How to grow into the tech lead position

What skills do I need to develop to grow into a software engineering tech lead? That’s the question I asked myself and my manager last year.

First off, before we jump into my story of how I became a tech lead, and how you can become one as well, let’s define our terms.

1. What is a tech lead?

For a quick overview: You might think of a tech lead as a hybrid between an individual contributor, team lead, and an architect.

They provide technical guidance, mentoring, and direction for a team. They also work to make sure project plans are well designed, and help ensure the team delivers projects successfully.

2. How did I become a tech lead?

I’ve always been drawn to help lead projects and work closely with other engineering leaders working through future plans and thinking through improvements our systems needed.

After learning about the tech lead role opening at the startup I was at, it really peaked my interest.

I’ve shared before of how I joined that startup, which went on to be acquired and listed as one of Inc 300’s fastest growing companies.

I remember sitting down with my manager and asking: “What skills do I need to develop to grow into a software engineering tech lead?”

I knew the tech lead role would be a good stepping stone between an IC, and an Engineering Manager, which I eventually wanted to move towards.

My manager shared that it would be valuable for me to get to the L5 Senior Software Engineer 2 level before moving into manager.

And so in conjunction with working towards tech lead, it would also be a good opportunity to work on some of my engineering skills to get me to that next level.

It ended up taking me about 6 months of hard work to grow into the tech lead role.

Here is a list of things I worked on during that time:

• Path to MA TL for next quarter

  • Crushing everything assigned to me for the release

  • Go to person for PMs and CX for issues

  • Code reviews (strong and useful) across your products

  • Be the go to person for answering product technical questions

  • Tech spec reviews

  • Onboarding

  • Documentation (hardly any atm)

  • Continuing to earn respect of peers, and of PMs, EMs, and strategic staff+ level ICs

Whew, I remember thinking: “that’s a lot, but I’m up for the challenge.”

3. What are the responsibilities and focus of a tech lead?

Now, a year into being a tech lead, its become more clear to me the skills needed to be successful.

If you want to be a successful tech lead, there are 4 main areas you’ll need to be proficient in. They include leveling up in several key areas including processes, communication and thinking.

A lot of these may be referred to as “soft skills”. I wish there was a better term for them, because some of them are harder to be good at than the “hard skills” we all usually focus on. 😅

Emerge as force multiplier for your team

It’s no longer just about you. A lot of what you will do as a tech lead will be ensuring and supporting and guiding your team towards technical excellence.

Some examples include:

• Ensure code quality though through and timely code reviews

• Guide architectural designs through technical spec reviews

• Work to onboard new engineers and help them get up to speed

Partner with other engineering leaders

As a tech lead you’ll be collaborating very closely with PMs, EMs, and other staff+ engineers. You’ll work together to ensure the success of your team and of your projects.

Some things you’ll be involved in include:

• Collaborate with staff engineers on architecture / tech debt improvements

• Understand how staffing and work assignment happens and be a contributor in sprint planning with your EM and PM

• Be the go to person for answering technical questions in your product area

• Helping estimate effort in roadmapping and planning meetings

Push for systems engineering quality

As a tech lead you’ll also be working on infrastructure health and long term priorities.

Not everything you work on will come from the product or business or customer teams. You’ll need to start advocating for systems and processes that need work / upgrades for the longterm health of the business.

Some areas that you’ll focus on:

• Develop documentation for complex systems / areas of code

• Build deep core problem solving skills

• Develop expertise in alerts and system monitoring

• Familiarity with various areas around longterm infrastructure improvements

Time management and prioritization

Being a tech lead requires spinning a lot more plates than being an IC does.

You’ll likely be keeping up with many different projects, rather than being just the lead engineer on one project.

Time management and prioritization will be key to your success.

I remember at first it felt like there’s no way I could get everything done so I needed to work an extra hr or so figuring out how to spin all the plates.

Gradually I was able to see what the top priorities are, and started being able to say no to things I could pass off to others or just shouldn’t be working on.

Soon I was in a good groove and was able to juggle everything while keeping to my normal hrs with a good schedule.

4. So do tech leads still code?

Yes, but not as much. 😅

Personally I’ve been coding between 20-40% of my time as a tech lead.

That’s been tricky for me personally as I moved into a tech lead role.

Many of us as engineers tend see our value calculated by how many lines of code we write. However, as we move into tech lead or staff+ positions, you may start writing less and less code.

Which ends up in days ending by thinking: “ahh... I didn’t get anything done!”

Translation = I didn’t code 💻

If we step back for a second, we’ll see there are three ways we tend to think about our contributions/value: 👇🏼

1. Do I feel that I’m adding value?

2. Do I feel valued by my coworkers / managers?

3. Do I feel I’m adding value to my resume/personal-brand?

When transitioning to management or senior IC positions, it’s easy for management to see your value, and to see the value to your resume, but it’s harder to see it for yourself.

Again, because we tend to measure our contribution in lines of code written.

My eng manager and I have been discussing all the other ways to add value to the team as a tech lead / senior+ engineer besides just writing code.

We talked about how a lot of them (shared above under responsibilities of a tech lead) are bigger picture contributions.

What’s really cool, is that a lot of them boil down into being a force-multiplier.

Being a force-multiplier on your team can help your entire team level up massively and be more productive - way more than you ever could just by yourself! 🚀👏🏼

I’m working towards a bigger picture of success. If my team is successful, I am also successful.

To quote a friend, Irina Stanescu (The Caring Techie):

Success is no longer about my individual output and my needs, but instead the team output and needs.

5. Is tech lead a title or role? And does it offer a pay raise?

For most companies being a tech lead is going to be a role, not a title / pay raise.

You would be a senior/staff engineer on the team playing the role of technical leader.

So why would you take on that role?

It can be a great stepping stone towards staff engineer or engineering manager. Or even just working on your leadership / engineering soft skills.

It’s not for everyone, but I’ve really enjoyed it.

I’ve been the technical lead for my engineering product team for a little over a year now and it’s been challenging, but also super fulfilling!

If you have dreams of leveling up into a technical lead – sit down with your manager, and other mentors and talk through what it looks like to get to the next level in your engineering and leadership skills. 🚀

If you consistently show up – anything is possible! 💪💪💪

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Tech leads or staff engineers, did I miss anything? I’d love to hear from you! 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

For everyone, what have you seen in your team / company that makes the difference between a good tech lead and a great tech lead? Let me know!

Until next week 👇🏼

Catch me daily on LinkedIn and Twitter, where I share everything I’ve learned about becoming a fullstack engineer and leveling up into a senior+ engineer and tech lead at a 🚀 ship startup.

I’d love to connect with you or chat with you in the comments on my posts. 🙌