Michal Nowak

Michał is an engineering leader with 20 years of experience in building digital products. He serves as the SVP of Engineering at SmartRecruiters, where he oversees Product Development, Cloud Infrastructure, Information Security, and Customer Support.

Michal’s professional focus is to build organizations that iterate quickly, adapt to a changing environment, and deliver innovation at scale.

He is a system thinker who loves to manage flow and design processes and structures that support shipping value.

Be Water My Friend: Improving Adaptability through Dynamic Reteaming

Bruce Lee used water to illustrate perfect adaptability. Can R&D organisation be like water?

In his talk, Michał will walk us through the most radical org structure transformation in SmartRecruiters' history. In 2024, the company decided to cancel the entire product roadmap, pause new development for a full quarter, and rethink how AI advancement will change the recruiting industry.

In order to adapt to this change, Michał's team decided to depart from a traditional structure with small, durable teams. The R&D org moved towards a much more fluid setup with new building blocks and dynamic reteaming as one of the key principles.

Michał will explain the concept of isolation pattern and how SmartRecruiters is using it at scale. He will dive into baking WIP limiting into the team setup, and creating large talent pools to ensure resilience. The session will wrap with quantitative and qualitative results observed after 12 months of living in the new structure.