Leadership · 2026.10.04

My Journey to Technical Lead and AI-Assisted Development

By Manu Mathew, Technical Lead Engineer · Last updated 4 October 2026

Most of my posts are about WordPress, hosting and how I work with clients. This one is more personal. It’s the story of how I went from a graduate who wasn’t sure he could really code to a technical lead, and how, much more recently, I had to learn AI-assisted development almost from scratch.

I’m sharing it honestly, including the parts where I didn’t feel confident at all. If you’re a student worried about your first job, or an experienced developer unsettled by how quickly AI is changing our work, I hope some of it feels familiar.

Quick answer

I started with basic C, C++ and a little Java, then trained in Perl and PHP at Spectrum Softtech Solutions. That led to an internship, a permanent role and, 14+ years later, technical lead at Newfold Digital. The biggest recent shift was AI-assisted development: I stopped resisting it and learnt to work with it.

Where did my journey as a developer begin?

It began with worry. During my undergraduate degree, I was anxious about the job market. What I knew was basic C, C++ and a bit of Java, and I wasn’t confident enough to say I could actually write code in any of them.

So I started looking for training opportunities. That search took me to Spectrum Softtech Solutions.

Why did I choose Perl when I had planned to learn Java?

Because I was curious. The funny part is that I went there planning to join the Java training. Then I heard about Perl for the first time, and I couldn’t stop wondering what it was.

The Perl curriculum also covered PHP, which made the decision easier. I had learnt PHP during my degree just for fun. My thinking was simple: even if I couldn’t shine in Perl, I could still do well in PHP.

If you’ve never come across them, Perl and PHP are both programming languages widely used on the web. PHP is also the language WordPress is built on.

What did the Spectrum years teach me?

They taught me that the training had paid off. When I finished the course, the company offered me a six-month internship. Based on my performance during the internship, they offered me a permanent position.

While I was there, I worked on projects across many domains, including healthcare, web hosting, debt collection and e-commerce. Each one taught me something different about how real businesses use software.

I also had the opportunity to train more than 40 wonderful minds. I have to say, some of them surprised me. Teaching made me a better developer, because you can’t explain something clearly until you really understand it.

How did I grow from developer to technical lead?

Step by step, and mostly by taking ownership of the platforms I worked on. Here’s the path at a glance:

Newfold Digital is the web hosting company behind brands such as Bluehost and HostGator. There, I progressed from software engineer to senior software engineer to Technical Lead Engineer.

Today I work on platform engineering and software architecture, including Kubernetes and Oracle Cloud (OCI), and on modernising legacy hosting platforms. In 2024 I received Newfold Digital’s Ace of Initiative award.

Looking back, Spectrum was where I mentored people, as part of my job as a trainer.

What changed when AI-assisted development arrived?

Almost everything about how I worked. From those early days until last year, my work was all hands in the mud and clay: building every piece of functionality myself.

Then the entire game changed. Everything moved towards AI-assisted development, and I felt as if the experience I’d built up so far was of no use. I honestly wasn’t sure what I should do to survive.

That’s not an easy thing to admit after so many years in the industry. But I think a lot of developers have felt the same way, even if they don’t say it out loud.

Why did I stop swimming against the flow?

Because it didn’t work. I looked for ways to cope with the sudden change, and at first I tried to swim against the current. That got me nowhere.

So I decided to swim with the flow instead, and to learn how I could use AI to make my life easier.

What did I learn once I started using AI?

Once I started looking into it properly, I learnt three things:

• AI isn’t as simple as it looks.
• But it is easy to learn.
• Keeping up is the hardest part. New things arrive every single day, and keeping pace with them is, for me, the toughest part of using AI in development.

How does AI-assisted development help, from planning to deployment?

If you know how to explain what you need, you can build almost anything with AI in very little time. That saves a lot of time at every stage, from planning to development to testing to deployment.

The benefits feel endless. And the key skill, explaining clearly what you need, turned out to be something my years of building software, and of teaching and mentoring as a trainer at Spectrum, had been preparing me for all along.

What would I tell someone feeling the same way today?

The same things my own journey taught me. Follow your curiosity, even when it takes you somewhere you didn’t plan to go; that’s how I ended up with Perl instead of Java. Take every opportunity to learn and to teach, because both pay off.

And when the ground shifts under you, don’t spend too long swimming against the flow. Learn the new way of working, keep up as best you can, and let it make your life easier.

Frequently asked questions

How did you start your career as a developer?

I trained in Perl and PHP at Spectrum Softtech Solutions after my undergraduate degree. After the training, they offered me a six-month internship, and based on my performance there, a permanent position. I later trained more than 40 people there.

Why did you choose Perl instead of Java?

I planned to learn Java, but I got curious about Perl because it was the first time I had heard of it. The course also covered PHP, which I had learnt for fun, so I knew I had a fallback.

Is AI-assisted development hard to learn?

In my experience, AI isn’t simple, but it is easy to learn. The real challenge is the pace: new tools and techniques appear every day, so the hardest part is keeping up rather than getting started.

How does AI help in software development?

If you can explain clearly what you need, AI helps you build quickly. It saves time across planning, development, testing and deployment, so you spend less effort on repetitive work and more on getting the result right.

What does your work as a technical lead involve today?

I work on platform engineering and software architecture at Newfold Digital, including Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud and AI-assisted development. I also help modernise legacy hosting platforms and work on CI/CD, reusable frameworks and APIs.

Want to talk?

If you’re planning a WordPress site, or you’d simply like to chat about AI-assisted development and how it’s changing the way we build, I’d be glad to hear from you. You can reach me through the contact section or email me at manu@manu.co.in. If hosting is on your mind, my post on choosing WordPress hosting for a small business is a good place to start.

About the author: Manu Mathew is a Technical Lead Engineer at Newfold Digital with 14+ years in enterprise software across web hosting, healthcare, investor relations and SaaS. He works on platform engineering and AI-assisted development and is a Certified Ethical Hacker; earlier in his career, as a trainer at Spectrum Softtech Solutions, he mentored trainees. See his experience.

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