Available for new opportunities

Daniel Suszczynski

> Engineering Leader | Building with AI-Assisted Development | Scaling Teams

Driving tech transformation, business impact & high-performing engineering organizations for 20 years.

Now combining deep leadership experience with hands-on AI-assisted development to shape how engineering teams build software in the AI era.

Get in touch View experience
Daniel Suszczynski
20+
Years Experience
60+
Team Size Led

// About Me

Engineering Leader Who Still Builds

I combine 20 years of engineering leadership with a hands-on approach to AI-assisted development. I believe the most effective engineering leaders understand the tools their teams use, and today that means working directly with AI to write, review, and ship code.

I have built and scaled engineering organizations from small teams to 60+ engineers across fintech and SaaS. I have driven platform transformations, modernized legacy systems, and introduced domain-driven design, event-driven architectures, and data-driven decision making. At smava, I led teams that built a matching engine and bank integrations powering one of Germany's largest lending platforms.

Right now, I am actively building with AI-assisted development, shipping a full-stack product from scratch to validate how AI changes the way we build software. This is not theoretical. It is practical, daily work that shapes how I think about team structure, developer productivity, and what engineering organizations will look like in the next 2-3 years.

Engineering Strategy & Execution
Defining technology direction and turning it into reliable, predictable delivery.
Scaling Teams & Organizations
Growing engineering organizations from small teams to 60+ engineers while improving quality and velocity.
Architecture & System Design
Designing domain-oriented, event-driven architectures using DDD, C4 models, and fitness functions.
Business Alignment & Domain Ownership
Aligning teams to business domains with clear ownership, OKRs, and accountability for outcomes.
Developer Experience & Platform Enablement
Reducing friction through paved paths, self-service infrastructure, and DORA & SPACE-driven improvements.
Delivery Quality & Reliability
Enabling autonomous teams to deliver and operate reliably through CI/CD, testing, and clear operational ownership.

// Career Journey

Professional Experience

Independent · Building with AI

Berlin, Germany (EU-wide available)

Engineering Leader & AI-Assisted Developer

Building a full-stack e-commerce product using AI-assisted development. Deliberately returning to hands-on engineering after years in leadership to understand first-hand how AI is changing software development workflows and team dynamics.

Exploring senior engineering leadership roles where hands-on AI experience and organizational scaling expertise intersect. Open to advisory conversations on AI-augmented engineering teams.

  • AI-Assisted Development
  • Full-Stack Product
  • AI-Augmented Workflows
  • Engineering Strategy
  • Organizational Design
  • Scaling

FinCompare

Berlin, Germany

Head of Engineering

· Reporting to CEO/COO

Led the transformation of the technology organization, introducing modern operating models (Team Topologies, Domain-Driven Design, OKRs) and establishing a strong engineering culture focused on ownership and outcomes.

Built and led cross-functional teams across product engineering, platform, and cloud infrastructure, scaling the organization while improving delivery predictability, quality, and developer experience.

Drove the migration from a monolithic architecture toward domain-oriented, event-driven services and modern cloud-native platforms, while contributing to post-merger integration, platform unification, and the introduction of data-driven decision making via a central data warehouse.

  • Engineering Leadership
  • Technology Strategy
  • Organizational Design
  • Platform Engineering
  • Cloud Infrastructure
  • Event-Driven Architecture
  • Legacy Modernization
  • Team Topologies
  • DDD
  • OKRs
  • Cross-Functional Teams
  • Developer Experience
  • Fintech

smava

Berlin, Germany

Engineering Leadership (Engineering Manager → Director / Group Lead)

· Reporting to CTO

Led multiple cross-functional teams within the core domain (Banking & Matching), driving the introduction of Domain-Driven Design and enabling full domain ownership. Built and scaled engineering teams, modernized a complex monolithic platform into domain-oriented services, and ensured stable delivery in a highly regulated fintech environment.

Played a key role in post-merger integration, contributing to platform unification and cloud migration initiatives. Partnered closely with data science teams to integrate machine learning into products and customer flows.

  • Engineering Leadership
  • DDD
  • Microservices
  • Event-Driven Architecture
  • Platform Modernization
  • Legacy Modernization
  • Cloud Migration
  • Post-Merger Integration
  • Machine Learning Integration
  • Fintech
  • Cross-Functional Teams
  • Agile

Early Career – Software Engineering Foundations

Germany / Poland

Software Engineer | Multiple companies

Built strong foundations in backend engineering, distributed systems, and product development. Worked across different technology stacks and domains, gaining hands-on experience in designing, building, and operating production systems.

  • Full Stack Development
  • Backend Development
  • System Design
  • Databases
  • APIs
  • Testing
  • DevOps Basics

// Expertise

Skills & Technologies

Engineering Leadership & Organizational Design

  • Engineering Leadership
  • Transformational Leadership
  • Servant Leadership
  • Organizational Design
  • Scaling Engineering Teams
  • High-Performance Teams
  • Talent Development

AI-Assisted Development & Engineering with AI

  • AI-Assisted Development
  • Generative AI
  • LLM Integration
  • Agentic Architecture
  • AI Adoption Strategy
  • AI-Augmented Team Enablement
  • Machine Learning in Products
  • Data-Driven Decision Making

Technology & Platform Strategy

  • Technology Strategy
  • Platform Strategy
  • Platform Engineering
  • Architecture Vision
  • Technical Roadmapping
  • Build vs Buy Decisions
  • Developer Experience

Architecture & System Design

  • Domain-Driven Design
  • Event Storming
  • Microservices Architecture
  • Event-Driven Architecture
  • Distributed Systems
  • API Design
  • Legacy Modernization
  • Monolith to Microservices

Delivery, Execution & Metrics

  • OKRs
  • Agile
  • Scrum
  • Kanban
  • Outcome-Oriented Delivery
  • Lean Product Development
  • A/B Testing
  • Prototyping
  • MVP
  • CI/CD
  • DORA Metrics
  • SPACE Framework

Cloud, Reliability & Security

  • AWS
  • Cloud Migration
  • DevOps
  • Incident Management
  • Cloud Infrastructure
  • Observability
  • Reliability Engineering
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • ISO 27001
  • ISMS

// Insights

Latest Articles

February 2026

How an Overheard Conversation Led Me to Redesign a Company's Core Architecture

Sometimes the most impactful engineering work starts not with a ticket, but with a question nobody thought to ask.

engineering leadershiparchitecture redesignmicroservices
January 2026

When the Org Chart Becomes the Obstacle: Leading a High-Stakes Platform Transformation

There's a moment in every complex technical initiative when you realize the technology isn't the hard part.

engineering leadershipplatform transformationcross-functional collaboration
View all articles

// Real-world Solutions

Case Studies

Organizational Design

Scaling Engineering Organizations for Sustainable Growth

A practical leadership blueprint for transforming fragmented delivery into autonomous, outcome-driven domains at scale.
View all case studies

// Get in Touch

Let's Build Something Great

I'm looking for engineering leadership roles where I can combine organizational scaling experience with hands-on AI-assisted development. Also open to advisory conversations on building AI-augmented engineering teams.

Email
daniel@suszczynski.dev
→
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/suszczynski
→
GitHub
AI-Assisted Development Projects
→

Engineering Leader Who Builds with AI

Looking for roles where leadership experience meets hands-on AI-assisted development. Open to advisory conversations on AI-augmented teams.

20 years in fintech and SaaS, from scaling organizations to 60+ engineers to shipping code with AI today. I bring both the strategic perspective and the practical experience.

Location: Berlin, Germany
Languages: English (fluent), German (working), Polish (native)