A pivotal role in the software development world is a tech lead. They harmonize innovation, technology, and collaboration in a way that helps a company’s project thrive.
To understand more about this role, we dive into their responsibilities, character-defining traits, and how to become one yourself or hire one!
What is a tech lead?
Tech lead is a position for developers that bridges the gap between them and management functions. These seasoned software developers have garnered enough expertise to oversee the team’s software development.
Their primary role is to ensure the team’s solutions uphold high standards. They play a collaborative role with the DevOps and the Project Managers, maintaining a vital link in the technical project’s chain – ensuring everything is in the direction of the predefined goals.
Although tech leaders are like the main developers, they must also have leadership and collaboration skills. Because even though they aren’t technically in the management designation, they have to foster an environment for the developers that promotes creativity, leadership, and teamwork.
What is the difference between a tech lead and a team lead?
A tech lead is mainly concerned with the intricate technical aspects of the project execution. However, a team lead will be in charge of people management for the assigned team, including managing vacation schedules, workload distributions, and more. The difference between tech lead and team lead is their nuanced responsibilities and roles.
Tech leads:
- Make critical decisions about the software’s architecture, design patterns, and technical direction
- Are chosen based on their advanced technical skills and how they guide the technical solutions
- They ensure technology is in alignment with the technical strategy of the company
- Maintain the coding standards through code reviews
- Mentor junior developers and help them advance in their careers with their expertise
- Carry out education sessions for knowledge-sharing purposes
Team leads:
- Manage team dynamics, assign tasks, and track progress
- They are chosen for their collaborative and communication skills
- They act as a bridge between the team members and the stakeholders of the company
- Handle conflicts and challenges within the team and offer solutions
- They handle the performance evaluation processes of the team members and help them reach their goals
Responsibilities of a Tech Lead
The technical lead wears many hats and is responsible for many duties. A few of the tech lead responsibilities include:
Setting frameworks and standards
Tech leads are responsible for setting a project’s scope, team, and resources. They also definite the best practices and establish the frameworks to improve the team’s performance. These processes serve as the foundation for consistent quality.
Project direction
Tech leaders are pioneers in their field. This means they can create a technical roadmap and set the direction of the project because of their technical expertise. They make the decisions on programming languages (unless it is also defined), tools, and architecture which impact the project directly.
Facilitate resolution
While developing code, many challenges come and go – a dynamic world where each day brings new quirks. Therefore, an effective tech lead handles such problems and facilitates efficient resolution that guides the team back on the team with minimal disruption.
Team building and ensuring morale
Although tech leads are primarily concerned with the technical details of a project, considering their seniority and professional experience, they also have the onus of nurturing the teams. They help improve individual strengths and match roles based on their personalities.
They are also responsible for promoting a culture of innovation and instilling leadership skills in younger minds. They have to ensure every team member is heard and valued.
Track progress
They monitor the progress of the project so they can identify potential bottlenecks. They assess the work focus and volume to determine where is productivity lost. Then they make resolutions for quicker turnaround time, bringing the project back on track with its goals.
Collaboration and reporting
Being the effective tech lead of a project also means collaborating with multiple stakeholders. Tech leads work closely with other leaders and managers as well. They are responsible for handling data to generate comprehensive reports.
The reports must highlight the development metrics, the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), success metrics, and future trends. Such data-informed insights help make better product decisions.
Code quality assurance
Tech leads ensure code quality is always adhering to the standards. They implement the best practices and metrics for a robust and sustainable codebase. They also ensure regular code review with the development team, providing a platform for constructive feedback and opportunities to learn and improve.
Architecture and design direction
Tech leads consistently oversee architectural decisions. They assess the code churn and identify the areas of improvement. These assessments lead to design discussions that can bring out necessary changes and help the technical foundation to be solid and adaptable.
Manage technical debt
Technical innovation is crucial in growing companies. However, there has to be a balance between innovation and code quality. Sometimes developers end up pushing the quality of code for newer features which in the long run leads to technical debt. They track the evolution of the project and its technical debt and ensure it is taken care of to avoid future challenges.
Shipping quality code
Since tech leads are involved with the development process from the architectural decisions, they are also responsible for shipping the code. They track the development frequency, deployment size, and bug detection rate. With this, they ensure that timely software releases are high in quality without causing disruptions to the end users.
Characteristics of a good tech lead
Handling responsibilities and technical abilities are essential to being a good tech lead. However, here are some other important characteristics that drive the success of this role:
- Prioritizes the team over personal success and ensures shared wins and responsibility.
- Delegates well to prevent burnout between team members and themselves. They know when to handle tasks personally and when to hand them over.
- Manages time effectively and alternates between the “maker’s schedule” and “manager’s schedule” to balance work.
- Knows when to give challenging feedback in a constructive manner that helps the team grow. They show how they care for the well-being of the developers and address performance issues collaboratively.
- Doesn’t let personal, professional setbacks impact the team. A good team leader understands repercussions and takes on responsibility without blaming the team and losing morale. They pick themselves back up and work on fixing issues without allowing any space for inappropriate behavior or office politics.
- They have empathy and emotional intelligence to handle teams and foster an environment of compassion. They create space for inclusivity with no room for bias.
These traits sometimes cannot be taught, but tech leads need to inherently have these characteristics or learn from others and build on them. This is what makes a good tech lead.
How to become a tech lead
To become a tech lead, you need to have certain qualifications.
Here are some of them:
Get a Bachelor’s Degree:
Earn a degree in a relevant field like computer science, information science, computer engineering, or other engineering/computer degrees.
Pursue additional certification:
You can complete courses on Project Management Professional (PMP) and earn relevant certifications to showcase you are prepared for a technical leadership position. They help validate your skills and make a strong case for why you fit the role.
Develop relevant skills:
As a tech lead, you must hone skills like programming, system understanding, and system architectures, and soft skills like leadership, communication, problem-solving, decision-making, and multitasking.
Gain professional experience:
You must work in software development roles to accumulate enough experience and then be promoted to tech lead. In your experience as a developer, you have consistently shown initiative. This involves being an active problem solver, seeking opportunities to learn and grow when needed, and constantly upskilling to keep up with trends.
If you follow the above steps, you are bound to reach a position where the natural career trajectory will be the role of a tech lead.
How to hire a tech lead
A tech lead has to have enough technical expertise and capabilities to be a leader. Here are some ways you can identify such skills:
Understand their technical background:
Tech leads must understand the technical design principle well. They need to make architectural decisions and understand the codebase well – hence, they need to be technically sound and capable overall.
People management skills:
A tech lead deals with several stakeholders, managers, and technical architects. This means they must excel at managing such people effectively and being the bridge enabling a collaborative environment.
Understand the candidate’s strategic thinking:
Look for candidates who understand the importance of long-term and short-term goals. They should be able to weigh tradeoffs in quality assurance and technical design decisions.
Communication skills:
Effective communication skills are an important tech lead role. They must be able to communicate well with their peers. This includes breaking down complex topics, guiding cross-functional teams, and communicating with empathy.
With these criteria at the helm of the decisions, you should be able to assess who is the right tech lead for your company.
Tech leads guide your company toward success
Tech leads, with their leadership, technical, and emphatic skills, drive teams to work collaboratively to build a project the right way. Without them, there would be loopholes in technical timelines, gaps that are overlooked for innovation, and projects whose timelines would drag on.
A tech lead balances it all to do right by their peers and the organization.
Typo, an intelligent engineering platform, helps to make your task easier as a tech lead. Through the platform, you can identify SDLC metrics, and delivery bottlenecks in real-time and foster a positive work culture.
