SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TEAM LEADER

Tech-Store Malaysia Sdn Bhd; Puchong; On-site; MYR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology company in Malaysia is seeking an Engineering Team Lead who combines engineering leadership with solution architecture within a cross-functional team. The successful candidate will mentor engineers, ensure scalable and maintainable system architectures, and influence technical standards. Ideal applicants will possess strong experience in distributed systems, Java and Spring Boot, and container orchestration. This position requires at least 5 years in a relevant role and offers opportunities for growth and collaboration on innovative technologies.

Qualifications

• At least 5 years experience in a related field.
• Strong understanding of leading and mentoring engineering teams.
• Ability to design, review, and communicate architecture.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional engineering teams.
• Define and govern system architectures.
• Review designs and oversee delivery timelines.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Solution architecture

Java and Spring Boot

Distributed systems design

Containerization and orchestration

Observability and monitoring tools

Education

University degree in computing or software development

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Linux

Elastic ELK

Job description

This role combines engineering team leadership with solution architecture stewardship. The focus is on enabling teams to deliver high-quality, scalable solutions through strong technical direction, standards, and mentoring — not on day-to-day feature ownership.

Hands‑on implementation is selective and situational, primarily during prototyping, critical incidents, or when resolving complex technical blockers. Architecture work is strategic and episodic, ensuring long‑term system health while supporting near‑term delivery.

What This Role Is Not

• Not a ticket‑driven individual contributor role
• Not responsible for owning every feature end‑to‑end
• Not a constant firefighting or 24/7 on‑call position
• Not a siloed architect role detached from engineering teams

Why This Role Is Interesting

• Influence architecture across multiple platforms at real production scale
• Shape engineering standards and technical direction
• Flexibility to work on state‑of‑the‑art technologies
• Evolve systems incrementally rather than maintaining legacy platforms

You’ll succeed if you enjoy enabling teams, making thoughtful architectural trade‑offs, and balancing delivery with long‑term maintainability. We value sound judgment and a learning mindset over checking every box.

RESPONSIBILITIES

1. As a Team Lead

• Lead, mentor, and support a cross‑functional engineering team spanning backend, frontend, mobile, and IoT
• Foster alignment across projects, priorities, and stakeholders
• Conduct design and code reviews, providing technical guidance without micromanagement
• Establish and maintain development standards, best practices, and architectural guidelines
• Support onboarding, performance guidance, and skill development
• Promote ownership, accountability, and psychological safety
• Participate in planning, estimation, and technical risk assessment
• Facilitate daily stand‑ups and regular team ceremonies to ensure visibility, alignment, and steady delivery progress
• Apply agile delivery practices, leveraging relevant tools for sprint planning, tracking, and team coordination
• Follow up on the company practices related to the department management and reporting

2. As a Solution Architect

• Define, evolve, and govern end‑to‑end system architectures across platforms
• Ensure architectures are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with business goals
• Evaluate and recommend technologies, frameworks, and patterns
• Prepare and maintain architecture diagrams, technical specifications, and solution documentation
• Act as the technical authority in cross‑team and cross‑department discussions
• Balance performance, reliability, cost, and operational complexity in architectural decisions

3. As a Senior Engineer

• Define reference architectures, technical templates, and reusable patterns
• Review high‑impact designs, implementations, and deployment strategies
• Ensure observability, security, reliability, and performance standards are embedded in delivery
• Maintain oversight of CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and release processes
• Act as an escalation point for complex technical challenges and critical incidents
• Step in hands‑on only when necessary (e.g., prototyping, production incidents, technical deadlocks)
• Oversee delivery timelines and release cycles, ensuring coordinated, predictable, and high‑quality product releases.

REQUIREMENTS

1. Engineering Leadership & Collaboration

• Strong understanding of leading, mentoring, and supporting senior, mid‑level or junior engineers
• Comfortable facilitating design reviews, code reviews, and architectural discussions
• Ability to work effectively with management and business stakeholders to align technical direction with business goals
• Ownership mindset with an appreciation for balancing delivery speed, engineering quality, and long‑term maintainability
• Solid understanding of distributed system design, including APIs, event‑driven architectures, and system integrations
• Ability to reason about and explain architectural trade‑offs across performance, reliability, cost, and complexity
• Comfortable producing and consuming architecture diagrams, technical designs, and solution documentation
• Willingness to act as a technical authority and escalation point when needed
• Exposure to collaborating on data dashboards and reporting solutions (e.g., Tableau), with an appreciation for usability and design quality

3. Core Engineering Knowledge

• Java and Spring Boot (Back‑end)
• Any relational database
• React.js or equivalent (Front‑end)
• Familiarity with building and supporting production‑grade systems, or the ability to reason about production concerns
• Good understanding of:
  • Microservices architecture and common design patterns
  • SQL replication, routing, and high‑availability concepts
  • Database proxies or read‑scaling approaches (e.g., MaxScale)
  • Caching strategies (e.g., Redis)
  • Event‑driven or messaging systems (e.g., Kafka, MQTT)
• Exposure to or interest in:
  • C# and .NET
  • PHP (Laravel)

4. Cloud, Containers & Delivery

• Understanding of containerization and orchestration concepts (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines, release workflows, and automated delivery practices
• Familiarity with artifact management and multi‑environment deployment strategies
• Working knowledge of Linux and Windows server environments, or the ability to adapt quickly in enterprise setups

5. Reliability, Observability & Operations

• Strong appreciation for observability and operational excellence
• Familiarity with monitoring, logging, and alerting tools (e.g., ELK, Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalents)
• Understanding of distributed tracing concepts and tooling (e.g., OpenTelemetry)
• Awareness of reliability, performance, and security considerations in real‑world systems
• Understanding of resilience patterns such as retries, backoff, idempotency, circuit breakers, bulkheads, and graceful shutdowns

6. Technical Judgment & Growth Mindset

• Ability to apply sound technical judgment and guide engineering decisions at a high level
• Comfortable setting direction and standards without necessarily owning day‑to‑day feature delivery
• Strong growth mindset with a willingness to learn, adapt, and continuously improve engineering practices

QUALIFICATION

• University degree or equivalent in computing or software development
• At least 5 years experience