Conrad Lotz
Technology executive and engineering leader. Building technology, organizations and leaders that scale.
How I think about leadership- in technology leadership
- 15+ years
- engineers led across geographies
- 100+
- platforms built and modernized
- Cloud, SaaS, Data & AI
What I bring
Leadership for engineering organizations that need to scale
Where I make the biggest difference: when an organization is growing fast, inheriting complex platforms, or needs a stronger bench of engineering managers.
Lead and scale engineering organizations
Org design, team topology and manager-of-managers leadership for organizations of 100+ engineers across multiple products and time zones.
Build engineering managers
Coaching engineers through the move into management, and building a management bench that runs on honest feedback and real one-on-ones.
Deliver and operate SaaS platforms
Owning the full lifecycle from architecture to production support, with operability, documentation and automation designed in from day one.
Adopt AI across engineering
Bringing AI tooling into everyday engineering pragmatically, so teams scale themselves instead of being replaced by those who do.
How I run large technology organizations
Six principles I operate by
Not a framework from a book. These come from running teams, getting things wrong, and writing down what worked.
- 01
People first, then process, then technology
A manager's success is measured by the growth and satisfaction of the engineers they guide, not their own output. Hire well, set people up to succeed, and the work follows.
Read the essay - 02
Feedback is immediate, never saved for year-end
Every one-on-one revisits each engineer's goals. Cameras on, no multitasking, notes kept. Course correction happens the week it's needed, so there are no surprises at review time.
Read the essay - 03
Honesty builds trust, so deal with it now
Avoiding conflict is a form of dishonesty. Problems get named early, people hear news from me first, and decisions are explained as openly as I'm allowed.
Read the essay - 04
Build for the team that inherits the system
Good systems live 5–10 years and outlast their authors. Documentation, admin interfaces and self-healing automation are part of the design, not an afterthought at handover.
Read the essay - 05
Discipline over motivation
Write it down, follow up, finish. Leaders don't have a time problem, they have a prioritization problem, and consistency compounds into a superpower.
Read the essay - 06
Security is everyone's responsibility
It can't be offloaded to a separate team. Every technologist owns security in their domain, and backups that were never tested don't count.
Read the essay
Philosophy
“Your responsibility is to grow your people into a better version of themselves.”
“Honesty creates trust!”
“You don’t have time deficiency problems, you have prioritization issues.”
“The price you pay upfront will be relatively small to the huge price you will pay later.”
“AI levels the playing field.”
Experience
From writing code to leading organizations
Full history and recommendations are on LinkedIn.
2020 – present
Director of Software Engineering
S&P Global
Leads a global organization of 100+ engineers, accountable for the full software development lifecycle across multiple SaaS platforms.
Earlier
Senior engineering roles
Coronation Fund Managers · Shoprite Group · MBV eQuSyS
Built and led delivery of financial and retail systems, from feature development and UI work to project leadership.
Education
National Diploma, Information Technology
Nelson Mandela University
Followed by further study in financial markets and computational investing.
- Full profile on LinkedIn
Latest writing
Thinking out loud
STAR Method: Make yourself more interesting when you speak
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” – Simon Sinek (adapted to interviews: great candidates don’t just list skills. They tell stories...
Applicant Tracking Systems: What Job Seekers Actually Need to Know in 2026
Separating fact from fear — how ATS really works, who uses it, what it costs, and how to make it work for you.
Should I Be Concerned About AI as a Software Engineer?
To be of a purist mindset and avoiding AI because you feel it does not make you a real developer/engineer is a mistake you will regret in the short...
Building or scaling an engineering organization?
I’m always glad to talk about engineering leadership, org design, and growing the people who do the work.