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 - 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 - 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
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 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
- 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 - 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
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 - 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.
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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Industry teams behind a decade of practitioner briefs
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Sponsor a challenge and meet candidates through actual work.
Industry teams can shape briefs around the skills they hire for, then evaluate students on rubric-scored deliverables — not resumes.
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.