Tech Lead Manager — Platform & Developer Experience

Northwoodspace; Torrance (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Northwood Space seeks a Tech Lead Manager to own and streamline the build, test, and release software across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will lead a small internal tooling and developer experience team while remaining hands-on in code, guiding sprint planning, design reviews, and developer enablement.

The role combines leadership with hands-on development of internal applications and tooling, reporting to the Head of Platform within a platform-focused organization.

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 (e.g., tooling for 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.

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 framework design

GitLab CI

Rust

Go

C++

Python

People leadership

Developer tooling

Education

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

Tools

GitLab CI

Nix

Monorepo tooling

Build caching

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Northwood Space seeks a Tech Lead Manager to own and streamline the build, test, and release software across FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. You will lead a small internal tooling and developer experience team while remaining hands-on in code, guiding sprint planning, design reviews, and developer enablement.

The role combines leadership with hands-on development of internal applications and tooling, reporting to the Head of Platform within a platform-focused organization.