Software Engineer (Squad Lead)  

About the role

As a Software Engineer Squad Lead, you are expected to lead and drive various projects assigned to your squad. You will also be the knowledge leader and code owner of a core sub-system of Tinkerlust’s platform, training your squad to support you in maintaining the system.

A squad leader role will see you leading 2-3 of engineers. You will work with your squad to produce and execute solutions. For example, this can come in the form of designing tech specifications, system design, writing code, running meetings, giving presentations, research and testing solutions. You remove blockers in your squad by either clearing their calendars or taking a complex problem off their plate. You will provide technical coaching and ensure your squad output is of high technical quality.

In this role, you will have the privilege of directly impacting our user’s user-experience through systems that you design and build. You will collaborate with UI/UX Designers and Product Managers supporting your squad during the design and implementation of solutions. You will use your creativity and problem solving skills – along with your technical knowledge – to develop great experiences.

Software Engineer Squad Leads take a more process-oriented and strategic role, so you will need to be extremely comfortable with diving into new technologies/frameworks with little hand holding. Of course we do not expect you to know everything so you will be mentored by your seniors along the way to master these high level system concepts.

As a Software Engineer Squad Lead at Tinkerlust, you will get the opportunity to experience all aspects of software engineering, from system design, programming, building & deploying scalable systems, establishing great engineering processes and business impact of engineering solutions.

Tasks and Responsibilities

• Develop a solid understanding of Tinkerlust’s business model
  • You will undergo an onboarding program where you will learn about the business and how we model it in our software
• Oversee and lead the development of new features assigned to your squad
  • Writing specs for your squads members to execute
  • Providing skeleton projects/code as a starting point for your squad members
  • Delegation of tasks and issues to your squad members
  • Ensuring good documentation is written
  • Code review to ensure high standard of code quality and industry best practices
• Maintaining a core sub-system of Tinkerlust Platform
  • Periodic reviews, debugging and coming up with solution to resolve errors reported from Sentry
  • Identifying and improving parts of the system, such as and not limited to, code quality, forming effective and efficient test cases, overhauling the system if required to improve user experience.
  • Ensuring documentation is up to date with changes
• Coaching your squad members
  • Mentoring via code reviews or training to improve their code quality and understanding of computer science fundamentals
  • Generating skeletons for your squad as a starting point for solutions or new features
• Lead meetings within your squad and between different departments.
• Working closely with Product, UI/UX and Growth teams to lead engineering efforts for medium to large and complex projects.
  • Formalise timelines and deliverables for the project
  • Collecting requirements from different teams
  • Designing technical specifications (e.g. database tables, classes)
  • Delegating work to your squad members for execution

• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Computer Engineering, Information Technology or related fields
• More than 3 years experience in software engineering in startups
• More than 1 year experience in leading at least 2 engineers to complete mid-size projects
• Strong Computer Science fundamentals in data structures and software engineering
• Practical knowledge in algorithms, networking and database concepts
• Able to break down complex problems into actionable steps
• Able to demonstrate strong understanding of software engineering concepts & fundamentals
• In-depth understanding of at least one web frameworks (Ruby on Rails, Django, Laravel, etc)
• In-depth knowledge of minimum one Javascript Framework (React, Angular, Vue, etc)
• Flexible, decisive and know how to put ego aside and focus on solving problems.
• Not afraid to voice your opinions on technical decisions made by the team
• High level of initiative to plan your own sprint deliverables
• Desire to learn