Tech Lead Manager — CI/CD & Developer Platform

Northwood; Torrance (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Northwood Space seeks a Tech Lead Manager to own patterns for building, testing, and releasing software across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will provide CI pipelines, release mechanics, and developer environments while guiding internal tooling and platform delivery efforts.

In this player-coach role, you will lead a small internal tooling team, participate in sprint planning, conduct code reviews, and stay hands-on with code to drive standards and adoption across multiple

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of software or platform engineering experience, including 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.
• Experience building developer platforms or paved paths for engineering disciplines you weren't part of.
• Strong proficiency in Rust, Go, 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.

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

Rust

Go

C++

Python

Team leadership

Developer platforms

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

GitLab CI

Docker

Artifact management

Nix

Monorepo tooling

Build tooling

Job description

Northwood Space seeks a Tech Lead Manager to own patterns for building, testing, and releasing software across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will provide CI pipelines, release mechanics, and developer environments while guiding internal tooling and platform delivery efforts.

In this player-coach role, you will lead a small internal tooling team, participate in sprint planning, conduct code reviews, and stay hands-on with code to drive standards and adoption across multiple