cause taxonomy. Run statistic…
- Defect Analysis
- Statistical Process Control
- 5 Whys & Fishbone Root Cause Analysis
Software Quality and Process Improvement - Browse challenges
Explore role
Product Manager
Ship product that solves real user problems. Combine user research, prototyping, and stakeholder alignment to turn ambiguous briefs into measurable wins — the role at the centre of modern software teams.
- StrategyIntermediateNew
Recover a Red-RAG Enterprise Implementation Mid-Flight
Pull 7 months of project artifacts (Jira, status reports, change requests, meeting minutes, time-tracking). Interview 6 people across the delivery team + 3 from the client side.…
- Project Recovery
- Estimation
- Scope Management
Software Project Management - AnalysisIntermediateNew
ISO 25010 Self-Assessment for an Aerospace Avionics Vendor
Read the module's documentation (architecture, requirements, test reports, defect history). For each of 8 ISO 25010 characteristics (functional suitability, performance efficien…
- Iso 25010
- Quality Assessment
- Do 178c
Software Quality and Process Improvement - StrategyIntermediateNew
Corporate Innovation Pilot Design for a Tier-1 Auto Supplier
Audit year-1: review the 14 pilots' charters, outcomes, and sponsor commitment. Identify the structural failures (likely: no sponsor with budget ownership, no scale-up criteria …
- Innovation Management
- Pilot Program Design
- Stakeholder Communication
Innovation and Entrepreneurship for CS - AnalysisIntermediateNew
Technical-Debt Quantification for an Acquired SaaS
Run a static-analysis sweep (SonarQube + custom dependency scripts) and a 4-hour structured walkthrough with the acquired team's 3 senior engineers. Categorize debt into: code-q…
- Technical Debt
- Code Analysis
- Estimation
Software Evolution and Maintenance Build a verifiable portfolio.
Submissions become evidence. Reviewers with shipping experience score against a rubric; the result becomes a credential anyone can verify.
Why Ewance
- PresentationIntermediateNew
Run a Cross-Team Retrospective After a Failed Launch
Design a 3-hour structured retrospective using either Liberating Structures or Norm Kerr's 'Prime Directive' framing (assume people did the best job possible with what they knew…
- Retrospectives
- Facilitation
- Incident Analysis
Agile Methods and Practices - DesignIntermediateNew
Build a Quality Metrics Program for a Medical-Device Software Team
Read the team's QMS (Quality Management System) documents and the IEC 62304 software lifecycle requirements. Design a metric catalog of 12-15 metrics covering process (review-co…
- Quality Metrics
- Iec 62304
- Process Improvement
Software Quality and Process Improvement - PresentationIntermediateNew
Run a Platform-as-Product Quarterly Review for a 40-Squad Org
Define the platform's 8 products (CI service, golden-path templates, observability stack, secret management, namespace provisioning, on-call tooling, internal portal, paved-road…
- Platform Engineering
- Platform As Product
- Facilitation
Platform Engineering - StrategyBeginnerNew
PMO Pilot for a Mid-Cap Engineering Org
Audit 4 pilot teams over 1 week: backlog, work-in-flight, cross-team dependencies, ad-hoc requests, slip history. Design a lightweight PMO covering: portfolio view (Notion + Lin…
- Pmo Governance
- Portfolio Management
- Intake Design
Software Project Management - AnalysisBeginnerNew
Rescue a Stalling Scrum Team at a Series-B HealthTech
Review 8 hours of recorded ceremonies and 3 sprints of Jira data (story sizing, carry-over rate, cycle time per story, blocker tags). Diagnose the top 3 root causes (likely cand…
- Agile / Scrum Ceremonies
- Agile Metrics
- Retrospectives
Agile Methods and Practices - StrategyBeginnerNew
Negotiate a Debt-Paydown Budget Inside a Roadmap
Pick 3 well-known debt items (e.g., flaky tests blocking deploys, manual tenant provisioning, a legacy notification service). For each, model the carrying cost in engineer-hours…
- Technical Debt
- Stakeholder Communication
- Refactoring Budgets
Technical Debt Management - StrategyBeginnerNew
Continuous-Improvement Kata for a SaaS Engineering Org
Read Mike Rother's 'Toyota Kata' framework + 'The Kata Coaching Practice Guide'. Design a lightweight Improvement Kata for the 3 pilot teams: vision (engineering quality), targe…
- Continuous Improvement
- Toyota Kata
- Coaching
Software Quality and Process Improvement - DesignBeginnerNew
Stand Up a Business-IT Alignment Operating Model
Map the current demand flow from intake to delivery (or non-delivery) and identify the top 5 break points (likely candidates: no triage, no prioritization frame, undersized capa…
- Business It Alignment
- Demand Management
- Portfolio Prioritization
IT Management and Governance - StrategyBeginnerNew
Design Critique Process for a Growth Design Team
Design a 60-minute weekly design-critique format covering: pre-read window, presenter prep template, time-boxed feedback rounds (start-stop-continue or 'I like, I wish, I wonder…
- Design Critique
- Facilitation
- Design Systems
User Interface Design and Prototyping
How it works
From brief to credential, in six steps.
Step 01
Browse challenges aligned to your studies.
Step 02
Accept the one that fits your goals.
Step 03
Work through it with AI Copilot guidance.
Step 04
Submit for structured evaluation.
Step 05
Earn a verified credential.
Step 06
Add it to LinkedIn with one click.
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Skills and disciplines shown on this page are derived from the Ewance challenge catalogue. When the median annual salary is available for this role via Adzuna, it will be shown above with the sample size and country.
Portrait: Photo by Jadon Johnson on Unsplash.