Developer Recruiting Guide: “Technical Lead”
Technical Lead" can be understood to mean various roles such as Development Lead, Technical Lead, Lead Software Developer, Software Manager, etc.
While the scope of duties varies from company to company, this position is usually held by someone with a software engineering or development background. This person is responsible for the output of multiple team members and often for personnel management. Typically, this person is more senior or experienced (in years or legacy system knowledge) than the other team members or developers.
They are in meetings a lot and represent the Dev team to other teams in the organization. This job may also include a project management role, establishing collaboration with design and product teams, and/ or overseeing system operations and quality (QA).
Technical Leads are often responsible for assigning and delegating work packages to their teams and reporting on work progress. Many serve as technical advisors to management as well as other business functions and act as a bridge to non-technical functions in the organization. This role requires strong technical skills, but also strong leadership and communication skills.
To recruit for this role, we have prepared two appropriate interview questions:
How do you distribute work to your team?
There is no right answer, but the candidate should mention that skills should be aligned with personal preferences. You can go into more detail and ask how the candidate handles assigning work content to someone they know won't like it.
What do you find is the best way to integrate new hires into a tech team?
Most tech leads have had this experience before, or certainly know this situation from an applicant's perspective. Ask what worked well and what didn't? Good leads mention mentoring, regular check conversations, clear goals, or starting with small tasks like bug fixing before taking on larger tasks.
