Every engineer will eventually reach a point where they understand that their most significant contribution comes from helping others build rather than building themselves.
During my time leading the frontend team at Brass Technologies, I encountered this transition because the fast-growing digital banking platform needed more than just technical expertise. It required a fundamental reorientation—from optimising components to empowering people, from debugging Reactjs to navigating team dynamics, and from solving problems alone to creating environments where solutions emerge collectively.
The transition from senior engineer to engineering manager is often misunderstood as a promotion that simply trades hands-on coding for meetings and spreadsheets. This is not entirely true. Engineering management stands as an independent field which requires engineers to maintain their technical expertise while developing skills in leadership, communication, as well as strategy.
At Brass, our task involved developing financial solutions for Nigerian SMES that needed access to underserved services. A poorly managed team would have resulted in delayed features, which business owners needed to process payroll and access credit. Early on, I made the common mistake of clinging to my old role—jumping into pull requests to “fix” code rather than guiding engineers through thoughtful feedback.
The result?
A combination of slow decision processes and employees who avoided taking responsibility for decisions. It took me several months to understand that great leadership meant establishing an environment where each engineer was empowered to deliver their finest work.
The most important lesson happened during a stressful product launch where our team faced challenges in deciding the architecture of a new merchant dashboard. When acting as an individual contributor, I would have developed a solution before executing it.
My managerial role, however, required enabling the team rather than imposing decisions. This, I was able to achieve by asking questions to understand multiple perspectives and giving junior engineers room to share their thoughts. For this project,
I also found myself weighing the impact of technical debt against business deadlines.
Leadership as an engineering manager required more than technical guidance. At Brass, it was important for our frontend engineers to gain both product intuition and React expertise because we built software systems for business owners who were new to digital banking experiences.
To achieve this, I organised sessions where product designers and managers could walk engineers through product features and design rationale. These sessions ultimately helped engineers change and improve their approach to development. In one instance that I am particularly proud of, an engineer began recommending accessibility solutions after observing the challenges users with visual disabilities experienced.
In all of this, I learned one thing – leaders who want a product thinking team simply cannot rely on chance but, instead, need to deliberately expand developer perspectives beyond IDE boundaries.
Read also: Google’s Gemini AI-coding assistant is now free for Nigerian developers
Another hard-won insight from managing distributed teams across Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem is that psychological safety sometimes outweighs technical skill in high-performing teams. Our team experienced a significant decline in velocity during a challenging quarter because engineers were too worried about repercussions from their honest mistakes.
As a result, I started conducting blameless postmortems while implementing “failure spotlights” where we shared stories about mistakes and recoveries from across the organisation.
This also included my own mistakes in early architectural decisions. By doing so, I was able to create a more relaxed working environment, invariably helping engineers detect potential risks sooner and collaborating to fix problems when they arose.
Engineers who want to make the transition to management should understand three essential principles, which the Brass experience demonstrates. First, success should be measured through team development rather than individual GitHub contributions.
Watching a former intern architect a critical checkout flow independently brings greater satisfaction than any personal coding achievements. The second principle involves protecting time for technical engagement—whether through architecture reviews or hands-on spikes—without slipping back into individual contributor mode.
Finally, recognise that leadership in African tech carries unique responsibilities: our rapidly evolving ecosystems need managers who can nurture homegrown talent while competing globally.
The fundamental achievement of engineering leadership involves creating capable builders rather than constructing systems.
As Nigeria’s tech sector develops, the difference between good and great companies won’t be their technical stacks, but their ability to cultivate leaders who understand that true scale comes from multiplying talent, and not just managing tasks.
Frontend engineers who find themselves at this crossroads should embrace technology to build environments that will support the growth of future African fintech innovation.
About the Author
Oluwadamilola Babalola is a seasoned Senior Frontend Engineer with over 3 years of experience in software development, specialising in scalable and user-friendly frontend applications. He has successfully managed engineering teams and multiple projects, focusing on enhancing technical processes.
His expertise includes HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Reactjs, with a commitment to continuous improvement and innovation in frontend engineering, driving user engagement in digital products.
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