The Tech Lead is the leadership team member responsible for our technology decisions. They work with other 2i2c leaders to make choices about overall organizational direction, then work with engineers and product team members to deliver a platform and services that make progress on our organizational direction.
They pair with the Head of Products & Services to make technology choices that meet our communities’ needs, and with the Engineering Manager to support the team as a whole delivering on the commitments we make. They have authority and responsibility to make best effort, “safe to try” technological choices when we cannot reach consensus.
The Tech Lead and Engineering manager are co-equals in the case of hiring or exit decisions, and the two roles must either reach consensus or disagree but commit.
Responsibilities¶
Building engineering capacity & capability.¶
Our engineering team is small, and we’re often at an intersectional cutting edge from an engineering perspective. The Tech Lead focuses on proactively identifying new and building technology skills for 2i2c (where they pair with the Engineering Manager) and the wider community, and guiding others in how and when to build those skills. However, ultimately the Engineering Manager is responsible (and accountable) for the team’s engineering capacity and capabilities.
Scoping and sizing projects.¶
The Tech Lead will be heavily involved in scoping, sizing and refining projects, identifying architectural choices to be made, making them, and clearly communicating them to other members of the team. This should be done at the ‘right’ level of detail so team members can work autonomously, have room for technical growth, but aren’t left to fend for themselves.
Community partnership.¶
One of 2i2c’s key strengths is how it is a true partner to many different communities. The Tech Lead needs a good understanding of the big picture, and serves as a technical expert alongside other Product & Services team members.
Hands-on coding application and infrastructure work.¶
There is still a lot of code to be written, infrastructure to be set up, outages to be handled and folks to be unblocked. While the Technical Lead role is not primarily a hands-on-keyboard job, they will take on complex technical challenges.
Health of our infrastructure.¶
Ultimately, the Tech Lead is the single person best able to see the big picture of our engineering decisions, and plays a key role in defining and monitoring the health of our platform.
How they interact with other team members¶
Acts as primary point of interface between Product and Engineering groups
Represents engineering interests and expertise in coordination meetings involving other areas of the business
Solves complex technical problems with broad, cross-project scope, often involving coordination with multiple teams across different open source projects.
Acts as a point of escalation for complex technical problems, preferring to solve them with collaborative guidance rather than ‘just doing it’.
Coordinates with product/business leads on roadmap priorities, and provide implementation suggestions and effort estimates.
Provides guidance on major strategic questions in infrastructure and engineering team strategy
Helps grow engineering capacity via mentorship, code & design review, and sponsorship to find opportunities for engineers to grow