--- title: "Should You Take the VP of Engineering Job? | 1:1 mentoring" description: "44 engineering directors have brought me this decision. What the VP seat costs, the five things to negotiate before you say yes, and who should decline it." url: "https://www.marian.coach/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/" lang: "en" image: "https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/infographic.webp" --- ![Should You Take the VP of Engineering Job?](https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/infographic.webp) One of my mentees called me this morning. Engineering director, offered a VP of engineering role, and he really wanted me to tell him what to do. I get this call around seven times a year. Forty-four people have brought me this decision. Roughly seven in ten took the role, and about three in four of those were still in the seat a year later. My count, my calendar, no control group. Everyone in it also had a mentor through the transition, so it is not the base rate for doing this alone. I stay with most of them as an external mentor through the first six months, which is where the role either holds or it doesn’t. I was VP of Engineering at Mews, scaling from 8 to 80 teams in two years, growing teams while delivering on the roadmap. Heavily challenging. I wrote up that first year while it was still fresh, including the parts that did not go to plan: [a look back on my first year as VPE](https://www.marian.coach/blog/vp-of-engineering-mews-a-look-back-on-my-1st-year/). So I did my best to make him understand what it really takes. ## Nobody above you absorbs it any more By the nature of the VP engineering role, it feels like you are crushed between two stones. People from the top are asking you to deliver pretty strict outcomes. The teams and departments you manage ask you to help them accomplish those same goals, and to have clear communication. They ask you for co-operation, cross-functional collaboration, resources, of course, and millions of other minor things that are part of the game. Both sides are right. That is what makes it heavy. The board isn’t being unreasonable when it wants the roadmap delivered, and your teams aren’t being soft when they ask for the resources to deliver it. You are the person standing where those two truths meet, and the pressure doesn’t go away, you just get better at carrying it. An [engineering director](https://www.marian.coach/engineering-director-mentor/) has this too, in a smaller shape. **The difference is that a director usually has someone above who absorbs it.** As a VP, you are that someone. | | Engineering Director | VP of Engineering | | --- | --- | --- | | Pressure from above | The roadmap for your area | Company outcomes, argued at board level | | Pressure from below | Your teams | Every team, plus your peers | | Who absorbs the squeeze | Someone above you | You | | Board exposure | Occasional, by invitation | A seat from day one, on probation | | A resource conflict | You escalate it | You are the escalation | | Measured on | Delivery | Delivery, and whether you fight | ![Marian Kamenistak in a 1:1 mentoring session.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/mentoring-06.CFmbsSxo_XDdsL.webp) Most of a call like this one is me listening. ## Who should not take this role I wanted to be very clear on this one, because it is the part people skip when they are flattered by the offer. **The VP role is not suitable for nice, friendly, teddy bear personality types.** It isn’t about being harsh. It is about whether you can sit in a room, hold a position that costs somebody something, and still sleep afterwards. Some very good engineering directors can’t, and there is no shame in it. A director who is great with people and protective of the team is doing the job right. That same instinct, one level up, turns into a person who cannot decide. Plenty of people who have done the job well would argue with me here. Emily Nakashima, who was promoted from director to Honeycomb’s first VP of Engineering, wrote up the traits that prepared her for it, and two of the seven are warmth: > A genuine joy in seeing teammates level up. \[…\] Good relationships up, down, and sideways. > > [Emily Nakashima, _On Becoming a VP of Engineering, Part 1_](https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/becoming-vp-of-engineering-pt1) She is right about her own path. **She was promoted from inside**, at a company she joined around employee twelve, by people who already trusted her. Warmth compounds when the relationships are already there. **You are being hired from outside**, into an organisation that did not watch you earn it, to make calls about people you met last week. Warmth doesn’t carry you through that. It just makes the first hard decision cost more than it should. Having said that, I would rather someone finds this out before the handshake as opposed to eighteen months in. So find out tonight. Three questions, and answer them with a real situation, not a principle: 1. The last time you took headcount away from a team that needed it, how many days passed between deciding and telling them? 2. Name the last position you argued in a cross-team meeting that cost your own people something. If nothing comes to mind in ten seconds, that is the answer. 3. Think of the last person you should have let go. How many months were there between knowing and acting? Most people score badly on at least one. The question is whether the delays are getting shorter. ## You get a seat at the table. You are the experiment. As a new VP of engineering you will most probably get a seat at the board meeting or extended leadership meeting from day one. It doesn’t mean that you have the true seat. You are an experiment. The seat is real, your standing on it is not yet. People will listen politely for a while, and in parallel they will be forming a view of whether you belong there. That view usually settles well before anyone says anything to you about it. This is also the part where the step to [CTO](https://www.marian.coach/cto-mentor/) stops looking like the obvious next one and starts looking like the same problem again, one floor up. ## They measure two things. Only one is delivery. There are two criteria that other people will measure closely, in your first half year and your second. **First, whether you can deliver the outcomes.** You hit the numbers, whatever it takes. That part is not negotiable, and it is the easier half of the job. **Second, whether you are strong enough to fight for your cause, for your mission. To be brave.** Meaning you really have to enter into challenging situations, into conflicts. Resources are not unlimited. There is one headcount, and if you take it, somebody else does not get it. The second one is where new VPs get quietly marked down. Not for failing. For being pleasant and absent. ![Marian Kamenistak in a leadership workshop, in front of a slide titled "Top 3 dangers — Why we haven't delivered the roadmap this quarter."](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-01.BK9BNN9P_Z1Q1Q8u.webp) A leadership workshop, working through why the roadmap didn’t land that quarter. The VP owns this conversation upward and downward at the same time. ## Compromise is a dangerous default Here I would argue with a good deal of what gets written about leadership. Treating compromise as your strategy is dangerous. Sometimes it’s really literally the case of one losing while another person wins, and no amount of good facilitation changes that. One headcount. One quarter of platform work. One team that gets the migration budget. Split those down the middle to keep the room comfortable and you get two half-funded initiatives instead of one that ships. Both peers walk out thinking you are fair. Neither thinks you are effective. **Your case is as strong as theirs? Fight for it like a tiger.** **Weaker against the company mission? Let it go.** Weaker means more work or less impact. That is the whole test. You win where your case is genuinely stronger, and you bring the numbers that show it. Two months into Mews I published an internal audit. It set three mission streams for the whole department: scalability, delivery, awareness. Some teams lost out in that plan. I could have widened it until every team saw itself in there, and it would have been a more popular document. It would also have committed the department to everything, which is the same as committing it to nothing. My job was to defend all of them, not one of them, and those are different jobs. So the fight isn’t the default and neither is the compromise. The mission decides, and you are the one who has to do that comparison honestly, including in the cases where it goes against you. Dropping your own plan in front of the room, out loud, because the other one serves the objective better, will buy you more standing than winning it would have. People remember who argues for the company and who argues for their own org. ## The five conversations before you say yes The offer is the easy part. What you agree in the next five conversations decides whether the job is survivable. **Sit with the board and with your direct manager.** You have to understand what’s in the strategy of the company for the next year. Just listen to it, listen to what they say, and make sure that you understand the strategy end to end. I did this at Mews for two months and almost nothing else. I joined Mews as VP of Engineering in April 2020, the Prague office closed the same month, and every introduction I had with engineers, team leads, my peers and the leadership board happened over video. I was doubtful it would work at all. Only after those two months did I publish my internal audit and the mission streams. Two months of listening felt slow at the time. It was the cheapest thing I did that year. **Then do your homework and propose the KPIs yourself.** Write the outcomes you will be measured against, and write your own definition of success. Without it, the review 12 months from now becomes a fight of subjective statements: was your performance good, or not that great? You lose that fight, because the other side has been in the company longer than you. **Then the resources.** Defined KPIs are not enough on their own. You need the resources agreed in advance: time, people, tooling, finance, licenses, and whatever else your work runs on. Agree them at the same time as the KPIs, in the same room, with the same people. Otherwise you own the outcome and none of the means to reach it. **Then the mandate, and this is the tricky part.** The handshake is not enough. It’s not enough just to say, “Yes I accept this role. I accept this new challenge.” What I want to see come with it is that you are also given a mandate to hit your objectives, whatever it takes, and to say it out explicitly. Out loud, in the room, in roughly these words: > This is my territory, this is my org structure, these are my processes, this is the way we communicate, this is the way we update each other. And I do everything for it. Say it and watch what happens. Agreement in the room is the mandate. Hesitation is data too, and you would rather have it now than in month seven. One of them skipped this conversation. He took the role on the handshake, no mandate, and he was laid off. Without it, other people interfere, and they do it for historical reasons rather than bad ones. The CTO who still runs 1:1s with your staff engineers because he always has. The peer VP who reassigns your platform team’s quarter. The founder who reopens your org chart in Slack on a Sunday. None of them think they are undermining you. All of them are. Without this explicit handshake and receiving the mandate, it will be very hard for you to execute on your mission. **Then negotiate your compensation package, and do it last.** Not because it matters least, but because until the four conversations above are done you do not know what you are being paid to do. The scope of a VP role is set in those rooms, not in the job description, and it is the scope that should price the package. Once you have said yes, you have nothing left to trade. This is the only moment you hold all of it. So know the number before you walk in. Going into 2027, a VP of Engineering at a standard Czech company sits around 240,000 to 280,000 CZK a month, with bonuses or stock options on top of that. That is my own read of the market I hire and mentor in, not a survey. If the offer lands under that range, the scope you just agreed in the four conversations above is your argument for moving it. ## The questions that make the call Everything above is preparation. Three questions make the final decision. **Is the leader worth following?** Not whether they are impressive in the offer meeting. Whether you would take their side in a hard quarter, and whether you would learn something from how they handle one. **Is the mission attractive enough?** You will be spending your credibility on it in rooms where people push back. A mission you are lukewarm about is hard to defend like a tiger, and it shows. **Will I get the resources and the mandate?** That is the whole negotiation above, turned into a yes or a no. Most people answer the first two quickly and stall on the third. Stalling is itself the answer. ## Why I didn’t make the decision for him I was very careful about advising him whether to accept. Reason being, if I learned one single thing in [3,611 mentoring sessions](https://www.marian.coach/testimonials/) it is that people have to make that decision on their own. I give them maximum information. I give them certain hints but it’s up to them to make that call. Otherwise I would weaken their ownership on this piece. So if you are the one holding the offer: get the maximum insight you can, from me or from anybody who has sat in that seat and will tell you the unflattering half. Then make the decision on your own. Whoever makes it for you takes your ownership of it with them. And guess what, the person I spoke to took that challenge and sent back the KPIs for the next 12 months to the top management. Right after our call. Stay tuned. ## Frequently asked Should I take a VP of Engineering role if I'm currently an Engineering Director?+ Only after five conversations, in this order: the company strategy for the next year, the KPIs you propose yourself, the resources that make those KPIs reachable, an explicit mandate over your territory and org structure, and the compensation package last. If the answer to any of them stays vague after you ask, that is your answer. How do I succeed in my first 6 months as a VP of Engineering?+ You are measured on two things and only one of them is delivery. First, whether you hit the KPIs. Second, whether you are brave enough to enter conflict over finite resources, because a VP who is pleasant and absent gets marked down quietly. The board seat you get on day one is real, but your standing on it is not yet. What does a VP of Engineering do?+ The VP of Engineering stands between the board's demand for outcomes and the organisation's demand for the means to produce them: resources, cross-functional co-operation, clear communication. Both demands are legitimate, which is what makes the position heavy. An engineering director usually has someone above who absorbs that pressure. The VP is that someone. What is the difference between an Engineering Director and a VP of Engineering?+ It is not mainly scope. Both roles sit under the same two pressures, from above for delivery and from below for support. The difference is that a director normally has a layer above them that absorbs the squeeze, and a VP does not. That is why the step up changes the job qualitatively and not only in headcount. What should I negotiate before accepting a VP of Engineering offer?+ Five things, in order. Sit with the board and your direct manager and understand the strategy end to end, just listening. Propose your own KPIs and definition of success. Agree the resource envelope those KPIs require. Get an explicit mandate over your territory, org structure and processes. Then negotiate compensation last, once you know what the job really is. One of the directors I worked with skipped the mandate conversation, took the role on the handshake, and was later laid off. 1:1 mentoring ## Ready to move this from advice to action? 1:1 mentoring for engineering leaders. 317 mentees since 2019. Pay-as-you-go or a 6-session pack. First intro is free. [Book a free 30-min intro →](https://www.marian.coach/mentoring/) ## Read next - [![Marian Kamenistak presenting at the Engineering Leaders Conference, client logo wall projected behind him.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/elc-conference-83.C-jfqKbZ_bLDO1.webp) ### AI Engineering Manager: The 2027 Career Fork The engineering manager job is splitting in two by 2027: AI engineering manager, or staff AI engineer. The dead zone is the shape most EMs hold today. 4 September 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/blog/ai-engineering-manager-2027/) - [![Full auditorium audience at an engineering leadership conference where Marian Kamenistak spoke.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/speaker-09.Cgx0l7B4_OIr2s.webp) ### Should I Become a Team Lead? A 6-Dimension Answer Six dimensions predict whether the team lead role will fit you, drawn from 3,611 mentoring sessions. Take the 3-minute test, get a straight verdict. 22 July 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/blog/should-i-become-a-team-lead/) - [![Marian Kamenistak facilitating a workshop, mid-gesture, in front of a slide about roadmap delivery.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-16.BOCFjZmx_2dJH3d.webp) ### AI Agents Don't Shrink Engineering Teams. They Expose Weak Managers. What AI coding agents change about the first-line engineering manager job: not headcount first, but feedback loops, spans, and what the role is for. 21 July 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/blog/ai-agents-first-line-engineering-manager/) ### New posts, straight to your inbox. Your emailSubscribe You're on it. Nothing hits your inbox today. First send goes out once the list is live, and you're already on it. [Connect on LinkedIn →](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariankamenistak/)[See the free tools →](https://www.marian.coach/ai-coaching-tools/) ## Structured data ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ProfessionalService","name":"Marian Kamenistak | Engineering Leadership Mentoring","url":"https://www.marian.coach/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/","image":"https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/infographic.webp","description":"44 engineering directors have brought me this decision. What the VP seat costs, the five things to negotiate before you say yes, and who should decline it.","serviceType":["Engineering leadership mentoring","Engineering manager coaching","CTO coaching","Fractional CTO","Leadership development for software engineers"],"hasOfferCatalog":{"@type":"OfferCatalog","name":"Engineering leadership mentoring and advisory","itemListElement":[{"@type":"Offer","itemOffered":{"@type":"Service","name":"1:1 engineering leadership mentoring","description":"One-to-one mentoring for engineering leaders from Staff Engineer to CTO. 60-minute sessions, weekly or bi-weekly.","url":"https://www.marian.coach/pricing/"}},{"@type":"Offer","itemOffered":{"@type":"Service","name":"Engineering manager coaching","description":"Coaching for first-time and experienced engineering managers: delegation, performance, hiring, team scaling.","url":"https://www.marian.coach/engineering-manager-mentor/"}},{"@type":"Offer","itemOffered":{"@type":"Service","name":"CTO and VP Engineering mentoring","description":"Mentoring for CTOs, VPs of Engineering and Heads of Engineering running 30-200 person organisations.","url":"https://www.marian.coach/cto-mentor/"}},{"@type":"Offer","itemOffered":{"@type":"Service","name":"Mentor in Residence","description":"A dedicated onsite mentor for your engineering organisation, booked by the quarter.","url":"https://www.marian.coach/mentor-in-residence/"}},{"@type":"Offer","itemOffered":{"@type":"Service","name":"Fractional CTO","description":"Part-time CTO engagements for companies without a full-time technology leader.","url":"https://www.marian.coach/fractional-cto/"}}]},"telephone":"+420 736 519 879","email":"marian@marian.coach","sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariankamenistak/","https://www.youtube.com/@engineeringleaders","https://github.com/marian-kamenistak","https://www.engineeringleaders.io/","https://twitter.com/marian_coaches","https://www.elc-conference.io/","https://www.marianslist.com/","https://www.mentoringhub.io/"],"address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","streetAddress":"Varšavská 715/36, Vinohrady","addressLocality":"Praha 2","postalCode":"12000","addressCountry":"CZ"},"geo":{"@type":"GeoCoordinates","latitude":50.0734418,"longitude":14.4385757},"openingHoursSpecification":[{"@type":"OpeningHoursSpecification","dayOfWeek":["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday"],"opens":"09:00","closes":"17:00"}],"priceRange":"296–395 EUR","areaServed":[{"@type":"Place","name":"Europe"},{"@type":"Country","name":"Czechia"},{"@type":"Country","name":"Slovakia"},{"@type":"Country","name":"Poland"},{"@type":"Place","name":"North America"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Person","@id":"https://www.marian.coach/#person","name":"Marian Kamenistak","url":"https://www.marian.coach/","image":"https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/infographic.webp","jobTitle":["Engineering Leadership Mentor","Engineering Manager Coach","CTO Coach","Keynote Speaker"],"hasOccupation":{"@type":"Occupation","name":"Engineering Leadership Mentor"},"worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Engineering Leaders Community","url":"https://www.engineeringleaders.io/"},"alumniOf":[{"@type":"Organization","name":"Mews"},{"@type":"Organization","name":"Manta (acquired by IBM)"},{"@type":"Organization","name":"Databricks"}],"knowsLanguage":["English","Czech","Slovak"],"knowsAbout":["Engineering leadership","Engineering management","Scaling engineering teams","CTO mentoring","Engineering org design","VP of Engineering role","Engineering director role","CTPO role","Team lead development","Staff engineer career path","Fractional CTO engagements","AI-assisted engineering leadership","Conference keynotes on engineering leadership","Panel moderation","Podcast guest — engineering leadership"],"homeLocation":{"@type":"Place","name":"Prague, Czechia"},"sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariankamenistak/","https://www.youtube.com/@engineeringleaders","https://github.com/marian-kamenistak","https://www.engineeringleaders.io/","https://twitter.com/marian_coaches","https://www.elc-conference.io/","https://www.marianslist.com/","https://www.mentoringhub.io/","https://www.crunchbase.com/person/marian-kamenistak","https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140488098","https://developers.mews.com/author/marian/","https://startupdisrupt.com/speakers/marian-kamenistak/","https://theorg.com/org/engineering-leaders-community/org-chart/marian-kamenistak"]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","url":"https://www.marian.coach/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/","name":"Should You Take the VP of Engineering Job? | 1:1 mentoring","inLanguage":"en","dateModified":"2026-09-03T00:00:00.000Z"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","inLanguage":"en","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Should I take a VP of Engineering role if I'm currently an Engineering Director?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Only after five conversations, in this order: the company strategy for the next year, the KPIs you propose yourself, the resources that make those KPIs reachable, an explicit mandate over your territory and org structure, and the compensation package last. If the answer to any of them stays vague after you ask, that is your answer."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How do I succeed in my first 6 months as a VP of Engineering?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"You are measured on two things and only one of them is delivery. First, whether you hit the KPIs. Second, whether you are brave enough to enter conflict over finite resources, because a VP who is pleasant and absent gets marked down quietly. The board seat you get on day one is real, but your standing on it is not yet."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What does a VP of Engineering do?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The VP of Engineering stands between the board's demand for outcomes and the organisation's demand for the means to produce them: resources, cross-functional co-operation, clear communication. Both demands are legitimate, which is what makes the position heavy. An engineering director usually has someone above who absorbs that pressure. The VP is that someone."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the difference between an Engineering Director and a VP of Engineering?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It is not mainly scope. Both roles sit under the same two pressures, from above for delivery and from below for support. The difference is that a director normally has a layer above them that absorbs the squeeze, and a VP does not. That is why the step up changes the job qualitatively and not only in headcount."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What should I negotiate before accepting a VP of Engineering offer?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Five things, in order. Sit with the board and your direct manager and understand the strategy end to end, just listening. Propose your own KPIs and definition of success. Agree the resource envelope those KPIs require. Get an explicit mandate over your territory, org structure and processes. Then negotiate compensation last, once you know what the job really is. One of the directors I worked with skipped the mandate conversation, took the role on the handshake, and was later laid off."}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting","headline":"Should You Take the VP of Engineering Job?","description":"44 engineering directors have brought me this decision. What the VP seat costs, the five things to negotiate before you say yes, and who should decline it.","inLanguage":"en","articleSection":"career","datePublished":"2026-09-03T00:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-09-03T00:00:00.000Z","author":{"@id":"https://www.marian.coach/#person"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Marian Kamenistak","url":"https://www.marian.coach/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.marian.coach/favicon-192x192.webp","width":192,"height":192}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/infographic.webp"},"mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.marian.coach/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/"},"keywords":"career, engineering-management, leadership","wordCount":2364,"timeRequired":"PT11M","isAccessibleForFree":true} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://www.marian.coach/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Blog","item":"https://www.marian.coach/blog/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Should You Take the VP of Engineering Job?","item":"https://www.marian.coach/blog/engineering-director-to-vp-engineering/"}]} ```