David Nakamura

Engineering Manager → Independent Consultant

Tokyo, Japan

15+years experience

About

I spent 15 years as an engineering manager (not VP, not CTO — the person actually in the trenches with the team). Most recently managed a 40-person engineering org at a Tokyo startup. I'm good at the messy middle stuff: hiring processes that actually work, getting teams to ship on time without burning out, and figuring out when to refactor vs. when to just live with the tech debt. Based in Tokyo, comfortable working in English or Japanese.

Expertise Areas

Technology & Engineering

Skills

Engineering ManagementAgile/ScrumHiring & ScalingDevOps

Active Posts

Offering

Engineering Team Coaching & Process Improvement

I help engineering managers and small CTOs get better at the people side of their job. How to run hiring that actually finds good people, how to set up sprint processes that don't make everyone miserable, how to have the hard conversations about performance. I'm not going to tell you about "engineering excellence" or whatever — I'm going to help you solve the specific problems your team has right now. I do this as coaching (1-on-1 with your eng lead) or as a short consulting engagement where I embed with the team for a few weeks.

Tokyo (remote OK)$180-$300/h