Engineering Lead

ENGINEERING LEAD

Own the technical vision for your systems. Keep them sound as everything ships.

The Role

As an Engineering Lead at Counterpart, you are the architect and tech lead for a domain: the claims system, the underwriting platform, the infrastructure layer, or another area where the systems are tightly coupled and need one person keeping them honest. You know how your systems work, how they should evolve, and where they break. You own the technical vision for them.

During planning, you partner with a Technical Product Manager to break initiatives into projects and write the high-level technical requirements for each. Before you lock an approach, you check with the other Engineering Leads: is anyone solving something similar, and should we solve it once? During execution, you run the technical review that gates each project, then step back and let the project team build. You come back in when an architectural question surfaces.

Together with the other Engineering Leads, you set and maintain Counterpart's technical standards. You are also an engineer. You build, and you can be called on to lead a project yourself.

People management is optional in this role, not the default. Some Engineering Leads manage a few engineers; most do not. Either way, you lead primarily through the technical vision, the standards, and the quality of your own work, not through the org chart.

YOU WILL

Own the Technical Vision for Your Systems

• Know where each system in your domain is going, how they depend on each other, and where the boundaries and data contracts need to be explicit.
• Hold the line on architecture. Catch redundant systems before they get built. Push for reuse and consolidation. Say no when the easier path creates long-term sprawl.
• Check with the other Engineering Leads before locking a technical approach: is anyone solving something similar, does this create or break an assumption in another domain? Lightweight, peer-to-peer. Natural collaboration over process.
• Make deliberate calls on technical debt within your domain. Know when to accumulate it, when to pay it down, and when to refactor. Communicate the trade-offs to your Technical Product Manager and the VP of Engineering.
• Own the context architecture for your domain. Keep documentation, design patterns, and domain knowledge up to date so engineers can operate your systems without relying on tribal knowledge.

Plan the Work

• Partner with your Technical Product Manager during planning. Combined, you turn business problems into initiatives and projects. You write the high-level technical requirements for each project: the system approach, the scalability, security, and integration considerations that determine whether the plan is real.
• Roll projects up to a rough t-shirt size (multi-month or single month) with your Technical Product Manager. For multi-month projects, define what is achievable within one month.
• Advise the VP of Engineering on Project Lead assignments. You know which engineers can carry which projects.

Review Through Reviews

• Run the technical review for each funded project in your domain. The Project Lead plays back the rounded-out requirements and approach. You confirm the approach fits your systems, follows the standards, and does not create problems the project team cannot see. Then development begins.
• When a project touches more than one domain, bring the other domain's Engineering Lead into the technical review. One review, all affected leads present.
• Answer architectural questions when the project team hits them mid-build. Otherwise, stay out of the day-to-day.

Set and Maintain Technical Standards

• Produce and maintain Counterpart's shared technical standards with the other Engineering Leads. Keep them current, specific, and enforceable.
• Enforce the standards within your domain. When work drifts from the agreed patterns, catch it early and course-correct.
• Contribute to decisions on AI tooling and development practices. The Engineering Leads collectively decide how AI tools are used across the engineering organization.

Build

• Write code and build systems when the work requires your depth. You do not delegate everything. You pick up the hardest problems in your domain.
• Take the Project Lead hat when a project calls for it. Then you operate as any Project Lead does: round out requirements, run the reviews, break out tickets, delegate, check in with stakeholders, and iterate.
• Stay at the frontier of AI development. Evaluate emerging frameworks, tools, and practices against Counterpart's systems. Share findings with the other Engineering Leads.
• Review production incidents in your domain. Identify root causes indicating architectural gaps. Fix the architecture, not just the symptom.

Mentor

• Mentor engineers working in your domain. Turn reviews and architectural questions into teaching moments. Raise the bar on how engineers think about system design.
• Coach Project Leads through hard technical decisions. Help them see the trade-offs, then let them own the execution.

YOU HAVE

• Deep experience designing, building, and operating complex software systems. You have built systems that lasted and maintained systems you inherited.
• The ability to operate as both architect and individual contributor. You know which the situation calls for and you do not default to one.
• Demonstrated experience reviewing technical work from other engineers. You turn reviews into decisions, not debates. You can say no with clear reasoning and say yes with conviction.
• Proficiency with Python, Django, Amazon Web Services (AWS), React, and PostgreSQL.
• Proficiency developing with AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) and the drive to stay ahead of how AI development practices are evolving.
• Experience setting technical direction across teams without being the manager. You influence through architecture, reviews, and the quality of your own work.
• Domain curiosity about insurance. You learn the business context your systems support, not just the systems themselves.
• The ability to communicate clearly across engineering, product, and business. You translate technical complexity without losing meaning.
• Low ego and high Emotional Quotient (EQ). You influence without authority, take feedback well, and leave your ego out of technical decisions.
• Experience working with distributed, remote teams.

Our estimated pay range for this role is $190,000 to $240,000. Base salary is determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to, market data, location, internal equitability, and experience.

We are committed to being a welcoming and inclusive workplace for everyone. We are intentional about making sure people feel respected, supported, and connected at work-regardless of who they are or where they come from. We value and celebrate our differences and believe being open about who we are allows us to do the best work.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate against qualified applicants or employees on the basis of race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, sexual preference, sexual identity, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, military status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law, rule, or regulation.