S2 | Episode #20 - Thorsten Spieker - Director of Engineering at Avi Medical - "Building an Empowered Engineering Culture"

The Technology Leadership Podcast

About Thorsten
Thorsten Spieker ,Director of Engineering at Avi Medical, is a seasoned engineering leader with a strong background in building and empowering engineering teams. With over 10 years of experience in Silicon Valley and Germany, Thorsten has worked with both large companies and startups, honing his skills in software development and product engineering.
Synopsis
In this episode of the Technology Leadership Podcast, Thorsten Spieker, Director of Engineering at Avi Medical discusses the importance of building an empowered engineering culture. Thorsten shares his journey from being a back-end engineer to becoming a director and highlights the differences between Silicon Valley and German-based tech companies. He emphasises the need for engineers to be involved in the entire software development lifecycle and shares his experience transforming Avi's engineering culture.
Key Takeaways

• The importance of execution, building things quickly and shipping them to increase learning cycles.
• Invest in high quality software to avoid future challenges and enable faster development
• Empowering engineers to take responsibility for the success of the company and the software they build
• Recognising the importance of automating processes to reduce errors and improve efficiency.
• Establishing a culture of continuous learning by involving engineers in decision making and promoting a strong feedback loop.

Episode Outline
[00:09] Meet Thorsten
[05:02] Building an empowered engineering culture
[09:04] Engineering values and culture for fast learning and product development
[15:42] Empowering engineering culture and overcoming initial challenges
[21:03] Prioritising customer needs in a non-tech first company
[26:38] Prioritising technical debt in a startup
[32:044] Engineering culture, product development, and technology trends