Tilemachos Tzanakis

Meet Tilemachos Tzanakis, Engineering Manager

You’ve recently stepped into the role of Engineering Manager. What excites you most about your new role?

What excites me most is getting to support an amazing team of engineers. I already know how talented they are, and I see my role as creating the conditions for them to do their best work, grow and achieve great things together.

I believe strongly in trust and autonomy. My job isn’t to tell great engineers how to do their work, but to give context and direction, remove obstacles and challenge them when needed. I want us to have high expectations of each other, while also being comfortable saying, “I don’t know, let’s try” – experimenting, making mistakes and learning together.

You’re from Crete, but spent many years building your engineering career in Stockholm. How has that shaped you?

I feel like I’ve been able to take something really valuable from both cultures. From working in Sweden, I learned a lot about trust and autonomy – environments where good ideas mattered more than titles, engineers were encouraged to speak up and challenge things, and people were trusted with real responsibility.

Crete brings something different but equally important: warmth, generosity, bonding and a strong sense of community. People make time for each other, share, help and come together – usually with some food involved!

I want my leadership to combine those two worlds: the autonomy, openness and trust I learned to value in Sweden with the warmth and sense of community I grew up with in Crete. People should have real independence, but never feel like they’re on their own.

Fairlo is on a journey to become AI-native. What does that mean to you as an engineer and leader?

I honestly think this is one of the most exciting times to be an engineer, a new era in the tech industry. AI is rapidly changing the boundaries of what one person or a small team can build.

For me, becoming AI-native isn’t just about writing code faster. It’s about raising our ambition for what’s possible. What can we solve that we couldn’t before? What can we build better, faster or in completely new ways?

It gives us more room to be curious, experiment, share what we learn and think bigger. We won’t always get it right, but I’d much rather be part of a team that is exploring and helping shape where engineering is going than waiting for someone else to figure it out first.