From Technical Expert to People Leader
Real talk from engineers and IT leaders who’ve done it, and the practical steps to help you decide if it’s right for you.
There’s a version of this conversation that happens in nearly every tech team, eventually. A strong engineer, a talented systems administrator, a high-performing developer; someone doing great work, building credibility, and one day wondering: Is management the next step?
It’s a question that comes with a lot of noise. Some people assume it’s the natural progression. Others feel pressured into it. And many talented technical professionals hold back, uncertain whether they’re ready, or whether it’s even what they really want.
As a Career Strategist who has worked extensively with professionals in technology, I wanted to get past the generic advice and go directly to people who have lived this transition. I spoke with four experienced IT leaders, all of whom began their careers in hands-on technical roles before moving into management, and asked them the questions that actually matter.
What follows is what they told me, combined with research on what the transition really demands, and practical guidance on how to approach it with intention.
The Leadership Gap in Tech Is Real, and It Creates Opportunity
Before we get into the how, it’s worth acknowledging the why this matters, particularly for women in tech.
According to Grant Thornton’s 2024 Women in Business report, women hold just 32% of senior management positions across the global tech sector, below the cross-industry average of 33.5%. But zoom in on the most senior technical roles specifically — CIOs, CTOs, and IT Directors — and the picture is starker: the Nash Squared Digital Leadership Report 2023 found that only 14% of those positions were held by women, a figure that has barely moved in years.¹
Those numbers aren’t just a diversity statistic. They represent a gap in perspective, in decision-making, and in the kind of leadership that high-performing technical teams need. If you’re a woman in a technical role considering management, you’re not just making a career move; you’re stepping into a space that genuinely needs more of what you bring.
First, the Question That Actually Matters
Before exploring how to move into management, there’s a more important question to sit with: Do you actually want to?
Management is not a promotion in the traditional sense. It’s a different job. It requires a fundamentally different orientation, away from technical execution and toward enabling others to execute well. And for many people, that shift is more demanding than they anticipated.
Ronan Murray, Infrastructure Manager, who moved through JP Morgan and IBM before taking on people management at LeasePlan Information Services, reflects on what drew him there: “I’ve always gotten the most satisfaction from delivering something new or improving how things are done. People management was a completely new challenge, but even more rewarding. Today, the most rewarding part of the job is seeing engineers and managers develop and grow.”
Not everyone finds that shift equally natural. Olivier Beyssac, Site Reliability Manager at Google, is candid about how different the reality was from his expectation: “I understood it would be a different job, but I didn’t think it would be such a radical difference. As a manager, the people aspect is predominant, combined with team dynamics. Your teammates expect you to take the right decisions on projects, while your reports need you to take the right decisions about them.”
And Gavin Hand, Head of IT Infrastructure, offers a perspective that gets to the heart of the mindset shift required: “Management requires a greater level of acceptance in order to succeed — acceptance of criticism, constraints, responsibility for others’ actions, even if this doesn’t sit well with you. The sooner your mindset changes, the better.”
These are not small shifts. They are identity shifts.
Harvard Business Review’s leadership research describes this well: moving into management for the first time requires genuine identity work, getting clear on who you want to be as a leader, not just what tasks you’re taking on. In a 2023 HBR Women at Work episode on becoming a first-time manager, leadership coach Jen Dary puts it directly: “There is identity work to do, which is: who do I want to be and what is my intention?”
Ask yourself honestly:
Do I get energy from developing others, or does it drain me?
Am I comfortable with outcomes I don’t directly control?
Can I find satisfaction in team achievement rather than personal execution?
Am I ready to take responsibility when things go wrong, even when I didn’t cause them?
There are no wrong answers. Some exceptional technical professionals find their deepest satisfaction staying in deep expertise. Others find management unlocks an entirely new dimension of impact. Clarity here will serve you more than any qualification.
What Actually Changes: The Skills That Matter Most
Across every conversation I had, one theme was consistent: technical expertise gets you to the door, but it’s your human skills that determine whether you thrive once you’re inside.
This aligns with a growing body of evidence. McKinsey’s research on talent management highlights how social and emotional skills — empathy, communication, adaptability, leadership — are increasingly critical as organisations navigate change. The same research notes that these capabilities remain persistently underdeveloped, precisely because they’re harder to measure and build than technical competencies.
In practical terms, what does this mean for a technical professional stepping into management?
1. Delegation is a skill, not a hand-off.
One of the most consistent pieces of feedback from the leaders I spoke with was how profound the shift from doing to trusting others to do really is. As our anonymous female IT Director put it: “A manager needs to be able to delegate, depend, and trust others to do the work. That is the most fundamental change, the shift from doing a task and knowing when it is completed, to handing that responsibility to a team member.”
This isn’t just an operational change. It requires genuine confidence in your team and a willingness to accept that things may be done differently from how you would do them, and that different doesn’t mean wrong.
2. Communication becomes your primary technical skill.
In a technical role, precision matters in code and systems. In a management role, precision matters most in how you communicate expectations, feedback, and direction. Ronan Murray describes it as needing “strong communication skills to translate what you need into something others completely understand and can deliver.”
Research from Harvard Business Review (2024) reinforces this, noting that a manager's impact on their team depends heavily on interpersonal capabilities that most first-time managers haven’t needed to develop before, including clear communication, empathy, and the ability to invest in others’ careers.
3. People are the work, not an interruption to it.
This sounds obvious, stated plainly, but it represents one of the biggest mental adjustments for technical professionals. The shift means staying selectively hands-on, not to hold on to the old role, but to serve the team. As our anonymous IT Director notes, staying technically engaged is most valuable “when it is required to impart skills to a team or team member,” a subtle but important distinction between doing the work and developing the people doing it.
Olivier Beyssac captures the broader balance well: “Switching to management at Google doesn’t mean that you stop being technical. It can be quite hard to mix people management and technical projects, but I don’t think you can manage an effective team in tech if your engineers don’t think your technical background is legitimate.”
The goal is not to abandon your technical identity. It’s to build a new one alongside it.
It’s worth noting that when asked about his top three daily skills, Beyssac named coaching, negotiation, and industry experience, notably different from the communication and delegation cited by others. It’s a useful reminder that management in tech isn’t one-size-fits-all. The blend of skills you develop will be shaped by your context, your team, and your own strengths as much as any rulebook.
Practical Steps: How to Move Towards Management with Intention
If you’ve read this far and the move still appeals to you, here’s where to start, without waiting for a formal opportunity to land in your lap.
Build your soft skills visibly.
Soft skills are the primary criteria when organisations promote into management. But many technical professionals develop them informally, without ever making them visible. Update your LinkedIn profile, your CV, and your professional presence to articulate not just your technical competencies but also your interpersonal ones: time management, mentoring, conflict navigation, team collaboration, communication, and stakeholder management.
Our anonymous IT Director is clear on why this matters in practice: “Communication is key; managing a team requires a manager to lead by giving good instruction, and to be a good listener. Organisation is essential for balancing needs from different people: your team, peers, senior management, internal and external customers. And delegation requires the confidence to trust others to do the work.”
Volunteer for team lead and mentoring opportunities now.
You don’t need a manager title to build management experience. Volunteer to lead projects, act as an escalation point for junior colleagues, or take on mentoring responsibilities. These experiences become both evidence and practice.
A useful framing from Ronan Murray: “Project management is a great interim step, you can work on technical projects and get people experience without having to formally manage people.”
Invest in structured learning.
Our anonymous IT Director completed a Supervisory Management course with the Irish Management Institute (IMI) and describes its impact clearly: “It helped put a lot of things into perspective. It is not instinctive; it is a skill which needs to be learned.” Exploring leadership, management, or HR development programmes, whether through your organisation or independently, gives you both a framework and a confidence boost that can be genuinely transformative.
Consider transition roles.
Not every move from technical to management has to be immediate. Intermediary roles, such as project manager, tech lead, team lead, and product owner, allow you to develop the people-facing muscles gradually, while still staying connected to the technical work you’re good at.
One Thing Worth Remembering
Management is not a more important job than deep technical expertise. It’s a different one. Both matter enormously. The most effective technical organisations need both great individual contributors and great people leaders, and the best managers are usually the ones who choose it, rather than the ones who feel they have no other way to progress.
Ronan Murray puts it simply, and it’s the best note to leave on: “Whatever you do, treat people with respect and the way you would like to be treated. People are a company’s greatest resource; look after them.”
If this is the direction you’re drawn toward, the path is more navigable than it looks from a distance. It starts with self-awareness, builds through small visible steps, and develops through genuine investment in the skills that enable others to thrive.
The technical skills that brought you here are a foundation, not a limitation. What comes next is up to you.
Contributors
This piece draws on original interviews conducted with the following professionals:
References
Grant Thornton (2024). Women in Tech: A Pathway to Gender Balance in Top Tech Roles. Note: the Grant Thornton figure (32%) measures senior management broadly across all functions within mid-market tech firms globally. (This is a wide net: it includes heads of department, directors, VPs, and senior managers across all functions within tech companies: HR, finance, operations, not just technical roles). The Nash Squared figure (14%) measures digital/technology leadership specifically, CIOs, CTOs, IT Directors, and heads of technology function. The two figures are complementary, not contradictory. https://www.grantthornton.global/en/insights/women-in-business/women-in-tech-a-pathway-to-gender-balance-in-top-tech-roles/
Nash Squared (2023). Digital Leadership Report 2023. Referenced via AIPRM (2024). https://www.aiprm.com/women-in-tech-statistics/
Harvard Business Review / HBR On Leadership Podcast (2023). How to Embrace Your New Identity as a Manager. https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/12/how-to-embrace-your-new-identity-as-a-manager
Penney, C. (2024). New Managers: You Don’t Need to Know It All. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2024/12/new-managers-you-dont-need-to-know-it-all
McKinsey & Company (2023). What Is Talent Management? https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-talent-management
