tailk
Engineering Team Lead (ETL)
The Job in Short
The ETL is the "Captain" of a single squad. This is a "player-coach" role focused on delivery predictability, people leadership, and day-to-day execution. You are a Senior+ Engineer who manages people, not a manager who used to code; if you cannot open the IDE and debug a production issue, you cannot perform this role.
Meet the Job
- Delivery Mastery: Optimize the team’s "Idea to Production" cycle time and strengthen delivery predictability.
- Talent Density: Own 1:1s, performance calibration, hiring decisions, and succession planning for your squad of 6–9 engineers.
- Hands-on Leadership: Spend ~50% of your time on system design and ~20% on hands-on development like code reviews and unblocking technical issues.
- Conflict Resolution: Mediate interpersonal or cross-team conflicts early to protect team cohesion and delivery.
- BS Detector: Use your technical depth to spot unrealistic estimates, fragile designs, or risk blind spots.
- Emergency Response: During critical incidents, jump in technically or coordinate the response effectively.
- AI-Native Engineering: Lead the adoption of agentic tooling, LLM workflows, and AI automation within your team to accelerate the development lifecycle.
How About You?
- You have 5+ years of experience and have shipped production code recently.
- You have an explicit desire to lead people but remain an active technical contributor.
- You possess high emotional intelligence and resilience under pressure.
- You are a strong unblocker who translates and synthesizes rather than just relaying messages.