Emma Brillhart

About Emma

I'm a Senior Engineering Manager at Honeycomb, where I lead the App Observability team. Over the past decade, I've built and led engineering teams at companies ranging from pre-seed to Series D, including Zapier, MainStreet, and Endgame, and spent nearly six years as a software engineer and engineering director at Formidable (now NearForm Commerce), shipping projects for clients like Starbucks, Nintendo, and 538. I've managed through reorgs, layoffs, rapid scaling, and the messy in-between parts of startup engineering leadership that nobody writes blog posts about. I've also gone deep on integrating AI into my own management workflows, from building custom tooling for planning and inbox processing to using AI for meeting prep, team updates, and prioritization. It's the thing I get asked about most. I work best with engineering managers and senior ICs who are in the middle of something hard. Maybe you just made the jump from IC to manager and the job feels nothing like what you expected. Maybe you're managing through a reorg or layoff and trying to keep your team steady while everything shifts underneath you. Maybe you're a solid manager who wants to actually use AI in your day-to-day instead of just reading about it. Here's what I bring: practical, specific advice grounded in things I've actually done, not frameworks I read about. I'll share what's worked for me (and what hasn't), help you think through real situations you're navigating, and push you to build systems that stick instead of ones that fall apart in two weeks. I'm direct, I ask a lot of questions, and I care more about what's actually useful to you than what sounds good on paper. If any of that resonates, send me a message and tell me what you're working through. We'll start with an intro call to make sure we're a good fit, and go from there.