Biography
General Biography
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software systems as the CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany) and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is a frequent keynote and conference speaker, author of three books including The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and Building Evolutionary Architectures and runs the free popular newsletter for leaders in tech, “Level Up” (http://levelup.patkua.com) and the Tech Lead Academy, offering online training for technical leaders. You can find him online on twitter as @patkua or running his very popular “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” workshop.
Short Biography
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience having done a wide variety of roles including being a developer, tech lead, consultant, CTO and more. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training.
Head-Shot Photos
Tell me more!
I started working as a programmer and fell early into the world of agile software development. I didn’t want to play around with software. I wanted to build software that had impact. In the early 2000s I was training and teaching other engineers at Oracle about automated unit testing which also slowly evolved into teaching Test Driven Development.
I joined ThoughtWorks in Australia before relocating to London where I helped clients of all shapes and sizes. I’ve worked as a Software Developer, Tech Lead, Agile Coach, Transformation Lead, Project Manager, Principal Architect, and CTO.
Over the years I have:
- Led many complex technical programs of work
- Evolved strategic core systems to keep up with the pace of business demand and change
- Optimised the working practices and processes of teams, departments and organisations
- Coached and advised management at all levels
- Developed numerous training programs (agile, core engineering skills, continuous delivery and technical leadership)
- Grew a technical team from 55 to 350 in under two years
- Managed managers and other technical leaders
- Led a technical organisation of 350+ people as CTO
What sized companies have you worked with?
As a consultant, I have worked with companies of all shapes and sizes from 30 to 3000+. I’ve worked with early stage start ups (<50 people) helping them evolve their critical systems and scale up their team and practices. I’ve worked with huge multinationals looking to transform their processes to deliver better quality software with speed. I’ve worked with numerous government agencies looking to have more impact with limited budgets.
What industries have you worked in?
I have worked with companies in sectors such as transportation, finance, retail, manufacturing, geospatial, voice recognition, non-profit and more!
The common challenge was helping any organisation where software is a key enabler or provides a competitive advantage.
Get in Contact
Get in touch with Patrick Kua about his Shortcut to Tech Leadership workshop, speaking or any of his other offerings:
- via email at [email protected];
- on LinkedIn; or
- Direct Message (DM) me on Twitter as @patkua
