About the Role
The Tech Lead is one of the most important individual roles in the engineering organization. You are the technical authority for your squad - you own the architecture, set the quality bar, govern external partners when applicable, and are the primary escalation point for every engineering decision in your domain.
This role carries light people management alongside deep technical ownership. You will have 3-5 direct reports (Backend Engineers, Frontend/Mobile Engineer, QA Engineer). You are responsible for their day-to-day unblocking, their technical growth, and honest feedback on their work. Formal performance reviews and hiring decisions sit with the Head of Engineering - but in practice, your view of each engineer in your squad is the most important input into those decisions. If an engineer in your squad is struggling, that is your problem to solve.
You are a peer of the Product Owner, not a subordinate. Product owns What. You own How and When. Sprint commitments are signed off by both of you together. If the roadmap is technically unrealistic, your job is to say so early and clearly.
Squad: Android Experience Engineering
- Partner governance: Tech Lead governs all architecture, code review, QA strategy, and releases. Development is currently hybrid in-house and external (vendor).
- Primary tech focus: Android, Java/Kotlin, Partner governance, BE API, QA, Release management
Domain Responsibilities
- Govern app development: Own all architecture decisions, review all PRs, and hold final sign-off on every release. External resources are execution resources, not decision-makers.
- Own the BE API: Oversee the BE API that serves the Android app - designed and maintained by this squad, consumed by the app.
- Own release process and QA strategy: Manage release cadence, feature flag strategy, staged rollout, and rollback procedures for the Android app.
- Own digital experience features: Coordinate with other squads (Device Management Engineering, Payment Engineering, Messaging Engineering, etc.) for cross-squad features and dependencies.
- Drive mobile capability: Build sufficient internal Android expertise over time to deliver the best app experience to clients.
Detailed Responsibilities
Architecture & Technical Direction
- Own the technical architecture for your squad's domain - system design, API contracts, data models, integration patterns, and the Architectural Decision Records that document why.
- Enforce the Watu engineering standards within your squad: GitHub for all code, mandatory PR review, coverage gates, OpenAPI documentation, runbooks, and secrets management.
- Be the squad's representative to the Platform General Architecture.
Delivery & Quality
- Review and approve all pull requests for your squad as the quality gate.
- Define and maintain the squad's Definition of Done.
- Own the squad's release process. Nothing ships without your sign-off.
- Drive sprint planning with the Product Owner.
Partner & Vendor Governance
- Serve as the technical point of accountability where your squad governs an external partner.
- Review partner code via PR access. Nothing a partner ships enters production without your review.
People Management
- Manage 4-6 direct reports (Backend Engineers, Frontend/Mobile Engineers, and QA Engineers) for day-to-day work.
- Unblock engineers actively - pair on hard problems, review designs, and foster a collaborative environment.
- Give direct, timely feedback to your direct reports.
- Model AI-native engineering using AI/LLM tools actively.
Engineering Standards Expected
- All code in GitHub - mandatory peer review, unified branching strategy, green CI before merge.
- APIs documented with OpenAPI/Swagger; Architecture Decision Records for significant decisions.
- No secrets in code - AWS Secrets Manager or Vault. OWASP Top 10 awareness is a baseline expectation.
- AI/LLM tooling used actively in your daily workflow for code generation, test writing, documentation, and debugging.
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