Tech Lead Manager, Developer Platform & CI/CD

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

Job summary

Northwood Space in Los Angeles is seeking a Tech Lead Manager to own patterns for building, testing, and releasing software across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will provide scalable build tooling, CI pipelines, and release mechanics while staying hands-on in code and leading a small internal tooling team.

You will manage sprint planning, design reviews, and drive adoption of standards across multiple teams, partnering with domain leads to reduce friction in the build and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a 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 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 ownership

Build frameworks

GitLab CI

Container builds

System languages

Python

Developer platforms

Team leadership

Internal tooling

Deliver internal apps

Education

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

Tools

GitLab CI

Container tooling

Artifact management

Job description

Northwood Space in Los Angeles is seeking a Tech Lead Manager to own patterns for building, testing, and releasing software across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will provide scalable build tooling, CI pipelines, and release mechanics while staying hands-on in code and leading a small internal tooling team.

You will manage sprint planning, design reviews, and drive adoption of standards across multiple teams, partnering with domain leads to reduce friction in the build and