Engineering Team Lead at Counterpart

The Role: Engineering Team Lead at Counterpart

As an Engineering Lead at Counterpart, you will be the architect and technical leader for a specific domain, such as the claims system, underwriting platform, or infrastructure layer. This role requires a deep understanding of how your systems function, how they should evolve, and potential failure points. You will be responsible for defining and owning the technical vision for your domain.

During the planning phase, you will collaborate with a Technical Product Manager to break down initiatives into manageable projects and outline high-level technical requirements. You will also coordinate with other Engineering Leads to identify opportunities for reuse and consolidation of solutions across domains. During execution, you will conduct technical reviews to approve project approaches, then empower the project team to build, stepping in to address architectural questions as needed.

Alongside other Engineering Leads, you will establish and maintain Counterpart's technical standards. This is a hands-on engineering role; you will write code and lead projects when required. While people management is an option, it is not the default for this position. Your primary leadership influence will stem from your technical vision, the standards you uphold, and the quality of your own work.

Key Responsibilities

Own the Technical Vision for Your Systems

• Define the direction for each system in your domain, understanding their interdependencies and establishing clear boundaries and data contracts.
• Uphold architectural integrity, preventing redundant system development and advocating for reuse and consolidation. Reject paths that lead to long-term technical sprawl.
• Collaborate with other Engineering Leads to ensure technical approaches are consistent and do not create unforeseen issues in other domains.
• Make informed decisions regarding technical debt within your domain, knowing when to accrue, repay, or refactor. Communicate these trade-offs to your Technical Product Manager and the VP of Engineering.
• Maintain comprehensive architectural context for your domain, including documentation, design patterns, and domain knowledge, to enable engineers to operate systems independently.

Plan the Work

• Partner with your Technical Product Manager to translate business problems into initiatives and projects. Define high-level technical requirements, including system approach, scalability, security, and integration considerations.
• Estimate project sizes (e.g., multi-month or single month) with your Technical Product Manager, breaking down multi-month projects into monthly deliverables.
• Advise the VP of Engineering on Project Lead assignments, leveraging your knowledge of engineers' capabilities.

Conduct Technical Reviews

• Lead the technical review process for funded projects within your domain. Verify that the proposed approach aligns with system architecture, adheres to standards, and avoids potential problems.
• Facilitate cross-domain technical reviews by involving other affected Engineering Leads.
• Provide architectural guidance to project teams when complex technical questions arise during development.

Set and Maintain Technical Standards

• Develop and maintain Counterpart's shared technical standards in collaboration with other Engineering Leads, ensuring they are current, specific, and enforceable.
• Enforce these standards within your domain, identifying and correcting deviations early.
• Contribute to decisions regarding AI tooling and development practices across the engineering organization.

Build

• Write code and build systems, focusing on the most challenging problems within your domain.
• Take on the Project Lead role when necessary, managing requirements, reviews, task delegation, stakeholder communication, and iteration.
• Stay current with AI development, evaluating emerging frameworks, tools, and practices for potential application at Counterpart and sharing insights with peers.
• Review production incidents in your domain to identify architectural gaps, focusing on fixing root causes rather than just symptoms.

Mentor

• Mentor engineers within your domain, using reviews and architectural discussions as teaching opportunities to elevate system design thinking.
• Coach Project Leads through difficult technical decisions, helping them evaluate trade-offs while empowering them to own execution.

Candidate Requirements

• Extensive Experience: Deep experience in designing, building, and operating complex software systems, demonstrating a track record of creating enduring systems and maintaining inherited ones.
• Dual Role Capability: Ability to seamlessly transition between architect and individual contributor roles, choosing the appropriate mode based on the situation.
• Technical Review Prowess: Proven experience in reviewing technical work, transforming discussions into clear decisions, and providing constructive feedback with strong reasoning.
• Technical Proficiency: Expertise in Python, Django, Amazon Web Services (AWS), React, and PostgreSQL.
• AI Development: Proficiency in developing with AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) and a commitment to staying updated on evolving AI development practices.
• Influential Leadership: Demonstrated ability to set technical direction across teams without direct management authority, influencing through architectural vision, review quality, and personal work excellence.
• Domain Curiosity: Genuine interest in learning the business context of the insurance industry that your systems support.
• Clear Communication: Ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to engineering, product, and business stakeholders without losing meaning.
• Low Ego, High EQ: Possesses low ego and high Emotional Quotient, enabling influence without authority, receptiveness to feedback, and objective technical decision-making.
• Remote Team Experience: Experience working effectively with distributed, remote teams.

The estimated pay range for this role is $190,000 to $240,000. Base salary is determined by various factors, including market data, location, internal equity, and experience.

Counterpart is dedicated to fostering a welcoming and inclusive workplace where everyone feels respected, supported, and connected. We value and celebrate diversity and believe that openness allows for the best work. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to non-discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, sexual preference, sexual identity, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, military status, or any other characteristic protected by law.