The Team Lead is responsible for leading a cross-functional engineering team with a focus on delivering operational excellence, fostering team growth, and aligning delivery efforts with business objectives. This is a foundational leadership role that ensures team effectiveness through strategic planning, performance management, and strong collaboration with technical and business stakeholders. The Team Lead acts as a force multiplier, enabling individuals and the team to succeed.
Team Operations & Performance:
Organize and manage the daily operations of the team, including workload planning and delivery execution.
Facilitate key team rituals such as sprint plannings, stand-ups, retrospectives, and grooming sessions.
Act as the primary resolver of team-level blockers and escalate issues when appropriate.
Track key performance metrics and ensure alignment with business expectations.
2. People Management & Development:
Lead recruitment efforts in collaboration with the hiring team; participate in interviews and decision-making.
Own onboarding and offboarding processes to ensure smooth transitions.
Set clear goals for team members and conduct regular one-on-one meetings to discuss performance, growth, and well-being.
Drive motivation and engagement by fostering a positive team culture and identifying risks of burnout.
Develop and review individual career plans; provide timely and constructive feedback.
Conduct performance reviews and participate in compensation and promotion discussions.
3. Planning & Prioritization:
Oversee task decomposition and estimation.
Distribute and monitor progress on tasks, ensuring alignment with project goals and team capabilities.
Balance urgent needs with planned initiatives and drive prioritization discussions with stakeholders.
Manage sprint priorities and ensure team members understand focus areas.
4. Cross-Functional Collaboration:
Act as a central point of contact for product managers, project managers, and other team leads.
Coordinate cross-team tasks and dependencies to reduce delivery friction.
Communicate breaking changes and key updates to relevant teams in a timely manner.
Foster transparency and efficiency in cross-team workflows.
5. Risk Management:
Monitor and mitigate team-level risks including bus factor, knowledge silos, and delivery blockers.
Proactively address risks related to team structure (e.g., attrition, promotions, reassignments).
Collaborate with Technical Leads to identify and plan for technical risks and maintenance efforts.
Provide input into workforce planning and hiring priorities.
6. Process & Continuous Improvement:
Track and analyze team-level and product-related metrics; define and maintain baselines.
Challenge the validity and usefulness of existing metrics and propose improvements.
Implement and adapt new team processes, assess adoption, and collect feedback to iterate.
Pilot process innovations at the team level and support broader adoption if successful.