About

Marian Kamenistak

Mentor to CTOs, VPs, and the engineering leaders who report to them. 3,662 sessions across 17 countries. Based in Prague, working across Europe and North America.

When the fit is right I step in as fractional CTO & Chief AI Officer: two days a week, leading a team's AI transformation.

I run the Engineering Leaders Community, the largest community of engineering leaders in Central Europe: 3,300+ members, monthly meetups with 100+ leaders, and a yearly conference of 350+.

I helped build Mews, the $2bn+ hotel-tech unicorn from Prague, growing engineering from 8 to 80 teams.

Book a free intro →What mentees say

Or email marian@marian.coach or call +420 736 519 879. Rates are on the pricing page; companies ordering mentoring for their managers start with the engineering leadership program.

Marian Kamenistak is an engineering leadership mentor and fractional CTO based in Prague. He mentors 1:1 with engineering managers, directors, VPs, and CTOs across Europe and North America, and leads AI transformation as a fractional CTO & Chief AI Officer. He runs the Engineering Leaders Community, 3,300+ engineering leaders in Central Europe. Since 2019 he has run 3,662 1:1 leadership sessions with 317 leaders from 17 countries. Mentees rate every session from 0 to 10 right after it. Since 2024 the average is 9.17.

Marian Kamenistak, engineering leadership mentor, celebrating a mentee win

Mentees come from these companies:

What I believe

“I've built teams in DevOps, SRE, platform engineering and product engineering, from new teams inside established companies to scaling orgs across locations and time zones. The technology changed. The fundamentals didn't. If I had to build another engineering organization from zero tomorrow, I'd spend far more time on team design, leadership and mission, and less time obsessing over the perfect org chart.”

Background

Been in the seat.

One road, from hands on the keyboard to the room that builds Europe's next leaders.

Age 11
Programming since age 11
Hands dirty with code since I was 11, long before the computer science degree made it official. The craft came first. It still does.
Top 3%
Toptal top 3% developer
Screened into the top 3% of developers worldwide on Toptal. For a while I was one of the top developers in Central Europe.
Bay Area
Principal architect at Databricks
The dream job took me to Silicon Valley for 3 years as a Principal Software Architect at Databricks. I learned the US business drive up close. Then I got married, and my wife and I came home to Central Europe.
The unicorn
Mews, a unicorn built in Europe
Back home I helped grow Mews from the inside into a $2bn+ unicorn. Through Series C, R&D went from 8 to 80 teams while the roadmap kept shipping. Advisor to Manta, acquired by IBM, along the way.
$1bn+valuation
317 leaders
Mentored 317 leaders, grew more unicorns
In 2023 I walked away from a $350k role to go all-in on mentoring. 3,662 sessions with 317 leaders across 17 countries since 2019, helping their companies and the next unicorns grow. Full numbers here.
Today
Building ELC: community, conference, startups
The Engineering Leaders Community: 3,300+ members across CEE, 120+ leaders in the room every month, and a conference with 350+ attendees and speakers from Netflix and Stripe. Plus a multitude of startups I help build along the way, as a mentor or fractional CTO.