Build the practice, not just the team.
The posting says first FDE Manager and no existing playbook to follow. That is the hire: build the practice, staff it, coach it, review what it ships, and turn what the field learns into the templates the next engagement starts from. Fauzul co-founded in 2017 and grew it to 22 engineers. He managed people there for 5 years 8 months, starting two years before he had the title. Every engagement was delivery work embedded in someone else's business, from prototype to production, across 10 cities.
The practice, braided.
A practice is not a headcount number. It is separate hires, separate geographies and separate handovers that have to end up pulling in one direction. Fauzul has braided that rope twice: once at from two founders to twenty-two engineers, and once at , where a team was hired from zero to production and handed over after product-market fit.
Eight numbers, before the argument.
22
Engineers at ELOFrom two founders · 2017 to 20266
Direct reports before the titlePrincipal Staff SWE · from Dec 202010
Client geographiesDhaka to Quebec60+
Apps and websites shippedFor enterprise customers4×
Faster time to market75% cycle-time reduction · CI/CD15,000+
Seats at acquisitionJamahook · Zürich · acquired 20265
Client orgs into complianceGDPR · HIPAA · WCAG 22
Alumni leading in NorwayCoached into the rolesThe job, line by line.
Hire, develop and retain FDEs, run 1:1s, and invest in their career growth
He hired across engineering, design, QA and product at and coached the people he hired. Two now lead teams in Norway, one moved into UX design in Germany, one took up graduate study in Canada on his recommendation, and one is engineering in Sweden.
Staff and oversee engagements across the portfolio, balancing customers against team growth
At 22 engineers ran against concurrent client engagements in 10 cities, and deciding who went where was a weekly call. Putting the strongest person on the hardest account is easy once. Doing it for years without spending that person is the actual job.
Partner with account teams and Engagement Managers to qualify, scope and inform statements of work
Nine years of scoping engagements at , from first conversation through quote and into delivery. He took over mid-flight on a two-page handover from a London agency and moved 2,605 active warm leads across four platforms onto accounts the client owned.
Review the architectures and code your FDEs produce
He still writes the code. is his, alone, and it runs 1,937 tests. A manager who has stopped reading diffs cannot hold a bar on them.
Stay hands-on enough to lead technical discovery, prototype, and debug alongside the team
The Claude CMS at was his prototype before it became the client's publishing flow. was a live system he debugged into shape after a two-page handover. Discovery sessions opened every engagement and he ran them.
Build repeatable playbooks, starter repos, integration templates and a knowledge base
This is already how he works. A pattern he has explained twice becomes an agent skill. A task he repeats every session becomes a hook. The point is that the next engagement starts further along than the last one did.
Define team OKRs and the operating cadences that keep the team aligned
He moved to remote-first in 2020 and rebuilt the operating cadence around it, for a 50% productivity boost and a 100% satisfaction boost. Standups, retros and engagement reviews are what held that together across 10 cities.
Translate field insights into product improvements with Product and Engineering
At the client work fed the platform: and came out of auth and billing problems that kept recurring across engagements, and Elobooks was built on top of them.
Travel to customer sites 25 to 50%
Ten cities in seven countries already. London is the base he is moving to, and the 25% in-office cadence is settled.
What the posting asks.
2+ years of people management in a services, post-sales or FDE organisation, hiring, developing and retaining strong engineers.
5 years 8 months of continuous people management, all of it inside a studio delivering to external clients. Six direct reports as Principal Staff Software Engineer from Dec 2020, Software Engineering Manager from Dec 2022, CIO from Sept 2024 to Jul 2026. The engineers were embedded in the customer's business from prototype to production, which is the model this team runs.
Experience building organizations from 0->1, not just inheriting an existing one.
He co-founded in 2017 and grew it to 22 engineers, 52 people counting contract. He also built 's engineering team in Norway from nobody to a team shipping in production, then handed it over once the product found its market.
Direct experience with enterprise customers on technical implementations, including complex organisational dynamics.
10 client geographies. At he shipped Vipps payments and the core financing system. At Skytracks he engineered alongside the client's own CTO. was a Zurich client for 6 years, through 15,000+ seats and an acquisition by Loopcloud in 2026. arrived mid-flight from a London agency on a two-page handover, with the client's own accounts to untangle.
Executive presence, moving between strategic conversations and technical work.
CIO from Sept 2024 to Jul 2026, in the room when clients decided what to fund. He also ran the compliance conversations most engineers hand off: App Store and Play submissions for the US and Europe at , payments and refunds under GDPR and VAT at , and a patient-data migration at that held HIPAA the whole way through.
Strong communication, translating complexity for diverse audiences.
He taught 5 client organisations enough software law to make their own calls on it. He publishes French grammar explainers at A2 while still learning the language, which is the harder version of the same skill. Two engineers he coached now lead teams in Norway.
Genuine excitement about building something new and defining what great looks like for a team that does not yet exist.
was two people in 2017. 's engineering team was an empty org chart. is a 2026 build he started alone and has carried to 1,937 passing tests. Zero to one is the part of the work he keeps choosing.
10+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions architecture, or a technical customer-facing role.
About 9 years 9 months. UNDP from Oct 2015, then from Jun 2017 to today, which is 9 years 4 months. That is 3 months under the line.
What the row is checking for is covered. He founded a delivery organisation, managed engineers inside it for 5 years 8 months, and carried client implementations across 10 cities.
5 yrs 8 mos
Dec 2020 to Jul 2026, inside a client-delivery studio. The Engineering Manager title arrives two years into that, which is why counting from the title understates it.
The builds behind the claims.
ELO
A venture studio he co-founded and grew to 22 engineers, 52 people counting contract. Remote-first from 2020, which lifted productivity 50% and satisfaction 100%. The work was 0 to 1 delivery for other people's businesses across 10 cities.
Frontgo
He hired one backend and two full-stack engineers, shipped Vipps mobile payments and the core financing system, then handed the team to the client once the product found its market.
Global Jute Trading
A 25-year trading house wanted to edit its own catalogue. Now someone there describes the change in plain English, Claude opens a pull request, and CI/CD ships it. They stopped waiting on a developer to publish.
Wiregent
Nobody can tell which early-stage companies are real, and both sides carry that. An allocator with hundreds of applicants can properly check almost none of them. A founder with a working private build can prove it to no one, because there is no repo they can show and no public product. takes custody of the build, runs it in a sandbox the investor never sees into, grades it against 11 categories the allocator sets, and returns a verdict naming every piece of evidence it read and every category it could not score. 1,937 tests passing, and 41 planted sentinels probed with 0 leaked.
Six things worth the interview.
He founded the organisation, then ran it
started with two people in 2017 and reached 22 engineers. 's team went from nobody to shipping in production under him. The posting asks for 0 to 1 explicitly, and this is the part of his record that needs no explaining.
Managing since 2020
Six engineers reported to him as Principal Staff Software Engineer from Dec 2020, and that line ran unbroken through Engineering Manager and CIO to Jul 2026. 5 years 8 months of managing engineers embedded in a customer's business, from prototype to production.
Claude is already in a client's production stack
describes a change in plain English, Claude opens the pull request, CI/CD ships it. A 25-year trading house updates its own catalogue now without waiting on a developer.
Repeat work becomes a playbook
He turns recurring workflows into agent skills, hooks and harnesses so the next build costs less than the last. The posting asks for exactly this, framed as starter repos and an internal knowledge base.
Compliance handled as delivery
HIPAA at including the data migration, GDPR and VAT at , App Store and Play review for two markets at , audit logging at . Five client organisations came out able to make these calls themselves.
London is settled
A sister already lives there and the city arrived through in 2024. The route is a company-sponsored Skilled Worker visa, and he is ready for the 25% office cadence and the travel.
Ten cities, nine years.
Jamahook
Six years as the client's technical partner. 15,000+ seats, Stripe checkout, GDPR and VAT. Acquired by Loopcloud in 2026.
DhakaEKAGRA
A HIPAA clinical platform for wound care, diabetes and nephrology. 64 doctors, 6,000 patients, 7 centres.
ELO productAnygum
An API marketplace with Auth0, org and instance level access control, and multi-tenancy. Elobooks was built on it.
CaliforniaOptimo
A connected-car service-automation testing framework for Hyundai HATA, including voice-assistant simulation.
Dubai and LondonOlympic Combat
Taken over mid-flight on a two-page handover. 2,605 active warm leads moved across four platforms onto accounts the client owned.
DhakaBSMMU
Research-grade patient records for the paediatric nephrology department at Bangladesh's largest public medical university. Still in use.
What he reaches for.
Leading delivery
- Hiring and coaching
- 1-on-1s
- Scoping and statements of work
- Stakeholder alignment
- Executive communication
- Remote-first teams
Building with Claude
- Claude Code
- Agent Skills
- Hooks and tools
- MCP
- Prompt caching
- Context and cost engineering
- Anthropic SDK
Shipping the product
- TypeScript
- React 19
- Node and Express
- Python
- PostgreSQL and Prisma
- Docker
- GitHub Actions
Keeping it legal
- HIPAA
- GDPR and VAT
- Auth0 and RBAC
- Multi-tenancy
- Audit logging
- App Store and Play review
Claude Certified Architect, Foundations
The first ninety days.
Sit inside the delivery, not above it
Take two live customer engagements as an IC. A manager who has not felt where the practice breaks will design a process for the wrong failure.
A hiring bar written down and calibrated
The scorecard, the work-sample, and two calibrated interviewers besides himself. Hiring fast without this is how a practice acquires its first regret.
Golden traces as a team standard
The honest ramp. Eval-design thinking exists in his own builds; standing it up as a scorecard the team runs against every deployment is a management job more than a research one.
Push on these.
You are 3 months short of the 10 years. Why should that not decide this?
It might, and that is the panel's call. The row is checking whether someone has carried technical work in front of customers long enough to lead other people doing it. All 9 years 4 months at were client-facing, across 10 cities, and 5 years 8 months of that had engineers reporting to him.
ELO is a studio in Dhaka. Does that scale to Anthropic's enterprise customers?
The clients were not in Dhaka. Zurich for 6 years through an acquisition, Norway through a Vipps integration and a team handover, Canada alongside a client CTO, plus London, Dubai, California, New York and Quebec. The team was remote-first from 2020. What is new here is the size of the accounts and the speed Anthropic moves at.
You left the operating role at ELO in Aug 2026. Why take a management seat now?
He stepped out to build alone, and building it alone answered the question. He is better at growing the people who do the work than at being the only one doing it. proved he can still ship. This seat is the other half.
The posting asks for retaining strong engineers. Your best coaching story is people leaving.
Both are true and they are the same story. ran nine years and grew to 22 engineers, so people stayed. The ones who left went up: two lead teams in Norway, one into UX design in Germany, one into graduate study in Canada, one engineering in Sweden. Retention in a practice is making year three more interesting than year one, and that comes down to which engagement someone gets next.
What he does when nobody is paying him to.
Learning French in public
A 994-day Duolingo streak and counting, at A2. He publishes grammar explainers on YouTube and Instagram while still learning the language, which is a good test of whether you can teach something you have not mastered.
Hackathons, finished ones
, an agentic news-to-audio briefing network, built for Milan AI Week. , six country agents evaluating visa eligibility in parallel, for the Google and Kaggle intensive. reached a 47% intro reply rate against a 2.4% average.
Running agents on a loop
Every build adds hooks, skills or plugins aimed at lower spend and faster delivery. This site's chat runs a Gemma 4 E2B model fully inside the visitor's browser, so no prompt ever leaves the device.
Coaching people out of his own team
Two alumni lead teams in Norway. One moved into UX design in Germany. One took up graduate study in Canada on his recommendation. One is engineering in Sweden. Two lead at major Bangladeshi firms.
London
London was settled before the job search was. A sister already lives there, the city itself came first through Olympic Combat in 2024, and the European record runs alongside it, from six years with a Zürich client through to its acquisition to Vipps shipped in Norway. The competition is the appeal: London is Europe's hub, where frontier AI is both built and used, and one seat meets more business domains in a year than anywhere else. The route is a company-sponsored Skilled Worker visa.
Ready when you are.
Interview him for the practice-building half of the seat. Building an organisation from 0 to 1 is the requirement most candidates cannot answer, and his answer is ELO from two founders to 22 engineers, plus Frontgo's team stood up and handed over. The application's own screening question, engineers embedded with customers from prototype to production, is a yes with nine years behind it. Push on the tenure row and on formal evals.