Bhuvana Vijayan currently serves as the Director of Engineering at Zenjob, where she leads the marketplace team, bridging supply and demand to create seamless job-matching experiences. With over 16 years of experience across engineering leadership roles in Germany and India, Bhuvana has worked at organizations like Google, Zalando, and Real Networks, where she honed her expertise in building scalable systems, reducing lead times, and fostering engineering excellence.

In this episode, Bhuvana shares her journey from hardware and firmware development to leading engineering teams at some of Europe’s most prominent tech companies. She dives into the strategies she implemented to optimize Zenjob’s lead time, establish cross-functional collaboration, and improve developer productivity. Bhuvana also discusses the importance of data-driven decision-making, psychological safety, and skill-based hiring in creating high-performing engineering teams.

This episode is packed with actionable insights for engineering leaders looking to build efficient teams, enhance developer experience, and drive impactful collaboration across their organizations.

Key Takeaways:

• Reducing Lead Time: How Zenjob optimized time-to-market by aligning teams around clear metrics like velocity and cycle time.

• Building High-Performing Teams: Creating an environment where engineers thrive through shared ownership, continuous learning, and addressing key pain points like tech debt and unclear impact.

• Skill-Based Hiring: A tailored approach to hiring that ensures team strengths align with organizational goals.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Establishing a product quad to bring together product, design, engineering, and data for better decision-making.

• Developer Experience: Enhancing team satisfaction through better tooling, reduced silos, and a focus on team health.

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