Technical Lead Manager

Aplazo; Mexico; On-site; PHP 5,562,423 - 7,416,564; Full time

Job summary

Aplazo is seeking a Tech Lead Manager located in Pampanga, Philippines. In this role, you will lead a squad of 4–8 engineers, ensuring both delivery and quality while remaining hands-on with technical responsibilities such as coding and decision-making.

The ideal candidate will have a strong software engineering background, experience managing teams, and fluency in AI tools. Aplazo promotes a culture of psychological safety and development for its engineers.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in software engineering.
• 1+ years managing or leading a team.
• Familiar with modern development practices: CI/CD, cloud, observability.

Responsibilities

• Lead a squad of engineers, ensuring delivery and quality.
• Conduct 1:1s and coach team members for career growth.
• Stay hands-on with coding and technical decisions.

Skills

Team leadership

Software engineering

AI fluency

Effective communication

Technical decision-making

Tools

Java/Spring

Angular

PostgreSQL

AWS

DataDog

Job description

About the Role

We're looking for a Tech Lead Manager to lead a squad of 4–8 engineers. This is a player‑coach role: you will stay hands‑on technically (40–60% IC work) while owning your team's delivery, quality, and people development. At this level you are the first‑line manager for your squad — running 1:1s, giving feedback, coaching careers, and building a culture of ownership and psychological safety. You also stay in the code, making technical decisions and shipping alongside your team.

What You'll Do

People & Team (40–60%)

• Build the team — Hire and onboard E1–E3 engineers
• Develop your people — Run effective 1:1s, give direct feedback, write performance reviews, and coach career growth
• Foster culture — Build psychological safety, ownership, and accountability within the squad
• Shield the team — Remove blockers, handle noise, and keep the squad focused on delivery

Technical (40–60%)

• Stay hands‑on — Write code, review PRs, and contribute to technical decisions
• Own delivery — Ensure the squad delivers on commitments with high quality and predictable velocity
• Drive quality — Champion testing, observability, and engineering best practices
• Handle incidents — Own squad‑level incidents and postmortems
• Leverage AI — Use AI tools daily for code reviews, design drafts, and debugging; teach the squad effective AI usage

Planning & Alignment

• Run the squad — Lead sprint planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives
• Align with product — Partner with PMs and designers to translate requirements into deliverable work
• Communicate up — Represent the squad in planning, cross‑team syncs, and leadership discussions

Experience

What We're Looking For

• 4+ years in software engineering
• 1+ years managing or leading a team (formal or informal)

Technical

• Strong technical background — guide architecture discussions and code reviews
• Familiar with modern development practices: CI/CD, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), observability
• Comfortable with our stack or similar: Java/Spring, Angular/React, PostgreSQL, AWS, DataDog
• Still enjoys being in the code and staying technically sharp

AI Fluency

• Uses AI tools (Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT) daily for code reviews, design drafts, and debugging
• Teaches squad effective AI usage and best practices
• Experiments with AI to accelerate team delivery and quality

Leadership & People

• Experience running 1:1s and giving direct, kind feedback
• Track record of developing engineers and helping them grow
• Servant leadership mindset — you enable others to do their best work
• Builds trust, psychological safety, and ownership culture

Communication

• Clear communicator with engineers, PMs, and leadership
• Sets expectations and provides continuous feedback
• Fluent in Spanish; working knowledge of English for cross‑team collaboration

Mindset

• Comfortable balancing people and technical responsibilities
• Thrives in ambiguity; makes smart trade‑offs with incomplete information
• Cares about both business outcomes and engineering excellence

Nice to Have

• Experience in fintech, payments, or high‑growth startups
• Background scaling or building teams from scratch
• Familiarity with engineering career frameworks and coaching practices
• On‑call and incident management experience

Our Stack

• Java/Spring, Python, Go
• Angular, React
• PostgreSQL, MongoDB
• AWS (ECS, Lambda)
• DataDog
• Pulumi
• Jenkins

Aplazo does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sex, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, marital status, disability, social or economic status, sexual preferences, or any other condition or characteristic. Selection is based solely on the qualifications and merits of the candidates.