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Adrian Diente
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I build engineering teams, grow managers and get delivery moving.

For 9 years I've led engineering teams in startups and high-growth scale-ups, most recently leading Engineering Managers across clinical and commerce teams in digital health. I'm at my best where something isn't working yet, and I leave behind practices that run without me.

I started as a developer, so I understand the work. My value is in the people, structure and clarity that let engineers do their best work.

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Key outcomes

2 days → 30 min

Effort per marketing promotion change

Shopify e-commerce implementation delivered across marketing, product, clinical and change teams, with fewer errors.

8

Teams led

Through 8 Engineering Managers, across clinical and commerce in digital health.

0

Production hotfixes

Across two teams I led, the only teams among roughly 150 engineers to avoid hotfixing into production.

3 in a year

Engineers promoted to senior

Three people I managed, at a scale-up finding its product-market fit.

How I lead

Clear guardrails, high autonomy

I set clear decision boundaries, then let teams change how they work without waiting for sign-off. Engineering Managers take turns running the EM leadership meeting, so ownership is practised, not just promised.

One front door for work

Delivery stalls when requests reach engineers through side channels like direct messages. I give the team one front door for new work, so planned work stays protected and big projects can run as business as usual.

Growth that's fair and visible

Career ladders, playbooks and a growth and performance framework make progression clear. I coach people into leadership and build the habits (like keeping a record of wins) that help them make their own case.

Warm, with standards

I coach first and set clear expectations. When something still isn't working, I act on it rather than let it drift, with HR as a partner, and keep it respectful.

Experience

— Present Brisbane, QLD

Group Engineering Manager

Health Innovation Labs, part of Montu Group

Montu Group is a digital health company: telehealth, prescriptions and pharmacy fulfilment.

  • Led 3 teams covering the patient sign-up and retention experience, the shared account, identity and billing platform, and clinical workflow tools for doctors prescribing treatment.
  • Led the rollout of an AI assistant (Claude) across the organisation: wrote the proposal, ran the privacy and security reviews and delegated model evaluation and platform design to Tech Leads.
  • Designed and facilitated the Engineering Manager offsite, including a workshop on writing business cases. Managers have since used it to build cases for team growth and an internal career move.
  • Rotated managers through running the leadership meeting and set clear decision guardrails, so they can change how their teams work without waiting for sign-off.
— Brisbane, QLD

Group Engineering Manager

Montu

  • Led 8 Engineering Managers across the clinical platform (patient records, scheduling, consultations, prescriptions) and commerce and fulfilment (customer accounts, orders, pharmacy onboarding, pharmacy stock).
  • Uplifted manager capability through individual development plans and coaching, strengthening their working relationships with product, delivery and HR.
  • Shifted managers to own their stakeholder relationships directly, building autonomy and self-organising teams.
  • Coached an individual contributor into an Engineering Manager over 9 months. They won the role in a competitive process open to external candidates.
  • Authored and maintained the Engineering Growth & Performance Framework used across the engineering organisation.
  • Partnered with HR as the escalation point for complex people matters, and facilitated the manager leadership offsite with 100% favourable feedback.
— Brisbane, QLD

Engineering Manager

Montu

  • Delivered a Shopify e-commerce implementation across marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), product, delivery, change management, the clinical team (so nurses and support staff were kept informed of each change) and engineering. Effort per marketing promotion change fell from around 2 days to under 30 minutes, with fewer errors. Run day to day by an Engineering Manager I was coaching.
  • Stopped ad hoc requests going straight to engineers by routing them through the delivery manager and me, so sprint work was no longer interrupted.
  • Built a business case that led to the team being redeployed onto the Shopify implementation.
  • Built career ladders for engineers, Engineering Managers and digital producers, wrote the Engineering Manager playbook and co-created the internal Engineering Manager development program, all adopted across the organisation.
  • Designed a mentoring system pairing engineers for peer learning, and coached two engineers from mid-level to senior.
  • Joined the interview panel for a new Ireland-based engineering team, alongside other managers, Tech Leads and senior developers, running behavioural interviews with talent acquisition.
— Sydney, AU (Remote)

Engineering Manager

Reejig

A workforce intelligence software scale-up.

  • Supported a team of 15 engineers and 5 contractors.
  • Triaged urgent customer issues with Customer Success and negotiated sprint adjustments to meet service-level agreements (SLAs).
  • Established engineering processes through documentation and guild meetings, and designed objectives and key results (OKRs) over two quarters to align team effort with company goals.
  • Built the engineering career ladder (still in use after I left). Three direct reports were promoted to senior roles within a year.
Show earlier experience (2014 — 2022)
—

Engineering Manager

Degreed

A learning and upskilling platform.

Supported a team of 7 engineers and led the team through the AngularJS 1.6 to Angular 10 upgrade, finishing months ahead of the December 2021 deadline. Set a culture from day one where hard conversations aren't avoided, and 1:1s and career conversations led to two internal promotions.

—

Tech Lead / Interim Engineering Director

Degreed

Interim Engineering Director for 4 months, leading 12 people. Maintained a zero-hotfix record across two Australian teams, the only teams among roughly 150 engineers not to hotfix into production during that period.

—

Senior Frontend Developer, Squad Leader, then Engineering Manager

Adepto

Supported 5 reports as an Engineering Manager, started "Dev Friday" (a weekly day for exploration and creative problem-solving), built UI component libraries and led the migration from AngularJS to ReactJS before the company was acquired by Degreed.

—

Senior Developer

Compare the Market and University of Queensland

Managed deployments, acted as interim team lead, mentored junior developers and built core application features.

What I do well

People and organisation

  • Engineering management: Leading managers, coaching and performance conversations.
  • Org design: Balanced frontend and backend teams, and steadying teams through change.
  • Career development: Career ladders, manager playbooks and mentoring.
  • Hiring: Behavioural interviewing, and partnering with talent acquisition to build teams.

Delivery and ways of working

  • Delivery: Agile methodologies, OKRs, SLAs and customer issue triage.
  • Stakeholders and business cases: Working with product, delivery and HR, and using utilisation data to make business cases that change how teams are deployed.
  • Technical foundation: Former hands-on developer who led a front-end migration from AngularJS to React and built shared UI component libraries.
  • Adopting AI sensibly: Privacy and security review, and a clear seat policy.

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