About
About Me
Teacher, writer, and long-time believer that leadership is a skill — not a personality trait.
Who I Am
I'm David Khachatryan. I bring 15+ years of software engineering and leadership experience. At ServiceTitan, I progressed from Senior Software Engineer to Software Engineering Manager, leading teams and major platform initiatives. I later built and led an engineering organization serving international SaaS companies.
Today, through Octa Labs, I work as a fractional Head of Engineering — combining engineering leadership with hands-on product and engineering execution for seed and Series A startups that need experienced support but aren't ready for a full-time hire yet.
Leadership is the thread that runs through both halves of my work. This site is where I teach it directly — four cohorts and 80+ students so far — and write about it. (For the more technical side of what I build, that's davidsblueprint.com.)
I didn't start teaching this because I had it all figured out. I started because I kept watching the same problems repeat across teams: feedback nobody wanted to give, goals nobody had actually agreed on, one-on-ones that were really just status updates in disguise. Most of it wasn't a talent problem. It was a framework problem — nobody had ever handed these people a clear, practical way to think about it.
Why I'm Passionate About This
Leadership gets taught like it's either innate or mystical — you either have it, or you go to a weekend retreat and hope something sticks. I don't buy either version.
The leaders I've seen do this well are running on repeatable principles: how they listen, how they give feedback, how they make decisions under uncertainty, how they build a team that doesn't fall apart the moment they look away. Those are teachable. That's the whole premise of the curriculum I run, and it's why I keep coming back to write about it here.
What I'm Doing Now
Right now that means splitting time between hands-on engineering leadership at a handful of startups and running this curriculum with small cohorts — writing up what I'm learning on the blog as I go. If you want the full breakdown of what I actually teach, start with the Leadership page.