200+ Resources to become a great engineering leader

List of books, newsletters, people and more!

Investing in yourself is a great investment anytime! I am sharing with you my personally curated resources to level up and grow to become a great engineering leader in 2026 and beyond!

I’ve been continuously curating them for over 6 years now.

Topics span from software engineering, system design, data engineering, leadership, management, and all the way to AI and product and business.

How to start?

There are a LOT of resources here, and your time is very important. I don’t suggest trying to learn all of the resources at once; I suggest picking a few resources at a time from specific categories that you need the most. That’s what I do as well.

When I need to go into more detail in a specific category, I choose the resources and do a deep dive into the specific topics. I also connect with certain individuals, check their posts, and/or ask them questions.

Important: Before you choose which resources you wish to go into more detail, I suggest doing a retrospective of your current skill set and defining where you need to improve.

To help you with finding out what skills you need, this is a great article: Become a Great Engineering Leader in 2026.

And for a full roadmap to break into Engineering Leadership, check this article: Full Roadmap to Break Into Engineering Leadership

This will ensure you are spending your time on the most impactful things first!

Get better in System Design

List of books

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann
• System Design Interview by Alex Xu
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
• Understanding Distirbuted Systems by Roberto Vitillo
• Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin
• Systems Analysis and Design, multiple editions and multiple authors
• Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems by Sam Newman
• Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Neal Ford and Mark Richards
• Software Architecture: The Hard Parts by Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage and Zhamak Dehghani
• Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems by Niall Richard Murphy, Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones and Jennifer Petoff
• Learn System Design in a Hurry, (Helping FAANG+ Software Engineering candidates land their dream job) by Evan King

List of blogs

• Meta Engineering
• AWS Architecture
• The Netflix Tech
• Apple Security Tech
• Google AI/Research
• LinkedIn Engineering
• Uber Engineering
• Engineering at Quora
• Pinterest Engineering
• Lyft Engineering
• Twitter Engineering
• Dropbox Engineering
• Spotify Engineering
• Github Engineering
• Instagram Engineering
• Canva Engineering
• Booking.com Tech
• The Airbnb Tech
• Stripe Engineering
• Discord Engineering and Design
• Engineering at Microsoft
• Reddit Engineering
• Slack Engineering
• Asana
• DigitalOcean
• CloudFlare
• HelloInterview

List of newsletters

• System Design Newsletter by Neo Kim
• ByteByteGo by Alex Xu
• AlgoMaster Newsletter by Ashish Pratap Singh
• Byte-Sized Design by Byte-Sized Design
• System Design Codex by Saurabh Dashora
• System Design Classroom by Raul Junco
• Big Tech Careers by Prasad Rao
• Simple AWS by Guille Ojeda
• Level Up Coding System Design Newsletter by Level Up Coding
• Hacking Scale by Better Stack by Richard Oliver Bray

People to follow on LinkedIn

• Neo Kim
• Alex Xu
• Raul Junco
• Saurabh Dashora
• Shalini Goyal
• Nikki Siapno
• Mayank Ahuja
• Prasad Rao
• Guille Ojeda
• Evan King

Become a better Leader / Manager

List of books

• The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo
• The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
• The Lean Manager by Andrew and Muhammad Wilkerson
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (my personal favorite)
• The Manager's Path by Camille Fournieri
• Leadership in 60 seconds by Omar Halabieh
• Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra
• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell
• Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson
• How to Lead When You're Not in Charge by Clay Scroggins
• Think Again by Adam Grant
• The Mind of the Leader by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
• Engineering Management for the rest of us by Sarah Drasner
• Data Leadership for Everyone by Anthony J. Algmin
• Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
• Impact Players by Liz Wiseman
• Leading Snowflakes by Oren Ellenbogen
• Leading Effective Engineering Teams by Addy Osmani
• Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager by James Stanier

List of newsletters

• Engineering Leadership by Gregor Ojstersek
• Elevate by Addy Osmani
• Scarlet Ink by Dave Anderson
• The Hybrid Hacker by Nicola Ballotta
• Manager.dev by Anton Zaides
• The Caring Techie Newsletter by Irina Stanescu
• Tech World With Milan Newsletter by Dr Milan Milanovic
• The Conscious Leader by Taha Hussain
• The Engineering Manager by James Stanier
• Techlead Mentor by Raviraj Achar
• Developing Skills by John Crickett
• Refactoring by Luca Rossi
• Level up as a Tech Lead by Anemari Fiser
• Thinking in Tech by Dariusz Sadowski
• Adrian Builds by Adrian Stanek
• Level Up Newsletter by Ethan Evans
• The Chronicles of a High EQ Leader by Djordje Mladenovic
• Crafting Tech Teams by Denis Čahuk
• The Software Engineering Times by Ryan Murphy
• Alex Ewerlöf Notes by Alex Ewerlöf
• Sudo Make Me a CTO by Sergio Visinoni
• Programming Leadership - Marcus Blankenship by Marcus Blankenship
• Blog for Engineering Managers by Stephane Moreau
• Leadership Superpowers by Gregor Purdy

People to follow on LinkedIn

• Gregor Ojstersek
• Omar Halabieh
• Nicola Ballotta
• Irina Stanescu
• Luca Rossi
• Addy Osmani
• Taha Hussain
• Anton Zaides
• Dr Milan Milanović
• David Anderson
• Anemari Fiser
• Raviraj Achar
• Pedro Gil Carvalho
• Dariusz Sadowski
• Adrian Stanek
• Ali Merchant
• Alexander Kliotzkin
• Ethan Evans
• Djordje Mladenovic
• Denis Čahuk
• Matt Watson
• Sarah Gruneisen
• Pramoda Vyasarao
• Steven Claes
• Anna J McDougall
• Ryan Murphy
• Kahlil Lechelt
• James Stanier
• Alex Ewerlöf
• Itzy Sabo
• Daria Rudnik
• Tobias Mende
• Luca Sartoni
• Doug Howard, P.E.
• Anco van der Wurff
• Sergio Visinoni
• Gregor Purdy

Articles

• Engineering Leader’s Guide: How to Become a Great Coach and Mentor
• This Is Holding Most Engineers Back from Lead Roles
• Stuck at Senior Engineer - How to Break Through and Reach the Next Level
• 7 Must-Have Engineering Manager Stories That Will Land You the Offer
• Engineer to Leader: 10 Insights to Get You Started
• Become an Engineering Leader Everyone Wants to Work With
• Your Engineering Team Should Be Looking to Solve Customer Problems
• How to Ace Engineering Manager Interviews
• The State of Engineering Leadership in 2025
• First Time in a Leading Position? This Is What to Do
• 15 Productivity Hacks Every Engineer & Manager Should Know
• Not Communicating Your Impact Is Killing Your Career
• How I Grew From Engineer to CTO
• Full Roadmap to Break Into Engineering Leadership in 2025
• What’s Next After Senior Engineer?
• Why You Should Do a Tech Lead Rotation in Your Engineering Team
• 5 Mindset Shifts Needed to Grow From Engineer to Leader
• Help Your Manager to Help You
• 5 Lessons Learned Setting Up a Global Engineering Org at Google
• How to Build Trust as an Engineering Leader
• How to Build Trust as an Engineering Leader Part 2: Structure and Execute the Plan
• Great Engineering Leaders Create Leaders
• 3 Main Soft Skills a Tech Lead Needs to Develop
• Senior Engineer to Lead: Who to Promote and How to Train Them
• How to Become a CTO
• 12 Ways to Become a CTO
• Good Managers Are Hard to Find and Once You Have Them, They Should Be Appreciated
• What Does a CTO Do
• From IC to Manager
• How to Develop a Great Tech Strategy
• How to Recognize the Potential in Engineers
• How to Manage Up as an Engineer or a Manager
• Software Engineering Team Structure That Works
• Engineering Org Structure That Works
• How Teaching Made Me a Better Engineer and Manager
• From Tech Lead to Team Lead
• How I Organized My Time as a Full-Time CTO
• How to Create a Great Engineering Organization Where People Can Thrive
• How to Use Engineering Metrics for the Success of Engineers and Teams
• From Engineer to Principal Solutions Architect at AWS With Prasad Rao
• How to Create a Culture of Ownership in Your Engineering Team
• Blameless Culture Should Be a Standard in the Engineering Industry
• How to Become a Fractional CTO?
• How to Handle Underperformance
• How to Have a Top Performing, Healthy and Active Day as an Engineer or a Manager
• The Importance of Having a Career Growth Plan in the Engineering Industry
• 8 Signs That You Have a Good Manager
• Leading 1 Team vs 3 Teams vs 5+ Teams

Become a better Software Engineer

List of books

• The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas
• Refactoring by Martin Fowler and Kent Beck
• Why Programs Fail by Andreas Zeller
• Clean Code by Robert Cecil Martin
• Grokking Algorithms by Aditya Y. Bhargava
• Staff Engineer by Will Larson
• Modern Software Engineering by David Farley
• Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
• Engineering Software Products by Ian Sommerville
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Code Complete by Steve McConnell
• The Staff Engineer's Path by Tanya Reilly
• Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
• Software Engineering Guidebook by Gergely Orosz
• The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly
• The Product-Minded Engineer by Drew Hoskins
• Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
• Clean Code Cookbook: Recipes to Improve the Design and Quality of your Code by Maximiliano Contieri

List of newsletters

• Engineering Leadership by Gregor Ojstersek
• Coding Challenges by John Crickett
• Developing Skills by John Crickett
• High Growth Engineer by Jordan Cutler
• The Developing Dev by Ryan Peterman
• The T-Shaped Dev by Petar Ivanov
• Hungry Minds 🍔🧠 by Alexandre Zajac
• The Hustling Engineer by Hemant Pandey
• A Life Engineered by Steve Huynh
• The Software Engineer Weekly by Kevin Naughton Jr.
• Level up software engineering by Caleb Mellas
• Optivem Journal by Valentina Jemuović
• Engineer’s Codex by Leonardo Creed
• The Modern Software Developer by Richard Donovan
• Strategize Your Career by Fran Soto
• The Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz
• Software Design: Tidy First? by Kent Beck
• Dev Details by Mike Thornton
• Front-End Focus by Mads Brodt
• Craft Better Software by Daniel Moka
• Saiyan Growth Letter by Tiger Abrodi
• The Polymathic Engineer by Franco Fernando
• ByteSizedBets by Ankur Tyagi
• Maximiliano Contieri - Software Design by Maximiliano Contieri
• Path to Staff by Sidwyn Koh
• Marko Denic Tech by Marko Denic

People to follow on LinkedIn

• Gregor Ojstersek
• John Crickett
• Jordan Cutler
• Ryan Peterman
• Caleb Mellas
• Richard Donovan
• Daniel Moka
• Tiger Abrodi
• Hemant Pandey
• Alexandre Zajac
• Brian Jenney
• Francisco Manuel (Fran) Soto Ramírez
• Guille Ojeda
• Gergely Orosz
• Kent Beck
• Steve Huynh
• Kevin Naughton
• Daniel Glejzner
• Valentina (Cupać) Jemuović
• Rahul Pandey
• Alex Chiou
• Mike Thornton
• Marko Denic
• Mads Brodt
• Petar Ivanov
• Fernando Franco
• Ankur Tyagi
• Harley Ferguson
• James Willett
• Milan Jovanović
• Eric Roby
• Zubin Pratap
• Sam Williams
• Maximiliano Contieri
• Sidwyn Koh

Articles

• How to grow from mid-level to senior Software Engineer
• Future Proof Your Career as an Engineer in Gen AI World
• Tech Lead is Becoming One of the Most Important Roles in Tech Due to GenAI
• Saying “I don’t know” Is a Sign of Seniority For Me
• How to Gain Respect From Your Peers and Leadership as an Engineer
• The Importance of Writing in the Engineering Industry
• How to build good relationships inside and outside your engineering team
• Best engineers are focusing on helping others
• Growing from engineer to Staff engineer and thriving
• Perfectionism - one of the biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry
• How to let your manager know about your goals and aspirations
• 5 skills to develop to grow from Senior to Staff Engineer
• How to be a reliable engineer
• How to be a proactive engineer
• Simple code is the best code
• From Shy Engineer to Director at Oracle and a Skilled Communicator
• How to propose an impactful improvement to the codebase and own the implementation
• How to build credibility in the engineering industry
• How to prevent burning out in the engineering industry
• Context-switching - one of the worst productivity killers in the engineering industry
• Going from impostor one day to feeling like a superhuman the next day
• Simplifying as much as possible is the way to go in the engineering industry
• Engineer's Guide to Freelance Work
• How to Develop a Senior Mindset
• Thrive in your first 90 days when starting a new position as an engineer
• Become the go-to engineer in your organization
• How Can Engineers and PMs Collaborate Effectively?
• How I was able to get promoted while constant reorganization
• Keep a brag list of the wins you achieved, thank me later
• Grow in your career by organizing an engineering guild
• Starting my career again as a junior engineer
• A good engineer thinks like a product manager
• The importance of data when making decisions in the engineering industry
• A CS Degree is not needed to be successful as a Software Engineer
• Why your job search is failing as an engineer or a manager (and how to fix it)
• You don’t need to be a manager to have a successful career in the engineering industry
• Engineer’s guide to convincing your Product Manager to prioritize technical debt
• Timeless skills in Software Development
• The importance of forming opinions in the engineering industry

Become product-minded and business-oriented

List of books

• Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
• Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products by Martina Lauchengco
• Empowered by Marty Cagan
• Start with Why by Simon Sinek
• Transformed — Marty Cagan
• What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You by Melina Palmer
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell

List of newsletters

• Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky
• The Product Compass by Pawel Huryn
• Product Growth by Aakash Gupta
• Wes Kao's Newsletter by Wes kao
• Product Management IRL by Amy Mitchell
• Leah’s ProducTea by Leah Tharin
• Elena's Growth Scoop by Elena Verna
• Untrapping Product Teams by David Pereira
• Behind the Craft by Peter Yang
• The Looking Glass by Julie Zhuo
• The Beautiful Mess by John Cutler
• Leadership Superpowers by Gregor Purdy
• GTM Strategist by Maja Voje

People to follow on LinkedIn

• Lenny Rachitsky
• Pawel Huryn
• Aakash Gupta
• Wes Kao
• Amy Mitchell
• Leah Tharin
• Elena Verna
• David Pereira
• Julie Zhuo
• Peter Yang
• John Cutler
• Gregor Purdy
• Maja Voje

Get better at Data Engineering / Data Science

List of books

• Fundamentals of Data Engineering by Matt Housley
• Data Engineering with Python by Paul Crickard
• Spark: The Definitive Guide by Matei Zaharia
• Big Data: Principles and Best Practices of Scalable Realtime Data Systems by James Warren
• 97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know by Tobias Macey

List of newsletters

• DataExpert.io Newsletter by Zach Wilson
• SeattleDataGuy’s Newsletter by SeattleDataGuy
• Daily Dose of Data Science by Avi Chawla
• Data Engineering Central by Daniel Beach
• Data Engineering Weekly by Ananth Packkildurai
• Joe Reis by Joe Reis
• Data Gibberish by Yordan Ivanov

People to follow on LinkedIn

• Zach Wilson
• Benjamin Rogojan
• Avi Chawla
• Daniel Beach
• Ananth P
• Joe Reis
• Pradeep Kumar
• Yordan Ivanov

Get better at AI & ML

List of books

• Designing Machine Learning Systems: An Iterative Process for Production-Ready Applications by Chip Huyen
• Machine Learning System Design Interview by Ali Aminian and Alex Xu
• AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models by Chip Huyen
• Building Applications with AI Agents by Michael Albada
• AI Systems Performance Engineering by Chris Fregly
• Prompt Engineering for LLMs by John Berryman and Albert Ziegler
• Prompt Engineering for Generative AI by James Phoenix and Mike Taylor
• Building LLMs for Production by Louis-François Bouchard and Louie Peters
• Building Generative AI Services with FastAPI by Alireza Parandeh
• Essential Math for AI by Hala Nelson
• Mathematics of Machine Learning by Tivadar Danka
• LLM Engineer's Handbook by Paul Iusztin and Maxime Labonne
• LLMs in Production by Christopher Brousseau and Matt Sharp

List of newsletters

• MarvelousMLOps by Maria Vechtomova & Basak Tugçe Eskili
• Al Supremacy by Michael Spencer
• Into Al by Dr. Ashish Bamania
• The Palindrome by Tivadar Danka
• Decoding ML by Paul lusztin
• The Al Engineer by Owain Lewis
• Nate's Substack by Nate
• Neural Bits by Alex Razvant
• The Al-Augmented Engineer by Jeff Morhous
• Gradient Ascent by Sairam Sundaresan
• Air Around AI by Pradeep Kumar

People to follow on LinkedIn

• Owain Lewis
• Paul Iusztin
• Dr. Ashish Bamania
• Maria Vechtomova
• Başak Tuğçe Eskili
• Michael Spencer
• Chip Huyen
• Li Yin
• Raphaël Hoogvliets
• Hamel Husain
• Meri Nova
• Timur Bikmukhametov
• Alex Razvant
• Sairam Sundaresan

Articles

• How to Use AI to Help With Planning Engineering Projects
• How to Use AI to Help With Software Engineering Tasks
• Companies Should Stop Obsessing Over AI Tools And Do This Instead
• How AI Is Impacting Engineering Leadership
• The Impact of AI on Engineering Teams
• How to Use AI to Improve Teamwork in Engineering Teams
• OpenAI's Product Leader Reveals: AI Product Strategy for Engineering Leaders
• LLMs: Common Terms Explained, Simply
• Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products Part 1
• Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products Part 2
• Biggest Mistakes Engineering Leaders Make With AI
• AI Evals: How To Systematically Improve and Evaluate AI
• How to Measure AI Impact in Engineering Teams
• Engineering Leader's Guide to Managing Unrealistic AI Expectations
• Guide to Prompt Engineering
• Why 51% of Engineering Leaders Believe AI Is Impacting the Industry Negatively
• Future Proof Your Career as an Engineer in Gen AI World
• How to Use AI to Be a Great Engineering Leader
• Top AI Coding Tools for Engineering Teams in 2025
• 5 AI Tools to Build to Be a Better Engineering Leader in 2025
• How to use Cursor AI to build side projects
• How to use AI to increase Software Development productivity
• Will AI replace mid-level engineers in 2025?
• You have an AI product, how to get users?
• Enforcing the use of AI in engineering teams — good or bad thing?

Get better at Coaching & Mentoring

List of books

• Coaching for Performance Fifth Edition: The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership by Sir John Whitmore
• The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients by Steve Chandler and Rich Litvin
• The Coaches' Handbook: The Complete Practitioner Guide for Professional Coaches by Jonathan Passmore
• Coaching Skills: The Definitive Guide to Being a Coach by Jenny Rogers
• Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership by Ruchira Chaudhary

Get better at Communicating and Emotional Intelligence

List of books

• Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman
• The Art of Empathy by Karla Mclaren
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck

Articles

• Empathy is a superpower in the engineering industry
• How to develop EQ as an engineer or a manager
• How to communicate with stakeholders the right way
• How Engineering Leaders Stay Calm and Effective When It Gets Personal

Any resources you liked and believe would be a great addition to this list? Feel free to open a PR! I am always in the lookout for some more great books / newsletters / people to follow.