Innovating the future of e-commerce engineering: Insights from Leon, Tech Vice President

Coupang is at the forefront of commerce innovation, and our engineering leadership is second to none. Among our distinguished engineers is Leon Warman, a Vice President whose career spans groundbreaking achievements across aerospace and global e-commerce companies. As a Distinguished Engineer and VP at Coupang, Leon exemplifies what it means to build the future of commerce as an Individual Contributor (IC). In this interview, Leon shares his journey, insights, and vision for engineering excellence at Coupang.   

Could you introduce yourself?   

Hi, my name is Leon Warman, and I’m a Distinguished Engineer in E-commerce Engineering at Coupang. My academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, a Master of Science in Computer Science, and a PhD in Applied Mathematics. My career began as a member of the flight code team writing the software for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. I continued in aerospace developing state-of-the-art simulators and virtual reality systems. Over the years, I have led transformative engineering projects at various companies, from designing medical imaging systems to email to creating and launching the world’s first Relational Database Service (RDS), innovative cloud services and e-commerce systems, online payment systems, Drone Delivery Services, Network Load Balancing (NLB), multi-tenancy in e-commerce systems and more. My focus has always been on leveraging technology to solve complex and impactful problems, and I’m thrilled to bring that passion to Coupang.    

What inspired you to choose a technical career at Coupang as an Individual Contributor?   

Throughout my career, I have always sought opportunities that allow me to drive meaningful technical change. Coupang offered me the chance to join a successful, fast-growing company with a startup culture and the resources of a large global public company. As an IC, I dive deep to understand the core issues, collaborate to identify the best solutions and evangelize those solutions broadly. I’ve always gravitated toward IC roles because of the challenge to influence on merit and without authority. At Coupang, I saw a unique opportunity to influence the technical direction of a successful company well-positioned to disrupt the industry.   

How do you balance technical leadership with hands-on engineering work?   

Every engineer interested in progressing into evermore senior engineering roles and tackling increasingly complex and impactful problems must become a force multiplier. It’s essential that technical leaders further develop their ability to influence stakeholders across the spectrum — providing clarity to communicate their vision, guidance to enable meaningful contributions, and inspiration to rally others behind their goals. Force multiplication enables me to balance my time effectively across my commitments and affords me opportunities to time-slice my efforts in both hands-on engineering activities and technical leadership.   

What are some of the most rewarding aspects of your role?   

One of the most gratifying aspects of my role is seeing critical mass form behind the initiatives I propose. When these initiatives shift the company’s direction and deliver tangible results, it’s personally gratifying.  For example, I’ve developed proposals on making Coupang a global system and managing cloud costs more effectively. Both initiatives are now being pursued and will be pivotal themes for 2025. Witnessing these ideas become a reality in building the future of commerce that will ‘Wow’ our customers is immensely rewarding.   

What makes Coupang unique in supporting engineering excellence?   

Coupang is unique in its commitment to fostering engineering excellence. The company’s success provides a strong foundation that enables us to focus on engineering for the future. With a team of highly skilled industry and subject matter experts, Coupang is implementing best practices and setting high standards for technical innovation and engineering excellence. The leadership’s dedication to maintaining a high bar for engineering further empowers the team to excel.   

What is your vision for the future of engineering at Coupang?   

My vision is for Coupang’s engineering teams to operate with greater independence while reliably delivering high-quality results at speed. To achieve this, we must focus on several key areas:   

First, we must organize our systems to guide development and ensure that solutions are designed according to best practices, are scalable and secure, and meet business goals. By leveraging predefined blueprints, teams can reduce complexity, minimize risk, and accelerate development.   

Second, architectural guidance and oversight are essential. Architectural and development standards help engineers align their designs with best practices. Senior engineering participation supplies the guardrails to ensure compliance while continuing to promote innovation.     

Finally, continuous improvement of our mechanisms for automating repetitive tasks, enhancement of our deployment pipelines, ensuring continuous regression testing, measuring our software delivery processes, and monitoring operations will ensure efficiency, reliability, and scalability.  By embedding these principles, Coupang will not only maintain standards of engineering excellence but elevate them.   

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Leon Warman’s journey and contributions at Coupang exemplify the power of technical leadership and innovation. His commitment, as VP, to fostering engineering excellence and solving meaningful problems aligns perfectly with Coupang’s mission to revolutionize the commerce landscape. For engineers looking to make a significant impact, Coupang offers unparalleled opportunities to grow, innovate, and lead. Join us in building the future of commerce.