Data · updated 2026-10-08
Engineering leadership statistics: Central Europe, counted.
Every figure on this page is counted in a live system, not estimated in a survey. Members sit in the community registry, meetups in the public Luma calendar, mentoring sessions in a log kept since 2019. Each number names its source and the date it was last verified. Journalists, researchers and fellow leaders: cite freely, the format is at the bottom of the page.
- 3,300+
- engineering leaders in the community
- 40+
- meetups since 2019
- 400+
- people at the 2026 conference
- 28,000+
- LinkedIn followers
01 · Community
How many engineering leaders are in the community
3,375 members in September 2026, counted from the member registry and republished nightly. The community started in 2019 and runs in Prague, Brno, Bratislava and Kraków.
- 12
- meetups a year, monthly in Prague plus three more cities
- 5
- active peer circles
- 80
- people who have spoken at an ELC event
02 · Seniority
How many CTOs, VPs and Directors the community holds
Counted from the 1263 member profiles with a recorded title, out of 3172 active members at the count date. 60% of profiles carry no title, so read each figure as a floor, never as a share of the whole community.
- CTO or CIO88
- VP of Engineering44
- Director or Head of Engineering173
- Engineering Manager or Team Lead289
- Staff, Principal or Architect112
- Founder or executive132
- Product leader18
- Other or unclassified title407
- Manager and above69%
- Senior or Staff IC21%
- Other roles10%
See the numbers as a table
| Recorded title | Members, at least |
|---|---|
| CTO or CIO | 88 |
| VP of Engineering | 44 |
| Director or Head of Engineering | 173 |
| Engineering Manager or Team Lead | 289 |
| Staff, Principal or Architect | 112 |
| Founder or executive | 132 |
Compare your own org against this split with the free leadership ratio benchmark.
For the Senior/Staff IC share there is 144, a 12-week program that takes senior engineers toward staff roles and five CTO coffees.
03 · Meetups
How many leaders sign up for an ELC meetup
Counted from the Luma API across the last 13 public meetups, September 2025 to October 2026. A registration is a confirmed seat. An application counts every request, including the declined and the waitlisted.
178
applications at the median meetup, declined and waitlisted included
04 · Conference
How big is the ELC Conference
Two editions held, 2025 and 2026, with 400+ attendees, 20+ speakers and an attendee rating of 4.8 of 5. The next edition runs on 22 April 2027 with 500+ attendees as the target.
- Engineering leadership43.0%
- Senior ICs and tech leads22.6%
- Founders and execs16.6%
- Specialists8.9%
- Product and delivery8.9%
See the numbers as a table
| Attendee segment | Share |
|---|---|
| Engineering leadership | 43.0% |
| Senior ICs and tech leads | 22.6% |
| Founders and execs | 16.6% |
| Specialists | 8.9% |
| Product and delivery | 8.9% |
05 · Reach
Newsletter and LinkedIn reach
Recent Leaders' Brief sends reach a 54% unique-open rate. Subscribers and community members are two different populations; we count them separately and never sum them.
- Leaders' Brief and Marian's List, unique emails3,000+
- Leaders' Brief subscribers2,900+
- Opens per issue1,500+
- Marian Kamenistak's profile26,000+
- ELC company page2,400+
- 550,000+
- LinkedIn impressions in the last 12 months
- 2,100
- impressions on the median post
- 182
- YouTube subscribers, 32 videos and 3,343 views
06 · Mentoring
Mentoring engineering leaders since 2019
The mentoring practice behind the community, counted from the session log and the collected reviews. The full mentoring dataset, including the mentee seniority mix and what leaders bring to sessions, is published at marian.coach/engineering-leadership-statistics.
- 3,662
- mentoring sessions delivered
- 317
- leaders mentored
- 17+
- countries
- 9.17/10
- average session rating, reviews
- 9.2/10
- NPS
07 · Hiring
Do companies hire engineering leaders from the community?
Yes, measurably: partner companies hire 2.7 engineering leaders a month from the community. For scale, a recruiter charges €15 to €25K per senior hire.
- Ataccama: 3 ELC meetups at its Prague HQ, 106 leaders checked in at the largest.
- Apify: 2 ELC meetups at its Prague office, the latest with 295 applications.
- Everpure: an ELC meetup at its Prague office and the first ELC meetup in Kraków.
How partnership works, including published prices, is on the partner page.
Cite
Cite this data
Free to quote with attribution, CC BY 4.0. Suggested format:
Engineering Leaders Community (2026). Engineering Leadership in Central Europe: Community Statistics. engineeringleaders.io. https://www.engineeringleaders.io/statistics/
Need a cut that is not on this page, or a quote for an article? Write to weare@engineeringleaders.io.
Methodology
Methodology
Member counts come from the community registry, stage Active only, synced nightly; the exact figure is always published with its month. Meetup history comes from the public calendar at lu.ma/elc. The title census classifies recorded job titles by pattern, which is why it only covers the 40% of profiles that carry one. The growth line starts from the nine founding members in 2019; the quarterly points from mid 2025 come from join dates in the member registry. Meetup demand comes from the Luma API for the 13 public meetups from September 2025, private events and the conference excluded. Newsletter reach comes from Ecomail, deduplicated across both lists; LinkedIn figures from LinkedIn analytics and the Unipile API. Conference composition comes from attendee data of the 2025 edition. Mentoring figures come from the session log and the collected reviews. Numbers round down, never up, and each carries its own verification date in the underlying registry.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Where do these numbers come from?
From the systems the community runs on. Member figures are counted in the member registry, meetup history comes from the public Luma calendar at lu.ma/elc, conference composition from attendee data of the 2025 edition, and mentoring figures from the session log kept since 2019. Each number carries the date it was last verified.
Can I cite this page in an article or a report?
Yes, free with attribution under CC BY 4.0. Name the Engineering Leaders Community, add the year, link this page. A ready-made format is in the Cite this data section above.
How often is the page updated?
The member count republishes itself nightly from the registry. The rest is re-verified on a monthly to yearly cycle depending on the number, and the date at the top of the page moves whenever anything changes.
Is ELC the largest engineering leadership community in Central Europe?
We have not found a larger one. 3,300+ members across Prague, Brno, Bratislava and Kraków, counted from the registry rather than claimed. If you run a bigger one, write to weare@engineeringleaders.io and we will gladly compare notes.
Wondering how these numbers stack against other communities? The comparison page puts them next to LeadDev, CTO Craft, SFELC, alphalist, Rands and Tech Execs. And the numbers nobody in the region has yet are being collected by the CEE Engineering Leadership Benchmark.