Hello, I'm Zef!

My name is Zef Hemel. Over the last 15 years I have been working in engineering leadership. I've lead teams in small start-ups, scale-ups and larger multi-nationals, ranging in size from a handful engineers to over a hundred, stepping into the role of Engineering Manager, Head of Engineering, Director of Engineering, and VP of Engineering.

While primary focusing on leadership and management, I bring 30+ year of programming experience (I never stopped writing code), and my natural curiosity and rigor sparked by my academic background (I have a Ph.D. in computer science) in whatever I do.

I have been writing about my craft for over two decades, read by hundreds of engineering leaders weekly.

After being an “in the weeds” practitioner for a long time, today I work as a leadership coach and consultant and I'm able to support you in various ways.

What some (nice) people say about me

“Zef is an extremely effective communicator, skilled writer, master at articulating ideas and feedback, and turning every encounter into an engaging exploration session.” — Stanislav Pogrebnyak, Head of Engineering

“He was the person that brought me back into management. We have had many conversations and he was my reference to test many of my ideas before implementing them as I know he'll give me honest and actionable feedback.” — Guillermo Vayá Pérez, Senior Engineering Lead

“I have worked with many CTOs and program managers. I did not believe there were top developers very good at management too, before meeting Zef. He is simply impressive. He introduced lean methodologies in the development process dramatically increasing the monitoring of all production metrics. Zef knows how to manage people respecting their human and psychological side. He boosts your team because he is respected by highly skilled developers keeping an eye at the project goals. His scientific approach was fundamental to find the solution path to hard problems optimizing human workload and efficiency.” — Luca Cipriani, VP Engineering