Tech Lead Manager: Build Systems & Developer Platform

Northwood Space; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Northwood Space is seeking a Tech Lead Manager to own build, test, and release patterns across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will provide reusable pipelines, define guardrails, and drive adoption of efficient tooling while managing a small internal team.

You’ll stay hands-on in code, lead sprint planning, conduct design and code reviews, and collaborate with domain leads to align the tooling roadmap with engineering priorities and operator workflows.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of software or platform engineering; 2+ years leading a team or workstream as a tech lead.
• Demonstrated ownership of a CI/CD or build framework adopted by multiple teams with different toolchains, including how you drove adoption and what tradeoffs you made.
• Experience building developer platforms or paved paths for engineering disciplines you weren’t part of (e.g., software tooling consumed by firmware, hardware, or data teams).
• Strong proficiency in at least one systems language (Rust, Go, or C++) and Python.
• Hands‑on experience with GitLab CI or equivalent, container builds, and artifact management.
• Ability to write clear technical standards and get engineers outside your team to adopt them.
• Experience delivering internal applications or tools to non‑engineering users, including scoping requirements with stakeholders who don’t write software.

Responsibilities

• Own the build, test, and release frameworks used across Northwood’s repos, including the build system, GitLab CI templates, artifact management, and versioning conventions.
• Provide paved paths like reusable pipelines and build components, with fast checks that fail early before expensive builds and tests.
• Define the guardrails repo owners work within (minimum pipeline stages, signing, promotion gates) and make the compliant path the easiest path.
• Partner with domain leads to understand build and release friction, prioritize it on the tooling roadmap, and measure adoption.
• Own internal software development: intake, prioritization, delivery, and lifecycle of applications Northwood builds for its own use across engineering and business functions.
• Collaborate across teams, contributing shared frameworks, components, and engineering capacity to support product development and operator workflows.
• Lead the Development team as a player‑coach with sprint planning, design and code reviews, and hands‑on contributions.

Skills

CI/CD

Team leadership

Rust

Go

C++

Python

GitLab CI

Build tooling

Developer experience

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/engineering or equivalent

Tools

Nix

Monorepo tooling

FPGA toolchains

CI tools (GitLab)

Job description

Northwood Space is seeking a Tech Lead Manager to own build, test, and release patterns across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will provide reusable pipelines, define guardrails, and drive adoption of efficient tooling while managing a small internal team.

You’ll stay hands-on in code, lead sprint planning, conduct design and code reviews, and collaborate with domain leads to align the tooling roadmap with engineering priorities and operator workflows.