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.
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.
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!
You are ✨790 Optimist Engineers✨!! 🚀
Thanks for your support and feedback, really appreciate it!
You’re the best! 🖖🏼
𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘰𝘺𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦 💜. 𝘐𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘴!
𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴, ♻️ 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵.
A nice illustration of the Tech Lead responsibilities, Marcos!
In my experience, tech leads in most organizations are considered a role assigned to a developer, rather than a job title itself. The Manager's Path book convers this.
For instance, a Team Leader (line manager) or a Staff Engineer (non-manager) could act as a Tech Lead, even if their titles are not changing.
Thanks for sharing!
I think dotted lists are quite organized. For this length it looks good and condensed. If it’s longer then it might feel a little hard to follow.