Tech Leadership Meetup with Sara Owen (Engineering Manager at Electrum Software)

Join us at our next in-person Tech Leadership meetup.

There will be drinks and snacks to kickoff the evening.

The event will be hosted at the Electrum Software Office, Observatory.

The agenda for the evening will be as follows:
17:30 - 18:15 - Arrival: Drinks and snacks.
18:15 - 18:20 - Introduction and house rules.
18:20 - 19:00 - Main speaker - Sara Owen.
19:00 - 20:30 - Networking and wrap up.

Topic of Main Talk - The Secret Sauce of High-Performing Teams

Shipping great products is not just about the tech stack. It is about the humans behind the keyboards. Join us as we explore the ingredients for building high-performing, high-velocity engineering teams.
We will unpack what drives:

• Cohesion through role clarity and high trust.
• Innovation through psychological safety, where people can learn from mistakes and challenge ideas openly.
• Ownership through autonomy.

We will also share practical ways to make candid feedback a habit, and how to handle the ultimate leadership test: addressing low performance with compassion while remaining firm to protect your team and culture.

Sara Owen is an Engineering Manager at Electrum Software, responsible for creating and leading high-performing teams that build next-generation payments software. Working from a servant leadership approach, Sara believes that trust, collaboration, and ownership are the core principles in forming elite-level software development teams.

Sara completed her Honours in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town. In 2020, she joined Electrum’s Graduate Programme. Rising quickly through the ranks, Sara began her leadership journey as a Team Lead in 2022 and continued to advance, reaching her current position in 2025.

Parking details:

Location: Electrum is on the podium level, above the Riverlands Mall.
Entering Riverlands from Liesbeek Parkway:

• Drive to the first circle and turn right. You will see Woolworths and Clicks on your left.
• Continue straight and take the down ramp labeled P1 into the basement retail parking.
• Park in the yellow zone.
• Use the lift lobby nearest pillar B4 (not the escalators, as they lead to the mall).
• Take the lift to Level P and turn left as you exit the automated doors. Electrum, Building 3, is straight ahead.

Entering Riverlands from Berkley Road:

• Turn left at the Traffic Light and follow the road, keep left at the first circle. You will see Woolworths on your left.
• Turn left at the next circle and take the down ramp labeled P1 into the basement retail parking.
• Park in the yellow zone.
• Use the lift lobby nearest pillar B4 (not the escalators, as they lead to the mall).
• Take the lift to Level P and turn left as you exit the automated doors. Electrum, Building 3, is straight ahead

Parking: Validate your parking at reception using the QR code before you leave our offices.

Thank you to our sponsors OfferZen
OfferZen (https://www.offerzen.com/) is an online job marketplace by developers for developers. Our mission is to help people unlock their potential by helping them build awesome software. That’s why we are connecting actively looking developers with exciting job opportunities from over 1000 companies in South Africa and the Netherlands. We flip the normal recruitment process on its head – companies reach out to candidates with upfront salary information.

---

Tech Leadership respects your privacy and will not share your personal information. However, please note that we use public platforms such as [[[[Meetup.com](http://meetup.com/)](http://meetup.com/)](http://meetup.com/)](http://meetup.com/) and X.com, where any information you share may be accessible to external parties.