Technical Leadership Responsibilities

7 responsibilities for the Tech Lead role by area of influence

The role of the Tech Lead is a complex one. It still has many responsibilities within the team but also has many in other places.

In today's issue, I explain 7 responsibilities for the Tech Lead role organized by area of influence

• Within the team

• Outside of the team

• Crosswise

Note: In this newsletter issue, you will notice I’m using fewer paragraphs and a more dotted list. Let me know your feedback about this change by replying to this email or writing a comment.

Technical Leadership Responsibilities

1. Within the team

Technical leadership

• Define technical direction: Make architectural decisions, guide the implementation of quality standards, and maintain a clear vision of the technical product.

• Code review: Ensure code is maintainable, scalable, and meets best practices. Not saying you are a watchdog though.

• Mentoring: Support the technical growth of team members through mentoring, feedback, and coaching.

• Complex problem solving: Lead the design and solution of technical challenges beyond the team's expertise. Leave margin for other teammates to collaborate and grow as well.

Workflow management

• Planning and prioritization: Collaborate with the team to break technical tasks into stories, ensure incremental deliveries, and manage dependencies.

• Facilitate progress: Identify and remove blockers that prevent the team from moving forward. If you have a Scrum Master, you can delegate this task in that role.

• Ensure quality: Oversee automated testing processes, CI/CD, and DevOps practices. This is also about the team; help them with your experience on this for them to understand the value of that culture.

Want to support a team member on the technical career ladder for Tech Lead? This might be of interest.

Feature Owner Role in a Tech Company

Internal communication

• Promote collaboration: Facilitate technical discussions, foster an environment of trust, and avoid knowledge silos.

• Act as technical point of contact: Coordinate with the team to ensure there is clarity on what is being built and how.

2. Outside the team

With other teams

• Cross-functional collaboration: Work with Product Managers, UX Designers, Data Scientists, and others to align business needs and technical goals.

• Technical interoperability: Ensure the team’s technical decisions are aligned with the organization’s overall architecture.

• Dependency management: Coordinate with other engineering teams to address technical interdependencies. Hope you have as less as possible.

With stakeholders and leadership

• Strategic communication: Explain technical decisions and their impact on the product in a way that is understandable to non-technical stakeholders.

• Progress reporting: Provide updates on technical progress, challenges, and key metrics.

• Priority negotiation: Ensure that technical needs are prioritized appropriately alongside business priorities. I would include technical debt and refactoring here, because I’m a big fan of doing this in every single code change. However, it might happen that some legacy code needs concrete allocated work on this.

Advocacy

• Advocate for the team: Protect the team’s time and interests from untimely scope changes or undue pressures.

• Foster team visibility: Share team achievements in leadership meetings or within the organization. This is critical in my opinion. Leadership will not get visibility of you not provide it, at least, medium-big companies.

3. Crosswise

Culture and leadership

• Promote a good technical culture: Foster an environment where innovation, continuous learning, and experimentation are valued.

• Manage conflict: Resolve technical or personal disagreements within the team with impartiality.

• Inspire the team: Act as a role model of responsibility, professionalism, and passion for technology.

Continuous improvement

• Contribute to organizational growth: Participate in initiatives such as defining organizational technical standards or contributing to the improvement of general processes.

• Adapt to change: Be open to new technologies, approaches, and practices that can benefit the team and the product.

Personal development

• Stay up to date: Learn about relevant technology trends and stay up to date with developments in your domain.

• Professional self-care: Manage the balance between your technical and leadership responsibilities to avoid burnout.

Something else you would know valuable? share it in the comments, I read all your comments!

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🔖 Related readings

What exactly is a Tech Lead?

Engineering grading systems

Influence: Lessons from a Staff Engineer and ex-Twitter 8-year Tech Lead