Differences Between Lead Roles and How to Find Your Right Path

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Intro

There are many different lead roles available in the engineering industry, and to make it even more interesting, a specific lead role may mean something different depending on the company.

Here’s an example: the role of a Lead Engineer at some companies includes people management, while in others, the focus is purely technical, with people management handled by a Team Lead or Engineering Manager.

So, whenever you are applying for roles, it’s really important to find out the real expectations and responsibilities. If you assume you know, you are probably assuming wrong.

To help you get a broader perspective of the lead roles and what the most common responsibilities and expectations associated with the roles are, today’s article will help you with that.

At the end of the article, I am also sharing my specific recommendation of what particular career path might be the right fit based on what things you are good at and what things energize you versus not.

Especially if you are wondering what is going to be your next step in your career, this is a must-read article for you!

Let’s start.

There Are 4 Main Lead Roles Available in Our Industry

As mentioned in the Intro of the article, there are many different titles associated with lead roles, but all of the 4 titles fall into these 4 categories:

• Tech Lead

• Team Lead

• Engineering Manager

• Architect

The biggest differentiators between them is the focus on people versus technical direction.

With roles such as Team Lead and Engineering Manager, you are also directly managing your people, and with roles such as Tech Lead or Architect, you don’t have direct reports, therefore you need to influence others without authority.

To be fair, with this article, I am particularly focusing on the Lead roles, which are close to what a Senior Software Engineer might take as a next step.

That’s the reason I am leaving out the roles such as Director, VP, CTO, or similar, as those roles are the next steps after already being in a Lead role.

Now, let’s start with the first category: Tech Lead. This is usually where engineers get their first experience leading a project and owning its outcomes.

Tech Lead

The Tech Lead role is typically the first leadership role that Software Engineers move into. When you become a Senior Software Engineer, you normally start owning projects, and that’s where you already start doing some of the responsibilities of a Tech Lead.

A Tech Lead is someone who is responsible for the technical implementation of the specific project. They create a technical specification, collaborate with a product manager on the planning of the project, and manage expectations of the project with the stakeholders.

Normally, they also estimate the effort that is going to be needed and provide the specific timeline, and also what the specific iterations of deliverables are going to be.

Tech Leads are the go-to people for the tech side of the project, and they are responsible for ensuring everything goes well. It’s a totally different role than the role of a Software Engineer, you do a lot less coding, and you act as a multiplier for others.

Unblocking and helping others to progress and move forward with their tasks is what becomes very important.

Some companies may use the Tech Lead as a direct title, but mostly the Tech Lead role is used to define the role of a certain individual.

For me, personally, I am an advocate of doing a Tech Lead rotation in the engineering team, I believe it’s a good way to share knowledge across the team and give an opportunity to people to grow.

Titles that are mostly associated with this role:

• Lead Engineer

This is how a lot of companies name the role of a Tech Lead, especially in smaller companies. The definition and responsibilities are practically the same for the role as what we mentioned above.

In bigger companies, there is normally a career ladder defined, which doesn’t include the Lead Engineer role, but rather focuses on Staff and Principal Engineer titles, after the Senior role in the IC ladder.

• Staff Engineer

In a lot of teams, the Staff Engineer of the team is also the Tech Lead of the team, so the Tech Lead role is automatically associated with the title. But being the tech lead is just one of the archetypes of a Staff Engineer, and, important to mention, it’s the most common one.

The other 3 archetypes, based on Will Larson and the book Staff Engineer, are:

1. Architect: Similar to the responsibilities of an Architect role.

2. Solver: Dives into the organization’s most complex, high-risk problems. Technically, a very competent engineer.

3. Right Hand: Handles org-scale issues at business/tech/people intersections with the borrowed authority from VP/CTO.

Team Lead

The difference between the Team Lead and a Tech Lead is that the Team Lead is normally the first role in the management path, which also includes people management and having direct reports, while as a Tech Lead, you don’t.

Of course, this varies across different companies, and in some companies, a Team Lead doesn’t have direct reports and engineers report directly to the Engineering Manager.

The main responsibilities of a Team Lead include facilitating meetings like daily meetings, retrospectives, sprint planning, etc., while at the same time also having 1:1 meetings with the team members, providing coaching and mentoring, giving feedback, and delegating work.

I like to view this role as doing what’s best for the team. I like to say that as a Team Lead, you either do what the team needs or you hire to fill this gap.

If the team lacks technical seniority, you need to fill this gap, and if the team is drowning in tasks, you focus on better prioritization, stakeholder management, or help with finishing the tasks. It’s certainly a role for good generalists.

A similar role to the Team Lead is the Tech Lead Manager role, just the expectation is that you are doing both the role of a manager of the team and also being a Tech Lead at the same time.

However, what works best in my opinion is to have these two roles separate, and as I mentioned before, I like to do a rotation of Tech Leads and not have just 1 fixed Tech Lead per team.

Engineering Manager