Summary
The Tech Lead Engineer is Northwoods’ senior-most individual contributor role, sitting at the intersection of hands-on engineering and technical leadership. The bar for this hire is intentionally high.
This is not a management position — this person writes code and carries a full delivery workload. But it comes with a clear expectation to drive how the team engineers software: setting technical direction, establishing the code quality bar, and actively advancing the engineering playbook.
The role carries dual accountability: deliver Traverse product features end-to-end, and co-build the agentic engineering framework that continuously raises the standard for how software gets built at Northwoods. AI-forward development is not a tool this person reaches for occasionally — it is the operating model for everything they build.
Qualities & Behaviors
Must-Have Behaviors
- Proactive leader — inserts themselves into conversations, architectural decisions, and team processes without being asked
- Curious and hands-on — willing to get into the weeds and figure things out
- Demonstrated tech lead experience — reviewing others’ work, setting engineering direction, coaching the team
- Cross-functional collaborator — proactively engages product and QA, not just engineering peers
- Strong written communicator — design docs, code review comments, and architecture decisions are clear and useful to someone who wasn’t in the room
- High autonomy — defines the approach, executes, and surfaces blockers early rather than waiting to be unblocked
Technical Must-Haves
Non-Negotiable
- Full-stack capability across all layers of the stack — front end, back end, database, CI/CD
- AI-First Engineering Mindset: Proven trajectory of daily, high-impact AI-assisted development using agentic tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) prioritized over raw years of experience.
- Full-Stack Proficiency: Solid, end-to-end expertise across C# (.NET) for backend, and frontend JavaScript frameworks (strongly preferred)
- Engineering fundamentals: test-first development (tests before implementation), clean code, code quality, consistent conventions
- Database & Data Layer Mastery: Strong proficiency in database design and management, with direct experience in PostgreSQL (strongly preferred)
- Ability to contribute meaningfully to architecture and system design conversations
Flexible / Broader Lens
- Specific Ruby on Rails or AWS experience is a plus but not a dealbreaker — leader and engineer capability comes first, stack specifics second
- At this level, the candidate should navigate across languages and frameworks with relative ease
- React/TypeScript, and PostgreSQL is a strong advantage
- AI tool preference is agnostic — the specific tool does not matter as long as they work fluently with AI in their daily practice.