Technical Lead Manager (Platform)

Chime; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

Wellness programs

Financial planning

Travel stipends

CRGs & events

Job summary

Chime is seeking a Technical Lead Manager to lead our CI/CD team, owning the integration, delivery, and release-safety surface used by every Chime engineer. You’ll stay hands-on in code, mentor 4 engineers, and own the roadmap for a high-leverage platform, balancing velocity with reliability and security across the production pipelines.

You’ll work with AI-assisted tooling, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Artifactory, and Sourcegraph, and partner with senior ICs and platform teams to ensure scalable,

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering with leadership experience.
• Hands-on with CI/CD, build pipelines, and release tooling.
• Proficient in Ruby, Go, or Python.
• Experience with code intelligence and quality tooling.

Responsibilities

• Lead a 4-engineer team and own delivery roadmap.
• Stay hands-on by authoring production PRs and coding.
• Define and maintain reliable CI/CD platform and release safety.
• Partner with senior ICs and cross-functional teams.

Skills

CI/CD

Code reviews

Go/Python/Ruby

Kubernetes

GitOps

Argo CD

Sourcegraph

Artifactory

AI tooling

Leadership

Recruiting

Tools

GitHub Actions

CircleCI

Qlty

Sourcegraph

Artifactory

Job description

• We’re looking for a Technical Lead Manager (TLM) to lead our CI/CD team, the group that owns how every Chime engineer builds, integrates, and safely ships code
• Your team owns the integration and delivery surface: source and code intelligence (GitHub, Sourcegraph), continuous integration and build (CircleCI, Qlty), artifacts (Artifactory), and the release-safety layer that gets changes to production without breaking it
• Your team’s mission is continuous, safe, reliable, and efficient integration and delivery of features
• Every merge and every deployment at Chime runs through what your team builds
• This is a player-coach role
• Under Chime’s Builder Operating Model, the TLM is a single accountable owner at the team level
• You own both delivery and people for a small team, and you stay hands-on in the codebase
• You’ll spend about 40%+ of your time building, authoring PRs that land in production, with the remainder split across people management, planning, and other business processes
• You’ll lead a team of 4 engineers, own the roadmap for a high-leverage platform surface, and be directly accountable for the reliability of the pipelines and release systems in the critical path of every Chime team
• You’re expected to use AI coding agents and workflows to keep planning, operations, and delivery overhead low so you can stay in the code and operate the team
• Build and ship, hands-on. Author and review PRs that land in production. Own the team’s technical direction, architecture, and quality bar; partner with senior ICs and lead technical design discussions and technical planning
• Lead and grow the team. Own full people management for the team: 1:1s, career coaching, performance feedback, promotion decisions, and hiring. Build an inclusive, high-trust team and own its health and engagement. Mentor engineers toward Staff or a future TLM path
• Own the CI/CD platform. Set direction and delivery for the build and integration systems (GitHub, CircleCI, Artifactory, Sourcegraph, Qlty etc): fast, reliable, self-service pipelines with strong documentation and low-friction adoption so every product team ships faster with less support burden
• Be accountable for safe delivery at scale. Own the release-safety toolkit (Release Guard, canaries and progressive delivery, feature flagging with Tuner, and rollback) and the operational discipline behind it: incident prevention, incident response, SLAs, and blameless learning for systems in the critical path of every deploy
• Balance the platform-team tension. Weigh new capabilities against keep-the-lights-on work, security remediation, and dependency upgrades, and make those trade-offs legible to engineers, cross-functional partners, and leadership
• Champion AI-driven velocity. Use AI coding agents and tooling to scale yourself and your team across planning, coding, and ops/triage, and introduce workflows that measurably improve team velocity
• Own cross-functional coordination. Serve as the XFN point of contact for your platform’s capabilities. Coordinate inbound requests and outbound dependencies, partner with client engineering teams and sibling platform teams (Release Enablement, Developer Foundations) on scope and delivery commitments, and tie‑break technical decisions
• Partner across the Platform Org. Work closely with product engineering teams, security, Core Infrastructure, and other Engineering Services leaders on shared roadmaps, dependencies, and other initiatives

Benefits

• Physical: We believe in taking care of your physical health, so as a Chimer you’ll get medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as benefits to support your physical activity, family planning, and all of your little Chimers
• Emotional: We know that staying healthy involves a lot more than doctor’s checkups. We partner with Modern Health to help you navigate your mental health, give monthly Take Care of Yourself Days, and want you to take time off when you need it
• Financial: We want Chimers to save and feel financially supported, so we offer savings plans with competitive matching, as well as access to financial planning and legal assistance so that you can find your financial peace of mind
• Social: We’ll celebrate your milestones together with travel stipends, swag, and high-fives and make sure you’re connected to fellow Chimers through our Chime Resource Groups (CRGs) and company events

The judgment to balance delivery velocity against safety, reliability, and technical-debt realities, and the communication skills to make those trade-offs clear to engineers and executives alikeA track record of delivering CI/CD, build/release, or developer-productivity systems: continuous integration, build pipelines, artifact management, or progressive deliveryHands-on experience with CI systems (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or comparable), build pipelines, and artifact management in production (must-have)Experience with progressive and safe delivery: canaries, release gating, feature flagging, and rollback strategiesExcellent written and verbal communication and a collaborative, low-ego approach to cross-team leadershipDemonstrated use of AI coding agents and tooling to accelerate development and team velocity, with a concrete example of the impact on your team’s outputHands-on technical depth you can still exercise: you author and review production PRs and can lead technical design, not just delegate it. Strong development experience in Ruby, Go, Python, or comparable languagesA customer-obsessed mindset toward internal developers. You measure success by the productivity and reliability experienced by the engineers who build on your platformHands-on experience with Kubernetes, Argo CD, or GitOps-based deployment in productionStrong understanding of operating production systems at scale: reliability, observability, incident response, and the operational discipline platform ownership demands5+ years of software engineering experience and 2+ years leading or managing engineers, including hiring, performance management, and career development, with the appetite and ability to stay hands-on in the codebaseExperience with code intelligence and quality tooling (Sourcegraph, Artifactory, code-quality and linting systems)Familiarity with common monitoring, logging, and observability platforms (e.g., Datadog)Experience in financial services or other high-reliability, regulated environments