Technical Lead

Summary

We are a tight-knit group with diverse backgrounds who value our culture. Individually, we strive to be humble, hungry, and people-smart. As a team we put learners first, we share before we are ready, we ask clarifying questions, we highlight what's working, we have difficult conversations, we get agreements, and we make time for life. These aren't just slogans we put on the wall…we love and live by our culture.

A technical lead at Lessonly is chiefly responsible for leading the technical direction of a squad. This involves establishing a technical vision, resolving technical disagreements, and managing the technical quality of team deliverables (source). A person in this role has a strong technical background in both the frontend and backend aspects of an application. Tech leads at Lessonly are master communicators and collaborators, able to interface with product managers, designers, architects, QA, reliability engineers, and tech leads on other squads.

Tech leads at Lessonly are responsible for working closely with a product manager to determine the high-level feasibility and cost of features and product changes. The tech lead serves as the subject-matter expert for all things related to their product to the product manager, other engineers, designers, QA, and tech leads on other squads. Additionally, tech leads serve as agile coaches for their squads, helping estimate tasks, break-down work into smaller pieces, and remove blockers that prevent the team hitting their commitments.

This specific position is for the Empower squad. The Empower squad works to empower both customers and internal teams to do their best work. They focus on building internal tools to ensure our teams can support our customers to the best of their ability.

Responsibilities

• Senior Full-stack Engineer
• Consistently ships high-quality back-end and front-end code
• Currently at a high level, our tech stack/tooling includes Rails, React, AWS
• Delivers awesome, customer-focused solutions iteratively.

• Technical Product Discovery
• Works closely with product management and design to assess the technical possibilities and understand or test the feasibility of potential solutions that meet customer needs.

• Architect / Squad subject-matter expert
• Collaborates and coordinates with the tech leads of other Lessonly squads to share knowledge and ensure technical excellence and innovation
• Understands both the frontend and backend aspects of the squad's functional responsibilities.
• May not know the answer to every question but is willing to find out.
• Reviews code and provides recommendations to other team members
• On-call for issues related to the squad's functional responsibilities

• Team Lead
• Keeps the team accountable on roadmap commitments
• Brings up any timeline risks early and collaborates to find a way to mitigate them.
• Works with all members of the team to determine roadmap commitments
• Able to break down work into bite-size pieces
• Sets an example for the team in transparency and asking clarifying questions.

What to expect in this role?

A tech lead at Lessonly IS:

• Mentoring, reviewing code, and generally helping their fellow engineers. (We already expect this, but still, I'm calling it out)
• The person most-responsible when it comes to technical issues or decisions on a squad.
• Working closely with the product managers and designers to innovate and discover awesome solutions.
• Providing high-level cost and time estimates for solutions.
• Working with the engineers on a squad to come up with refined estimates the closer we get to build and delivery.
• Writing code everyday that makes the product better

A tech lead at Lessonly IS NOT:

• Managing the engineers on their squad or conducting 1:1s.
• The sole person consulted for squad related decisions. They may have the biggest say or strongest opinion, but other engineers count.
• The only person estimating work. This is still a squad function, but with their oversight.

Lessonly Benefits

• Health Insurance - Medical, vision, dental, and life plans available.
• Disability Insurance - Short-term and long-term coverage.
• Paid Parental Leave - Because time with your new baby llama is important.
• Unlimited PTO - We believe in making time for life, so we like to keep this benefit simple.
• 401k Plan - Save and prepare for the future with us.
• Equity - When we win as a team, you should win, too.
• Flexibility - What works best for you, works for us—whether that means you're in the office, at a coffee shop, or at your kitchen table. We have llamas working in Indy and across the U.S. We also provide everyone with a tech stipend to keep their tech rocking and rolling smoothly.
• Work Happier - Our community is one of recognition and fun. From company-wide shoutouts to dogs in the office to our vibrant Slack workspace, we're constantly collaborating and celebrating together.
• Make Indy Brighter - Every year, we select four organizations that serve kids in Indianapolis and dedicate our time, money, and talent to them. Making time to volunteer and give back to our community matters.
• Professional Development - We learn from experts, community leaders, and each other constantly. From Mass Classes and workshops to company events and daily conversations, we're always growing.
• Accessibility - We're conveniently located in the Monon16 neighborhood, right by the Monon Trail and the Red Line if you prefer to run, walk, bike, or bus to work.
• Self-Care - We have in-house yoga, ping-pong, Peloton bikes, a meditation room, a library for silent work, a mother's room, wellness groups, and more because we're humans first and llamas second.