Marco Cedaro

Engineering Director

An optimist with a plan b
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👋 that's me

I'm a principle-driven, people-first manager who believes that outcomes are byproducts of investing in people and culture. Comfortable navigating (and helping others navigate) ambiguity, I enable aligned autonomy through strategic guardrails and operational support. I leverage my technical background to guide and challenge decisions, remaining hands-on when necessary.

Aug 2025 - present

Engineering Director

Smartsheet

privately held

Leading ~40 engineers in fully remote, cross-functional platform teams delivering enterprise administration, auditability, and premium data storage capabilities, supporting $1B+ in annual revenue. Ramped into a complex org during a period of transition and high volatility, tailoring leadership to teams at very different stages of maturity.

I stabilised Admin Center delivery with a mix of tactical and operational improvements, and authored a strategic realignment from feature factory to platform, enabling other teams to self-serve their admin interfaces, reducing bottlenecks. The team delivered 2 key features (Seat Request Flow and Enterprise Plan Management) for plan migrations to a new pricing model.

In Audit, I supported a geographical transition of responsibilities, enabled an architectural rehaul for availability and scalability, and advocated for reframing auditability as a first-class NFR — flipping the model from the Audit team chasing coverage, to product teams owning event compliance.

Achievements

  • Stabilised and recovered Admin Center delivery post-missed commitments;
  • Authored and gained SLT alignment on Admin Center’s “Platform, Not Content” strategy;
  • Delivered Seat Request Flow and EPM v2, accelerating licensing migration (66% vs 60% target);
  • Initiated the shift to event ownership as a product-team NFR for Audit.
Apr 2020 - Jul 2025

Engineering Director

Storio Group (formerly Photobox Group)

privately held

Hired to build a new serverless platform for a CRM strategy, then promoted to lead eCommerce. Following the merger with Netherlands-based Albelli, I united 6 teams (~55 people across UK, NL, ES, and UA) into a single domain while driving commercial goals and a major replatforming across .NET, Node.js, AWS, a 20-year-old Perl monolith, and modern event-driven microservices.

I partnered with senior leadership on domain strategy and budget, and led the discovery for the post-replatforming operating model, proposing a reorg aligned with team topologies.

Achievements

  • Enabled 2 full system replatformings, migrating ~50% of customers to the target platform while maintaining commercial and operational KPIs;
  • Mentored Senior Engineers into Engineering Manager roles;
  • Managed teams through a merger, re-orgs, redundancies, budget constraints, and in active war zones.

Marco is a rare engineer leader who combines an empathetic style with deep technical acumen to create value whilst striking a great balance between speed, quality and enabling humans in the loop to be the best they can be.

— David Jensen, CTO @ Storio Group

Previous Roles

Jul 2018 - Apr 2020

Tech Lead

Condé Nast

privately held

My first platform role, and the one where I started to branch outside technical influence and into line management. I led the team rebuilding Vogue Runway’s CMS across 11 markets — a system where seconds mattered, as catwalk images had to be live almost as they were taken. After a merger with our US sibling, the challenge shifted to content syndication: enabling magazines worldwide to access, translate, and republish each other’s editorial content, alongside an AI-based image tagging tool.

May 2017 - Jun 2018

Front-end Lead

Crowdcube

privately held

First hire by the new CTO. Drove a technical and cultural transformation, shifting the department from execution to problem-solving. Delivered production-ready proofs of concept to validate a stack transition and led a product team interim, while defining the hiring process for the role.

Between 2010 and 2016, I (co)founded and ran one of the main European Front-End Conferences: From the Front. I took care of communication and customer care since day one, and worked each year on the lineup, call for papers and inclusivity policies.

I spoke at several conferences, including Paris Web in 2011, Front Trends in Warsaw in 2015 and 2017, DIBI London in 2016, React Advanced London in 2021. I gave keynotes to the Italian CssDay (2019) and JsDay (2024), and React Alicante, where I spoke in 2018 and 2019.

Senior Javascript Engineer,

Kahoot!

Feb 2016 - Apr 2017

Brief stint due to the London office closing, but formative — a mission-driven, UX and data-led company that shaped my engineering mindset. Championed performance improvements and mentored junior colleagues.

Senior Web Engineer,

Shazam Entertainment

Sep 2012 - Feb 2016

Mobile-first companion web experience. Led the modernisation of the front-end architecture.

Front-end Developer,

Spreaker

Aug 2011 - Aug 2012

First external hire; took full ownership of the front end working remotely with the two technical founders.

Client-side Architect,

Yoox Group/YNAP

Jul 2006 - Jul 2011

Joined as the second front-end developer, left as client-side architect. Delivered internal SDKs, led 2 teams, and witnessed the company grow from 30 to 120 engineers and go public.

Webmaster,

MagicNet

Apr 2004 - Jul 2006

Started as an internship, ended up handling full-stack development for all agency projects and building internal tools.

Event Organiser,

Kappa Management

Jun 2002 - Feb 2006

Managed artist bookings and events for up to several thousand attendees — my first taste of operational awareness.

Education

In 2002, I was 3 years into a 5-year Communication Studies degree when I had the chance to turn my longtime webmaster hobby into a job. Stepping into the professional world, I realised my true passion lay in tech and soon left university to pursue a full-time career in the industry.