Next.js Engineering Lead — Hands-on Tech Leader

Vercel; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 340,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Healthcare package

Learning & growth support

Flexible time off

Work-from-home budget

Job summary

Vercel is seeking an Engineering Team Lead for the Next.js team. You will stay hands-on while guiding a small team, contributing directly to the framework, and shaping architecture across rendering, caching, and tooling.

You will mentor engineers, drive critical initiatives, and ensure high-quality delivery for a large-scale open source project. The role emphasizes technical leadership, collaboration with Product and Design, and building infrastructure to support developers at scale in a

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience and hands-on doing.
• Led engineers or small technical teams (team lead, tech lead, staff, etc).
• Recent experience writing, reviewing, and shipping production code.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship Next.js; write production code, review PRs, debug issues, contribute to the framework.
• Lead major technical initiatives; own projects end-to-end from exploration to production.
• Set technical direction across rendering, caching, routing, build tooling, runtime behavior.
• Investigate performance regressions, production failures, and improve the framework.
• Raise engineering standards for code quality, testing, performance and reliability.
• Coach engineers through pairing, design/code reviews, feedback, and shared ownership.
• Provide people leadership with clear expectations and career development support.
• Improve team execution with lightweight planning and clearer ownership.
• Partner with Product, Design, Infrastructure, and other teams for clean integration.
• Champion open source by contributing in public and balancing community needs with product priorities.
• Help grow the team through recruiting and talent assessment.

Skills

Team leadership

React ecosystem

Open source

Code reviews

Technical direction

Job description

Vercel is seeking an Engineering Team Lead for the Next.js team. You will stay hands-on while guiding a small team, contributing directly to the framework, and shaping architecture across rendering, caching, and tooling.

You will mentor engineers, drive critical initiatives, and ensure high-quality delivery for a large-scale open source project. The role emphasizes technical leadership, collaboration with Product and Design, and building infrastructure to support developers at scale in a