Problem
4Industry builds a mobile, highly customisable manufacturing platform that helps operators and machines reach world-class manufacturing. The company had a product and a small team, but no enterprise customers yet. To win and serve them, engineering had to grow from five people into a department, without losing speed or quality.
Approach
As team lead, then Head of Engineering:
- Hiring on values. I set up a full recruitment programme that hired on the company’s core values, and hired most of the department myself.
- Onboarding. I wrote an onboarding programme of my own that got new engineers up to speed within their first 90 days.
- A release rhythm. There was no fixed release cadence. I put one in place, aligned with ServiceNow’s best practices, and redesigned the development life cycle from planning and design to testing and support.
- Roadmap and budget. I set the technical roadmap together with product, owned the budget and planned the growth in FTE.
Result
- The team grew from 5 to 30 people across iOS, Android, ServiceNow, QA and UI design, with little to no regretted attrition.
- The product went from zero to five enterprise customers.
After the acquisition
In 2024 ServiceNow acquired 4Industry. As Engineering Manager I led the complete re-platforming of the product, over two years:
- We rebuilt the product in the ServiceNow structure, as part of its Industrial Connected Workforce solution, and moved it onto ServiceNow’s enterprise framework.
- I drove the architectural, performance and technical decisions, and used the rebuild to apply what we had learned at 4Industry.
- My leadership scope grew from one to three engineering teams.
Part of Fractional CTO.