Engineering Leadership Events in Bucharest

Join Incremental Community at Criteo on November 18, starting 6 pm, for an evening of shared experiences and open conversations about scaling delivery.

Secure your spot using this registration link: https://luma.com/y8rq6wq8
How do you scale software delivery while keeping teams flexible, autonomous, and ready to adapt?

As teams grow, so do dependencies, coordination needs, and the pressure to deliver. Finding the right balance between structure and flexibility becomes an everyday engineering challenge.

We’ll start with a joint keynote by Nicu Murgu and Anca Bărar, followed by a panel discussion with Ionuț Moldovan, Răzvan Căciulă and Magda Miu.

Bring your questions and perspectives, and stay for networking, snacks and drinks!

Agenda
18:00–18:30 | Welcome & check-in
Arrive, meet fellow community members and settle in.
18:30–18:45 | Opening remarks
A welcome from the organizers and our hosts at Criteo.
18:45–19:15 | Keynote with Nicu Murgu and Anca Bărar
Technical Program Management at Scale
19:15–20:15 | Panel discussion with Ionuț Moldovan, Răzvan Căciulă and Magda Miu
Starting at 20:15 | Networking, snacks & drinks
Continue the conversations, exchange experiences and connect with fellow tech professionals.

Sessions & speakers
Technical Program Management at Scale
Abstract: As technology organizations grow, Technical Program Management becomes less about managing a backlog and more about aligning teams, priorities, and leadership around measurable outcomes. Drawing on the practices and lessons of Criteo R&D’s EPM group, this talk explores how to connect strategy with engineering work, make trade-offs visible, keep planning flexible, break down complex initiatives, and influence decisions without formal authority. It offers practical patterns for improving cross-functional delivery in any growing technology organization.
Nicu Murgu is an Engineering Program Manager Lead at Criteo with more than 20 years of experience in software development, software delivery and engineering leadership. He started as a software developer and moved into project, program and department management, leading cross-functional teams and multi-team programs. He is passionate about engineering excellence, user-centered products and helping teams stay autonomous and flexible as they scale.
Anca Bărar is a Senior Engineering Program Manager with more than a decade of experience across enterprise software, online advertising, telecommunications, and data analytics. Her career spans technical consulting, business intelligence, and program leadership. She combines a strong technical foundation with the versatility to navigate different industries, organizational environments, and delivery challenges. Her expertise lies in connecting engineering and business teams, aligning distributed stakeholders, and turning complex goals into clear, actionable plans. Anca holds a PhD in Computer Science focused on telemedicine, complemented by certifications in project management and Agile practices.

Panel discussion with Ionuț Moldovan, Răzvan Căciulă and Magda Miu
About Ionuț

Ionut Moldovan is Head of Engineering Program Management at Criteo, where he leads Engineering Program Management and Product Operations. With nearly two decades in technology, he has moved from software engineering and architecture through project and engineering management to organizational leadership. He helps shape how Criteo’s technology and product roadmaps are built, prioritized, and delivered, connecting strategy to execution across R&D. He is passionate about building scalable teams, improving developer productivity, simplifying ways of working, and enabling measurable business impact through clear ownership and effective collaboration.
Răzvan Căciulă is a seasoned technology executive currently serving as the VP of Engineering and Head of the Bucharest Office at Showpad. Tasked with building a world-class engineering hub from the ground up, he leads cross-functional teams focused on developing cutting-edge, AI-powered revenue enablement platforms.
With more than two decades of experience in the software industry, Razvan brings profound expertise in organizational scaling and complex systems architecture. Previously, he served as a Director of Engineering at Adobe Romania, where he played a pivotal role in scaling one of the largest EMEA engineering sites and leading the development of Adobe Experience Manager. A passionate advocate for ecosystem growth, Razvan is the founder of the Bucharest DevOps community and an active mentor in the startup ecosystem, dedicated to fostering engineering craftsmanship across the region.
Magda Miu is an innovative Senior Engineering Manager at Adobe with over 15 years of experience in software development and technology leadership. She has a proven track record of scaling engineering organizations, delivering high-impact products, and developing top-performing leaders. Magda is currently spearheading AI-first initiatives across Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) and Apps flows, embedding Machine Learning capabilities and Agentic skills to drive intelligent, autonomous experiences for customers. A passionate advocate for technology and leadership excellence, she also shares insights as a blogger, trainer, and public speaker, inspiring the Romanian tech communities and shaping the future of digital innovation.

👥 Who should join?

Software engineers, tech leads, engineering managers and anyone involved in helping teams deliver software as they grow.

Whether you’re navigating these challenges today or preparing for your team’s next stage, join us to exchange ideas and learn from different perspectives.

Hosted by Criteo. Organized by Incremental Community.

Looking forward to seeing you for another evening of learning, inspiration and good conversations! 🚀

AI Adoption: The Real Challenge Is Not Technical. It's Human - a joint community meetup.

What happens when AI challenges our sense of competence, confidence, and professional identity? How do we deal with uncertainty, resistance, and change? And what does it really take to build organizations where AI adoption is more than just another transformation initiative?

Agenda

18:00–18:15 | Welcome & Opening
18:15–18:45 | Psychological Effects or Comfort Crisis? An interactive workshop with Anne Dumitrache – Trainer, Coach & Psychologist.
18:45–20:45 | Interactive Panel: AI Adoption: Psychological & Organizational Effects (including a networking break, because some of the best conversations happen offstage).
Moderated by Anne Dumitrache.

Our panelists:
Vlad Herescu – Engineering Manager at Booking Holdings Romania
Loredana Ciurlău – IT Area Lead for Global Products & Technology Services at ING Hubs Romania
Cătălin Stoiovici – Engineering Leadership at PortSwigger (former Senior Director / Head of Engineering for UK&I at NTT DATA)

Vlad Herescu is the Engineering Manager leading the Identity and Access Management team at Booking Holdings Romania. His team is responsible for implementing a unified, state-of-the-art IAM solution for the company’s systems. With a background in software engineering, Vlad has led teams across both consultancy and product-based companies, tackling diverse challenges in complex environments. Passionate about understanding software “under the hood,” he frequently collaborates with development teams to uncover technical challenges and identify innovative solutions that push beyond the status quo.

Loredana Ciurlău has been with ING Hubs Romania since 2023 and brings more than 20 years of experience across banking, technology and organizational transformation. She has built her career around helping organizations connect strategy with execution, navigate change, and enable teams to perform at their best in complex, international environments. At ING Hubs Romania, she leads a local engineering team and drives transformation initiatives within Financial Markets IT, working closely with global stakeholders across ING.A strong advocate for the responsible use of AI, she actively promotes practical experimentation and knowledge sharing, helping colleagues discover how AI can enhance productivity, collaboration and the way they work every day.

Catalin Stoiovici is an engineering leader with more than 20 years of experience building software and the teams that ship it. He has scaled engineering practices from tens to hundreds of people and led architects and engineers across financial services, insurance and consulting, including senior engineering roles at J.P. Morgan, Elsevier and leadership of a major UK consulting engineering practices at Capco and NTT DATA UK&I. His work focuses on developer productivity, engineering operating models and the impact of AI across the SDLC. He writes and speaks regularly on these themes and coaches technology leaders, from CTOs to Heads of Engineering, on building high-performing teams. He now works at the intersection of application security and modern software delivery as Engineering Leader at PortSwigger, the company behind Burp Suite and the Web Security Academy, where AI is reshaping how code is written, reviewed and secured.

Join us at ING Hubs Romania for another thought-provoking, interactive, and definitely no-sugar-coated Upskilling event. We don't promise to have all the answers.

But we do promise to ask some good questions.
Because maybe the biggest challenge of AI adoption isn't what technology can do. It's how ready we are to change.

Getting your first Product Management role feels like breaking into a fortress. But securing the title is just the boot sequence. The actual engineering problem is figuring out how to build trust and ship impact when you are fresh in the system.

We hear a lot about advanced product strategy from veterans with 15 years of experience. That is great for high-level theory. But we need to decode the exact steps of surviving those critical first years in a fast-paced environment.

Stories of the Web is back on the stage. We are cutting through the textbook frameworks to debug the exact transition from university directly into a high-stakes product role.

We are thrilled to host Radu Minea.

Radu jumped straight from university into the product trenches. He has spent the last two years navigating a high-velocity ecosystem, currently scaling eMAG's advertising platform.

🎙️ The Talk: From First Steps to Impact. A Product Manager Journey.
This is not a theoretical lecture on user stories. This is a deep dive into maturing your mindset as a product builder.
We are debugging the PM transition:

• The Trust API & Authentic Leadership: Moving from newcomer to reliable partner. Earning technical credibility by mastering system architecture, and dropping the "servant leadership" overreach to avoid burnout.
• Expectations vs. Production: Navigating opportunity cost and value capture. Features exist strictly to capture value for B2B or B2C users, not just to pad a release log.
• The Impact-First Modus Operandi: Operating like an ER triage unit. Embracing the inherent chaos of tech environments, focusing relentlessly on high-leverage initiatives, and decoupling your self-worth from immediate output.
• The Network & The Claudes: Leading through influence in an AI-driven landscape. Finding mentors who are exactly one step ahead and applying a strict "Hell Yes or No" filter to incoming opportunities.

🚀 Who needs to be in the room?

• Junior & Aspiring PMs who want to bypass the theory and understand the mechanics of breaking into product.
• Software Engineers looking to understand the product mindset and how to build better alignment with their PMs.
• Tech Leads & EMs who want to mentor and onboard fresh product talent more effectively.

📅 SAVE THE DATE: Thursday, November 26th, 18:30
📍 One Cotroceni Building C, 11th Floor
Str. Sergent Nutu Ion 44, Bucuresti
📝 Small agenda:
18:30 to 19:00: Welcome, networking & food
19:00 to 20:00: Live session with Radu
20:00 to 20:30: Q&A, deep dives & curiosities

Attendance is free, but seats are limited and security requires pre-registration. 👉 Please make sure to provide your full name and email address so we can add you to the building's access list.