Do you long for a job where you could spend part of your week laser-focused on delivering product features and the rest on coaching team members?
At Crossover, we believe the top performer on the team should give first-line technical coaching. Managers in our partner organizations are active contributors to the team’s roadmap instead of simple task schedulers. With deep knowledge of the code base and product architecture, our managers provide detailed, insightful, and actionable feedback to the development team.
If guiding the team with your software development insights to improve the output quality excites you, now is your time to fast-track your career into management without sacrificing your technical expertise.
What you will be doing
- Pull Request: Building directly on top of AWS, utilizing the full power and range of the platform to generate simple solutions that are easy to maintain
- Root Cause Analysis: Cracking the code on the toughest bugs by diving deep to find the true root cause and identifying permanent fixes based on your analysis
- Technical Coaching: Reviewing your teams’ output that doesn’t meet our quality bar, giving detailed coaching on pattern matching, using new technologies, and understanding architecture’
- Breaking down release milestones into high-level execution plans
- Defining the granular tasks needed by engineering to implement releases
- Reviewing and accepting engineering work, ensuring it meets all of your requirements
What you will NOT be doing
- HR and administrative management. We want your technical expertise. We will never waste your time doing performance reviews, committees, etc.
- Project management or assigning tasks. We have automated that, you don’t have to ever worry about prioritization.
- Chasing developers to get their work and tasks delivered on time
- Performing low-level exhaustive quality assurance work
Key Responsibilities
- Build a team that delivers excellent work at a high pace
- Create high-quality software releases by leveraging engineering talent
- Ensure the engineering deliverables snap together well and fully implement the milestone
- Imagine how users will interact with a product and develop robust use cases
Candidate Requirements
- A degree that included the study of data structures, algorithms, and computing fundamentals OR hands-on experience as a software engineer
- Experience developing product execution plans and reviewing engineering specs
- Senior-level coding experience in the software industry
- Excited about coaching teams to write better code through technical excellence
Frequently asked questions
How is this role different from other similar roles?
In most companies, this role typically includes a degree of project management. All project management rituals are automated and this role is focused on developing the team using technical excellence.
Within most companies, this role is at the same pay grade as Senior Software Engineers, but Lead Software Engineers are the managers of other Software Engineers and have broader responsibilities. While the main output of a Senior Software Engineer is code, Lead Software Engineers are focused on building a great team.
What makes someone successful in this role?
To be successful in this role, you must be deeply technical, learn quickly, and be able to simplify software design and source code by finding better implementation alternatives. You will build a great team by coaching others on the simplest solution for a technical challenge.
The most successful people in this role share these core skills:
- Big-picture thinkers - they can read use cases and technical specifications and envision how they fit into the broader product
- Detail-oriented - they are obsessively focused on finding every detail that could improve the UX and account for variations
- Technically proficient - they understand how software is architected and can both define and break down the work required to achieve the desired goals
What is the main challenge for this role?
The main challenge is to identify the simplest technical designs and create code simplifications for every case across multiple technologies, and translate these into insights for improving the team’s output quality.
Does this role require hands-on coding?
Hands-on coding is required when you provide concrete individualized coaching to engineers. Our managers do not stay at the “buzzwords-level” (e.g., you need to improve your quality). They will review the actual deliverables of their team, come up with deep technical insights and then, shoulder-to-shoulder (in the virtual space), demonstrate how to actually perform the work. So you need to be a great coder and technical person.
I’m currently an engineering team-lead. Is this role right for me?
Are you super-technical and spend more than 50% of your day-to-day on technical tasks? If so, you should apply.
How can I get promoted to the next position on the career ladder ?
After one year in the role, top-performers can apply for new positions and move up the career ladder. With proper guidance and career planning, you can become a VP of Software Engineering and eventually an SVP of Software Engineering. Your career path is dependent on your performance.
What you will learn
You will learn how to make better architecture decisions and deliver higher quality code. You will learn how to raise the bar for everyone on the team by providing actionable coaching.
