Have you ever seen a bold idea light up a room, only to fizzle because no one knew what to do with it?

That’s where the Concepting Engineer shines.

They’re the bridge-builders.

The ones who can take a spark of possibility and shape it into a plan that others can act on.

While ideators live in the “what if,” conceptors thrive in the “how.”

But here’s the challenge: too often, organizations mistake them for simple project managers instead of recognizing their unique superpower—the ability to translate ambiguity into structure.

So let’s hand this over to our resident expert, Blake Sanchez, who has lived and breathed the concepting role through every stage of his engineering career.

Blake’s Take

At our core, a concepting engineer is the problem solver. 

We want to know the end goal and be given some guardrails to ensure we are going in the right direction. 

We bring a lot of energy to ambiguity and enjoy the challenge of finding the answer. 

The concepting engineer is also a power networker. We love to step back and examine the problem they are solving from a higher level to ensure they understand it. This often requires input from experts in other fields. You will find that concepting engineers often have a strong network of subject matter experts with whom they maintain rapport and can ping for input to build their solution.

While finding an answer when one is not obvious is a strength of the concepting engineer, finishing the detailed work is their weakness.

Once visibility to the solution is obvious, the challenge driving the energy to solve it, falls away. 

That is not to say that concepting engineers will not do detailed engineering work, it is part of every engineering role. But, to feel satisfied with our role in engineering, the concepting task needs to be some part of our day to day.

Ultimately, Concepting engineers are the people who take what feels messy and unshaped and begin bringing order to it.

They see the pathway where others only see the problem.

You’ll often find them sketching frameworks, building models, or asking clarifying questions that anchor an idea back to reality.

They thrive in collaboration with ideators, because while ideators spark, conceptors shape. Together, they can change the game.

— Blake Sanchez

EQ Superpowers of the Concepting Engineer

For the Concepting Engineer, it’s…. drumroll please…..

Clarity, Communication, and Patience.

• Clarity in seeing patterns and frameworks in the midst of complexity.

• Communication skills that translate sparks into language that executives, customers, and teammates can all understand.

• Patience in creating space for ideas to be tested, refined, and made actionable.

The EQ Superpower: Clarity + Communication + Patience

At the heart of concepting is the gift of structure.

Neuroscience tells us that the prefrontal cortex is where planning, prioritization, and pattern recognition live. Conceptors lean heavily on this region, organizing chaos into clarity.

Unlike ideators, who get dopamine spikes from novelty, conceptors find reward in resolution—taking a tangled mess and laying it out into a roadmap.

But clarity alone doesn’t make them valuable. It’s when clarity is paired with communication that they unlock their full potential.

Concepting engineers are at their best when they can:

• Facilitate messy meetings and walk out with a clear framework.

• Translate abstract technical possibilities into concrete business value.

• Connect dots across teams, surfacing alignment others might miss.
  

This taps into the social brain network, particularly the prefrontal-temporal pathways that help us sequence complex information and share it coherently.

Put simply: conceptors make ideas stick.

So what can we do as engineering leaders?

Supporting concepting engineers means amplifying their structure-building strengths while protecting them from being overburdened.

Here are 5 ways leaders can do that:

1. Give them raw material.

• Pair them with ideators who bring sparks they can shape.

• Invite them into early brainstorms to begin forming pathways from the start.

• Give them the outcome, not the solution

  
   🧠 The Neuroscience: The brain’s reward system lights up when patterns emerge. Conceptors thrive when given unstructured input to organize.
  

2. Recognize the value of structure.

• Celebrate when someone takes a messy idea and turns it into a clear roadmap.

• Reward clarity as much as creativity.

• Ensure you protect the structures they created.

   🧠 The Neuroscience: Pattern recognition networks (the basal ganglia + prefrontal cortex) fuel satisfaction when disorder becomes order.

3. Put them in cross-functional conversations.

• Let them connect dots between engineering, product, and business strategy.

• Give them time to create meaningful connections with their cross-functional partners.

• Encourage them to lead alignment meetings.

  
   🧠 The Neuroscience: Mirror neurons in the social brain activate most when engineers build bridges across perspectives.
  

4. Develop their storytelling.

• Invest in training around presentation and narrative framing.

• Celebrate when they lead with impact.

• Teach them how to frame ideas in the language of executives and customers.
  
   🧠 The Neuroscience: Storytelling activates multiple regions (sensory + emotional), making ideas memorable and persuasive.
  

5. Protect them from overload.

• Conceptors are often leaned on heavily—be mindful of burnout.

• Balance their workload so their clarity doesn’t blur under pressure.

• Celebrate when they take breaks. Rest is KEY for their creativity.

  
   🧠 The Neuroscience: Chronic overload floods the brain with cortisol, impairing the very executive functions conceptors rely on.

Closing

Without conceptors, ideas stay stuck in notebooks. With them, sparks become strategies and strategies become impact.

If you’re ready to start creating environments where your engineers can turn sparks into systems, let’s talk. You can book a call with me to explore how to unlock the full potential of your team.

And stay tuned! In the next newsletter, we’ll dive into the Execution Engineer—the ones who thrive in bringing those systems into reality and delivering results at scale.

If you missed our kick off to the series, you can find it here:

And here’s a link to our last article on the Ideation Engineer:

Follow along, share your thoughts, and let’s continue this conversation—because building high-performing engineering teams starts with understanding the people behind the ideas.Follow along, share your thoughts, and let’s keep building engineering teams that bring out the best in every role.