Engineering Lead

<h1><strong>ENGINEERING LEAD</strong></h1> <p><em>Own the technical vision for your systems. Keep them sound as everything ships.</em></p> <h2><strong>The Role</strong></h2> <p>As an Engineering Lead at Counterpart, you are the architect and tech lead for a domain: the claims system, the underwriting platform, the infrastructure layer, or another area where the systems are tightly coupled and need one person keeping them honest. You know how your systems work, how they should evolve, and where they break. You own the technical vision for them.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>During planning, you partner with a Technical Product Manager to break initiatives into projects and write the high-level technical requirements for each. Before you lock an approach, you check with the other Engineering Leads: is anyone solving something similar, and should we solve it once? During execution, you run the technical review that gates each project, then step back and let the project team build. You come back in when an architectural question surfaces.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Together with the other Engineering Leads, you set and maintain Counterpart's technical standards. You are also an engineer. You build, and you can be called on to lead a project yourself.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>People management is optional in this role, not the default. Some Engineering Leads manage a few engineers; most do not. Either way, you lead primarily through the technical vision, the standards, and the quality of your own work, not through the org chart.</p> <h2><strong>YOU WILL</strong></h2> <h3><strong>Own the Technical Vision for Your Systems</strong></h3> <ul> <li>Know where each system in your domain is going, how they depend on each other, and where the boundaries and data contracts need to be explicit.</li> <li>Hold the line on architecture. Catch redundant systems before they get built. Push for reuse and consolidation. Say no when the easier path creates long-term sprawl.</li> <li>Check with the other Engineering Leads before locking a technical approach: is anyone solving something similar, does this create or break an assumption in another domain? Lightweight, peer-to-peer. Natural collaboration over process.</li> <li>Make deliberate calls on technical debt within your domain. Know when to accumulate it, when to pay it down, and when to refactor. Communicate the trade-offs to your Technical Product Manager and the VP of Engineering.</li> <li>Own the context architecture for your domain. Keep documentation, design patterns, and domain knowledge up to date so engineers can operate your systems without relying on tribal knowledge.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Plan the Work</strong></h3> <ul> <li>Partner with your Technical Product Manager during planning. Combined, you turn business problems into initiatives and projects. You write the high-level technical requirements for each project: the system approach, the scalability, security, and integration considerations that determine whether the plan is real.</li> <li>Roll projects up to a rough t-shirt size (multi-month or single month) with your Technical Product Manager. For multi-month projects, define what is achievable within one month.</li> <li>Advise the VP of Engineering on Project Lead assignments. You know which engineers can carry which projects.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Review Through Reviews</strong></h3> <ul> <li>Run the technical review for each funded project in your domain. The Project Lead plays back the rounded-out requirements and approach. You confirm the approach fits your systems, follows the s…