Succeeding as an Engineering Lead at Wise Platform
Kostas Stamatoukos, Senior Director of Engineering for Wise Platform in Singapore, shares the key qualities that define effective engineering leadership 🚀
“The best engineers stay curious, asking how we could make something 10× better, not just 10x cleaner.”
Kostas Stamatoukos (He/Him)
Senior Director of Engineering for Wise Platform
Tell us about your role at Wise
I’ve spent over a decade at Wise and I've had the opportunity to build products, grow teams, and learn from some of the best engineering leads I know. Currently, I lead the engineering teams for Wise Platform, which stands as our fastest-growing area in Wise.
To power that growth, we need strong teams and engineering leads play one of the most critical roles in making that happen. Find out more below on what I’ve learned about leading a team ⬇️
About Wise Platform
At Wise Platform, we’re fuelling Wise’s mission to make international money movement instant, convenient, transparent, and eventually free for everyone, everywhere..
We power international payments for some of the world’s largest banks, financial institutions, and online platforms, embedding Wise’s infrastructure directly into their products so they can offer leading international transfers to their customers.
Customer obsession and accountability
Success begins with a deep obsession for the customer and full accountability for the products we build, beyond just the technical aspects. At Wise, it’s essential to care about whether our solutions solve real-world problems for partners and customers, just as much as code quality or system design. Leads don't just follow a roadmap; they're integral in shaping the direction and purpose of their teams. This starts with staying close to customers, understanding their operations, and feeling their pain points to make informed decisions about what to build next.
Stay product-driven, not project-driven
We always aim to remain product-driven, developing capabilities that make sense as part of the broader product, ensuring reusability across various partners. Every integration should strengthen the product, not fragment it.
Be involved in the “why” and “what,” not just the “how”
Engineering leads should go beyond delivery - they need to understand and help to shape the why and what, not just the how. A great test of leadership is whether you could lead effectively without a product manager, maintaining the focus on the right outcomes based on your understanding of the customer and the problems they face.
Stay hands-on and care about your craft
Our leads remain actively involved in building products. It's not just about supporting and leading your team, it’s about ensuring quality, design clarity and product reliability. Being ready to review code, debug, or sketch with the team keeps your judgment sharp and your team inspired.
Empower your team to own problems and solve them
Embracing ownership and accountability is key at Wise. As a lead, your role is to empower your team to take charge of key initiatives. This approach fosters growth, learning, and motivation, building a resilient team capable of delivering complex work.
Ultimately, you’re not just leading projects — you’re empowering the next generation of leads and staff engineers at Wise.
Get it done
We value leads who can get things done - it sounds simple, but it’s rare. You need to combine urgency with a sharp focus and help unlock blockers for your team, make trade-offs and deliver results without waiting for perfect conditions.
Our partners move fast. If we don’t solve their problem, someone else will. The best leads maintain momentum and quality simultaneously.
Influence beyond your team
At Wise Platform, we're leveraging the robust infrastructure we’ve built over the last 14 years. To accelerate our progress, it's essential to influence teams across Wise. By inspiring those who manage core aspects of our product to address partner challenges, we can move ten times faster. Exceptional leads build strong cross-team relationships and align everyone towards a shared goal.
Move fast, but build for the future
We’re building a network for the world’s money.. So, reliability is non-negotiable - we move with urgency, but we also build with the future in mind, designing systems that can handle the next billion transactions.
Stay curious and creative
The best engineers stay curious, asking how we could make something 10× better, not just 10x cleaner.
Innovation often comes from re-examining what everyone else has already accepted as good enough.
Final remarks
Being an Engineering Lead at Wise Platform isn’t about managing projects or reporting metrics. It’s about owning a product end-to-end, leading a team that’s solving real problems for global enterprises, and doing it with craft, urgency, and curiosity.
We’re building the network for the world’s money, and we want to do it in a way that will work for generations to come.
If you’re someone who’s curious, accountable, and ready to build at scale, we’d love to have you on the journey with us.
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