Скачать или смотреть 20+ Years in Engineering Leadership: What Actually Breaks Large Tech Programs || Abhishek Kumar

In this episode of the Dawdle.live Podcast, Rishikesh speaks with Abhishek Kumar, Senior Director – Engineering at Coforge, a seasoned technology leader with over 21 years of experience across banking platforms, enterprise systems, global delivery, cloud transformation, and digital payments.

This conversation goes far beyond theory. Abhishek shares real failures, real trade-offs, and real leadership lessons from building and scaling mission-critical systems across North America, Europe, and emerging markets. From engineering resilience and delivery governance to managing global teams and navigating AI ethics, this episode is a masterclass for senior engineers, architects, delivery leaders, and aspiring CTOs.

🎯 What You Will Learn

✔ How early career failures shaped Abhishek’s leadership philosophy
✔ Why delivery timelines slip even with strong planning and teams
✔ Designing scalable, reliable systems under extreme load
✔ Event-driven architecture, microservices, and chaos engineering in practice
✔ Payments engineering challenges in emerging markets
✔ Speed vs fraud control trade-offs in real-world payment systems
✔ Why discovery failures derail large programs
✔ Managing globally distributed teams across cultures and time zones
✔ Governance, risk management, and stakeholder alignment
✔ AI, automation, and ethical responsibility for future engineering leaders
✔ Why modern engineering leadership is about orchestration, not just coding

⏱️ Chapters / Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction and welcome
00:19 – Abhishek’s 21-year engineering journey
02:45 – Early failures and leadership lessons
04:57 – First major delivery mistake and its impact
06:40 – Leadership beyond individual heroics
09:46 – Engineering challenges that repeat across industries
11:20 – Building for scale, reliability, and extreme load
13:55 – Microservices, event-driven architecture, and resilience
16:45 – Chaos engineering and failure-first design
19:49 – Why transformation is more about governance than technology
21:33 – Payments engineering in emerging markets
23:40 – Offline transactions, onboarding, and customer behavior
27:05 – Conversion, adoption, and product success metrics
29:31 – Speed vs fraud control trade-offs in payments
33:45 – Why even small monetary errors matter
36:02 – Why delivery timelines slip despite perfect planning
38:46 – Discovery gaps, unknown dependencies, and integration risks
41:00 – Risk dashboards, checkpoints, and stakeholder alignment
45:30 – Leading globally distributed engineering teams
47:45 – Culture, empathy, and distributed leadership
50:11 – Why leaders must protect and enable teams
53:38 – AI, automation, and the next generation of engineering leaders
56:10 – Ethical risks and responsible AI usage
59:00 – Skill obsolescence and continuous learning
1:01:45 – Democratization of innovation and small high-impact teams
1:04:14 – Closing reflections and final advice

🌍 About Dawdle.live

Dawdle.live is a leadership and innovation platform helping 150,000+ senior leaders grow professionally and personally. We focus on meaningful leadership stories, not surface-level inspiration.

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