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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Lead Full Stack Developer

💰 $150,000 - $220,000

Software DevelopmentEngineeringTechnologyFull StackLeadership

🎯 Role Definition

Are you a seasoned full-stack expert ready to guide a talented engineering team and shape the future of our technology platform? This role requires an inspiring and highly skilled Lead Full Stack Developer to take the helm of our product development efforts. In this critical role, you will act as both a technical authority and a people leader, responsible for architecting robust end-to-end solutions, establishing best practices, and mentoring developers. You will be the driving force behind our software development lifecycle, from conceptualization and design to deployment and maintenance, ensuring we build cutting-edge, scalable, and secure applications that delight our users. If you thrive on solving complex problems and empowering teams to do their best work, we want to hear from you.


📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Full Stack Developer
  • Senior Software Engineer (with full-stack experience)
  • Tech Lead

Advancement To:

  • Engineering Manager
  • Principal Software Engineer
  • Software Architect

Lateral Moves:

  • Solutions Architect
  • DevOps Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead the architectural design, development, and deployment of complex, end-to-end web applications, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and maintainable.
  • Provide technical leadership and mentorship to a team of full-stack, front-end, and back-end engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
  • Define and enforce engineering best practices, coding standards, and design patterns across the team through rigorous code reviews and pair programming sessions.
  • Act as the primary hands-on contributor for the most challenging technical problems, writing clean, high-quality, and efficient code for both server-side and client-side components.
  • Drive the technical roadmap and long-term vision for our core products, evaluating and recommending new technologies, tools, and frameworks to enhance our platform.
  • Collaborate closely with product managers, UX/UI designers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements and user stories into well-architected technical solutions.
  • Own the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), from initial planning and estimation to testing, deployment, and post-launch support.
  • Architect and manage robust, scalable backend services and APIs (RESTful, GraphQL) that serve our web and mobile applications.
  • Design and implement intuitive, responsive, and performant user interfaces using modern front-end frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue.js.
  • Champion and implement automated testing strategies (unit, integration, end-to-end) to ensure application reliability and quality.
  • Oversee and improve our CI/CD pipelines to streamline the development and deployment process, enabling rapid and reliable releases.
  • Optimize application performance across the stack, addressing bottlenecks in the database, backend services, and front-end rendering.
  • Ensure the security of our applications by implementing security best practices, conducting vulnerability assessments, and responding to security incidents.
  • Lead technical discovery and proof-of-concept projects to de-risk new initiatives and explore innovative solutions.
  • Decompose complex business problems into simple, straightforward technical designs and guide the team in their implementation.
  • Manage and maintain cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure), utilizing services like serverless functions, container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker), and managed databases.
  • Facilitate technical discussions and decision-making processes within the engineering team, ensuring alignment and clear forward momentum.
  • Act as a key point of contact for cross-functional teams, effectively communicating technical concepts and project status to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Participate in the hiring process, including conducting technical interviews and evaluating candidates to help grow our talented engineering team.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues, providing timely support and implementing long-term fixes to prevent recurrence.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Conduct internal tech talks and knowledge-sharing sessions to upskill the broader engineering organization.
  • Participate in an on-call rotation to ensure the stability and availability of our production systems.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Front-End Development: Expert-level proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript and modern frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue.js, along with HTML5 and CSS3/SASS.
  • Back-End Development: Deep experience with server-side languages and frameworks such as Node.js (Express/NestJS), Python (Django/Flask), Java (Spring), or Go.
  • Database Technologies: Strong command of both relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis) databases, including data modeling and query optimization.
  • Cloud Platforms: Extensive hands-on experience with a major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including core services for compute, storage, networking, and security.
  • API Design & Development: Proven ability to design, build, and maintain scalable RESTful APIs and/or GraphQL schemas.
  • DevOps & CI/CD: Proficiency with containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and building/maintaining CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions.
  • Software Architecture: Solid understanding of architectural patterns, including microservices, serverless, event-driven architecture, and monolithic designs.
  • Testing Frameworks: Experience with automated testing tools and frameworks such as Jest, Cypress, Pytest, or JUnit.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Familiarity with tools like Terraform or AWS CloudFormation for managing cloud infrastructure.
  • Version Control: Mastery of Git, including branching strategies (like GitFlow) and collaborative workflows.

Soft Skills

  • Leadership & Mentorship: A passion for leading teams, mentoring developers, and fostering a positive and productive engineering culture.
  • Communication: Exceptional verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical ideas to diverse audiences.
  • Problem-Solving: A systematic and analytical approach to solving complex technical and business problems.
  • Strategic Thinking: Ability to think long-term, anticipate future technical needs, and contribute to the overall product strategy.
  • Collaboration: A highly collaborative mindset with a proven ability to work effectively with product, design, and business teams.
  • Project Management: Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage priorities, and timelines in an agile environment.
  • Ownership: A strong sense of ownership and accountability for the quality and success of the product.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s Degree in a relevant field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Technology

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 8-12+ years of professional software development experience.

Preferred:

  • At least 2-3 years of experience in a formal or informal technical leadership or mentorship role.