Hey Everyone!
As NEAR organization grows larger, there is a need for a structure that would allow us to continue scaling without slowing down. In the past few years, we had several engineers assume the engineering leaders’ responsibilities, which allowed us to scale technical decision-making. Some of these engineers will be assuming the people managers’ responsibilities to help us scale non-technical decision making, like processes, planning, hiring/recruitment, people-related discussions like culture, efficiency, and happiness.
- Bowen Wang will assume people management of the Chain team in addition to his existing responsibilities as the engineering leader. Most of the people who are already working under his leadership will now be directly reporting to him: Mikhail Kever, Michael Birch, Piotr Mikulski, and all the new hires who will be joining this team soon
; - Vlad Frolov will assume people management of the Node Interfaces team in addition to his existing responsibilities as the engineering leader and the product owner. Bohdan Kholorets and all the new hires;
- Alex Shevchenko will assume people management of the Bridge team in addition to his existing responsibilities as the product manager of the Bridge and EVM teams. In the short-term, Alex Skidanov will be functioning as an engineering leader of the Bridge team, setting the technical direction. Marcelo Fornet, Evgeny Kapun (while Evgeny works in the Bridge team), and all the new hires will be reporting to Alex Shevchenko;
- Arto Bendiken will assume people management of the EVM team in addition to his existing responsibilities as the engineering leader. Alex Shevchenko will continue helping the team as their product manager. Frank Braun and all the new hires will be reporting to Arto Bendiken;
- Mike Purvis will assume people management of the Berrypickers teams. Evgeny Kuzyakov will remain the engineering leader of that team and will continue setting the technical direction. Evgeny Kuzyakov, Chad Ostrowski, and all the new hires will be reporting to Mike Purvis.
These new people managers will be reporting to me, and I will keep skip-level 1:1s with all of their direct reports. In the medium term, the Infra team and the Contract Runtime team will not have a dedicated people manager. Sandi Fatic, Mario Halambek, Nikolay Igotti, Bo Yao, Willem Wyndham, and all the new hires into these two teams will be reporting to me.
Congratulations to the new managers for being trusted with new responsibilities! Let’s keep it scaling!
Max