Michelin North America - Engineering Manager
Overview
Led engineering teams at Michelin North America, managing full-stack development and DevOps initiatives. This role marked my transition into technical leadership while maintaining hands-on engineering expertise.
Important: This was a new role starting AFTER my time at Decisiv. Decisiv was NOT acquired by Michelin — that was incorrect information in earlier versions of this portfolio. Started AFTER Decisiv — NOT an acquisition.
Leadership Responsibilities
Team Management
- Led distributed engineering teams across multiple time zones
- Managed hiring, mentoring, and career development
- Implemented agile processes and continuous improvement practices
- Fostered a culture of engineering excellence
Technical Leadership
- Architected solutions for manufacturing and logistics systems
- Established CI/CD pipelines and DevOps best practices
- Drove technical decisions on technology stack and infrastructure
- Balanced technical debt with feature delivery
Key Projects
Manufacturing Digitalization
Led initiatives to modernize manufacturing systems:
- Legacy system integration with modern APIs
- Real-time production monitoring dashboards
- Predictive maintenance systems
DevOps Transformation
Established DevOps practices across teams:
- Containerization with Docker
- Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
- Automated deployment pipelines
- Monitoring and observability standards
Remote-First Leadership
This role was remote-first — years before it became standard post-2020. I developed practices for:
- Asynchronous Communication: Documentation-first culture
- Team Cohesion: Virtual team building and regular 1:1s
- Performance Management: Outcome-based evaluation
- Work-Life Balance: Respecting boundaries across time zones
Technologies
- Cloud: AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda)
- Infrastructure: Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes
- Backend: Ruby on Rails, Node.js
- Frontend: React, Angular
- Monitoring: Datadog, New Relic
Lessons in Leadership
- Servant Leadership: Enable your team to do their best work
- Trust: Remote work requires trust-based management
- Communication: Over-communicate in distributed teams
- Technical Depth: Stay hands-on to make informed decisions
Recognition
Successfully delivered multiple high-visibility projects while growing team capabilities and maintaining high team satisfaction scores.