Engineering excellence is more than code quality or tool choice. It’s about aligning engineering with business goals, improving systems systematically, and building a culture of continuous progress.
In a recent episode of the Tech Lead Journal podcast, Cortex CTO and co-founder Ganesh Datta shared lessons from his engineering career. From early experiences debugging microservices to helping some of the world’s largest companies operationalize engineering excellence, his insights offer a practical guide to building stronger teams and better software.
Turning problems into patterns
Ganesh began his career fixing bugs in a newly separated microservice. At first, the work felt repetitive and thankless. Then a mentor helped him see it differently.
“Don’t look at these as just bugs,” he recalls being told. “If you want to become a senior engineer one day, you need to be able to see the patterns.”
That shift in mindset helped Ganesh spot recurring issues, propose architectural improvements, and communicate the value of those changes in terms the business could understand. Later, he applied the same lens to performance tuning, reducing P95 latency across key endpoints and posting improvement charts like trophies on his desk.
Engineering excellence starts with outcomes
Ganesh defines engineering excellence as the alignment of engineering practices with business results. In his words, “It’s our practices in service of business outcomes.”
At Cortex, that means optimizing for:
Time to value and innovation
Cost efficiency
Product quality and reliability
These goals are supported by four pillars: velocity, reliability, security, and efficiency. Ganesh draws parallels with other business functions.
“Sales has CRMs. Marketing has automation. Finance has ERPs. Why is engineering the only organization flying blind?”
He argues that engineering teams need visibility, clear expectations, and tools to drive improvement just like everyone else.
Leadership’s role in making the case
Ganesh emphasizes the importance of engineering leadership in translating strategy into day-to-day action.
“If an engineering team doesn’t know how their work ties to a business outcome, the project won’t have an impact,” he said.
Rather than pursuing broad, long-term projects, he recommends identifying one top-priority business goal and building the smallest solution that moves the needle.
“Engineering excellence is like the engineering team’s product. You need to build a minimum viable process that solves something real.”
Metrics as drivers of change
Ganesh is clear that metrics are not about tracking productivity. They are tools for identifying and testing improvements.
“Imagine if a sales leader said, ‘We don’t need a CRM. Let’s just wing it.’ You’d laugh them out of the room,” he said. “Why is it different for engineering?”
He stresses the importance of not just collecting data but using it to drive behavior. “It’s about hypothesis generation and testing. Are our practices moving the metrics that matter?”
That starts with visibility: knowing who owns what, where code is running, and what standards apply.
Culture comes from repetition and clarity
Engineering culture isn’t abstract. It’s built through rituals, shared language, and repeated messaging.
“Everyone should know what good looks like. If you ask three people what production readiness means and get three different answers, that’s a problem,” he said.
Ganesh recommends breaking down standards into tiers: what’s essential, what’s recommended, and what’s gold standard. This ensures teams know where they stand. He also highlights the power of public recognition.
“If someone’s team migrates 80 percent of their services to a new platform, shout it out in all-hands. That builds momentum.”
When to invest in platform engineering
Ganesh provides clear guidance on when to begin platform investments:
Around 30 to 50 engineers: establish a service catalog and track ownership
Around 60 to 100 engineers: start automating infrastructure and standardizing deployments
After 100: introduce mature platform capabilities that improve security, reliability, and autonomy
He also recommends aligning platform, security, and SRE under one leader focused on engineering excellence: “Why should those teams be split if their goals are interdependent?”
Common pitfalls to avoid
Ganesh calls out three common mistakes in internal platform efforts:
Waiting for perfect data before starting
Assuming developers will adopt new tools without a clear value proposition
Trying to build an entire platform at once
“Start with what your teams are already doing and make it better,” he said. “Define what good looks like, then build the tools that help people get there faster.”
Cortex as an engineering excellence platform
Cortex was built to help teams turn these ideas into reality. It includes:
A catalog of services, infrastructure, and ownership
Scorecards to define and track best practices
Workflows for self-service tasks like provisioning and scaffolding
Engineering intelligence to track metrics like MTTR and cycle time
Together, these tools give teams a way to measure, improve, and scale operational excellence.
Ganesh’s advice for engineering leaders
Ganesh closed the podcast with three pieces of advice:
Be a good storyteller: “You need to be able to explain why something matters and bring people along with you.”
Understand your product deeply: “It helps you make faster decisions and route information more effectively.”
Design your rituals intentionally: “Your operational cadence creates your culture. Weekly demos, reviews, and shared metrics all reinforce what matters.”
Engineering excellence isn’t a status you achieve. It’s a system of thinking, measuring, and improving. As Ganesh puts it, “You’re not trying to be excellent right away. You’re trying to be better tomorrow than you were yesterday.” If you’re interested in learning how Cortex helps drive engineering excellence across engineering organizations, book a demo!
