Engineering Team Lead

As an Engineering Team Lead at CredLens, you will take on a critical player-coach role, leading a team of engineers dedicated to our innovative non-degree credential data platform. You will actively mentor your team while contributing directly to development using our core tech stack:  Python, Flask, React (Next.js), and PostgreSQL on the AWS cloud.   Additionally, you’ll play a key role as part of the “Build Team” leadership and work closely with senior leadership on feature prioritization and software release management. 
Your responsibilities will include collaboratively shaping the platform with Product Management, Design, and Data Science; defining and managing development tasks (stories); ensuring high-quality code delivery; and fostering a collaborative and technically proficient team environment. This is an exciting opportunity to have a significant impact on a growing non-profit by shaping our platform's development from its early 1.x releases.
About CredLensFounded in 2024 as an independent nonprofit subsidiary of Strada Education Foundation, CredLens is building a national data trust to solve for the lack of verified outcomes of non-degree credentials. Our mission is to provide actionable insights and drive research for industry-based, professional, and workforce credentials, addressing a significant data gap. CredLens offers tailored data analytics and visualizations to credential issuers, workforce training providers, philanthropic funders, and state systems to improve credential quality and inform funding decisions.

Key Responsibilties

• Lead and mentor a small team of software engineers, fostering a collaborative and high-performing culture.
• Actively participate in the design, development, and deployment of our platform's frontend using React (Next.js) and backend using Python/Flask.
• Partner with Product Management to define, estimate, and prioritize work based on end-user value and business impact, collaboratively assessing technical complexity and effort to ensure efficient sprint planning and on-time delivery of quality software.
• Provide technical guidance and expertise to team members, promoting adherence to best practices.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code.
• Conduct thorough code reviews to ensure code quality and adherence to standards.
• Collaborate closely with UX/UI designers, engineers, and product managers to create seamless user experiences and robust services.
• Ensure the technical feasibility of UI/UX designs and optimize applications for speed and scalability.
• Implement and maintain security best practices to protect data integrity and privacy, leveraging AWS Cognito for identity management.
• Partner with the CTO to review, develop and implement new architectural paradigms based on the evolving needs of the organization.
• Build strong unit and integration tests and ensure robust quality assurance practices are followed.
• Actively participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies.
• Stay informed about the latest industry trends and technologies to keep our applications cutting-edge.

The Person: Qualifications and Experience

• Education: A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field is optimal but not mandatory.  Equivalent experience and/or relevant certifications are highly valued.

Experience Required

• 8+ years of software development experience with at least 3 years in full-stack development.
• Demonstrated proficiency in leading small teams of engineers, including hiring, coaching and performance management.
• Demonstrated competence in strategically aligning engineering efforts with product vision.
• Strong proficiency in either React (ideally Typescript and NextJS) or Python (ideally Flask) for back-end development, with good proficiency in the other.
• Strong experience with building and consuming RESTful APIs and good experience with authorization patterns, including OAuth and OIDC.
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL and SQL Alchemy.
• Good familiarity with cloud services (AWS CDK preferred).
• Good working experience with Git.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.

What Sets Great Candidates Apart

• Experience with AWS IaC using Python CDK.
• Experience with Docker/containerizing application environments.
• Experience with other AWS technologies such as Cognito, ECS, EKS, Redshift & Lambda.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, especially using AWS CodeBuild/CodePipelines and GitHub Actions.
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, Slack, and Figma.
• Experience in un