The Role of a Technical Leader in Development Teams

After eight months of 13 sprints with my product team, we were now in the final sprint, racing to wrap up features for the next version, only to hit a stonewall. Pull requests (PRs) were piling up, and our critical integration test of multiple services kept failing. Our junior developers, Michael and Faith, were confused and lost after spending days trying to trace a subtle bug. As the Product Manager at that time, I began to question whether the team could deliver on this milestone.  

Frustration was in the air, and I won’t deny it, until the Tech Lead who doubled as the Solutions Architect spoke up in a recent chat with him, he said, “That final week felt like everything was falling apart,” But in moments like that, my job isn’t to panic. It’s to steady the team and help us think clearly again.”

He didn’t slam a fix into the codebase or bark out orders. Instead, he did something more powerful in the midst of the chaos; he brought clarity. He called for a troubleshooting session with Michael and Faith and helped them break the problem into manageable parts. Reviewed the failing integration holistically and proposed a slight shift in approach that stabilized the flow. Finally, he called me and the VP of Products to offer a transparent update and shielded his devs from unproductive panic.

Yes, we had to start another 2-week sprint to cover up for the technical debts, but the team was back in motion.

Now, that’s the essence of technical leadership! It's not just being the best coder, but the compass when the path is unclear.

So what does real technical leadership look like in practice? Here are eight core traits that show up when it matters most.

1. Leadership Isn’t Just Seniority 

Many developers equate seniority with leadership, but being a senior developer doesn’t automatically make you a technical leader.

A senior developer is a high performer who writes solid code, understands the system, and in most cases delivers on time, but on the other side of the town, a technical leader carries the responsibility of direction, decisions, and development of others.

Our technical lead's impact wasn’t measured by lines of code but by the clarity of architectural decisions, thoughtful trade-offs on technical debt, and how seamlessly he onboarded new developers. His value was creating an environment where the entire team performed at its best

2. The Unseen Work of Tech Leads

Ask any developer, and they’ll tell you the most satisfying days are those spent in flow, headphones on, deep into solving a problem.

For technical leads, the work is less visible as they attend extra meetings, align with product and design, coach teammates, review architecture proposals, unblock junior devs, and constantly assess risk. It’s glue work, often unseen, sometimes underappreciated, but critical.

Our Technical Lead once spent a whole day helping a teammate debug a seemingly trivial deployment error. Some might say that wasn’t a good use of his time, but for that teammate, instead of being stuck and unproductive on his own, he got support, learned, and was able to move forward confidently. 

This behind-the-scenes work often goes unnoticed, but it’s what keeps projects moving smoothly and prevents small issues from becoming blockers.

3. Translating Business Needs into Technical Solutions

One of the hardest things about leading technical teams is translating business needs into realistic tech outcomes.

A product manager might say, “We need this feature in two weeks”, like I would say - We need this feature done like yesterday. I have found out from observations during this event, the tech lead’s job isn’t to blindly accept the ask or dismiss it, it’s to guide the conversation.

• What are the trade-offs? 
• What’s the smallest valuable slice we can ship? 
• How do we keep quality intact?

Our Technical lead had a habit, before every planning session, he would pull me aside and the product owner and walk through the tickets from a technical lens, clarify edge cases, and that saved the team from hours of rework.

That’s what great tech leads do; they manage ambiguity, so the dev team doesn’t have to.

4. Making Smart Architectural Decisions

There’s a myth that tech leads must have all the answers, and that’s not true. You should know the best technical leaders don’t know everything, but they know how to decide, even if it's not the best decision. 

When the team faced a “build vs. buy” decision for our customer onboarding application, opinions flew. One developer wanted to use an open-source application and white label it, while another wanted us to build a custom solution. Our technical lead didn’t pick a side immediately. He facilitated a spike, brought in other stakeholders from DevOps, Infrastructure and Operations to weigh in, and led a risk-value analysis. After this exercise, he made a call and, more importantly, explained the reason behind it.

Good decisions build trust.

5. Mentorship as a Growth Tool

Technical leadership is about creating systems, habits, and people that continue to thrive even when you’re not in the room. The real success of a tech lead is when juniors confidently step up because of the foundation you built.

Make time to pair program with juniors, review PRs with context, and share why as much as what. Curate documentation that will help new hires understand the code structure of the team and help them onboard faster. 

Encourage your team members to present at internal demos to build confidence. Once in a while, you can delegate to your developers and say, “Next sprint, you’ll lead the estimation session. Coach them through it, and by the end, they can lead confidently. It comes to a time when there is a ripple effect, and the mentee can become a mentor for another mentee.

6. Building Culture, Not Just Code.

A toxic tech lead hoards knowledge, dictates decisions, and dismisses differing views. A great one builds culture. The ability to foster a safe space where no one fears saying, “I don’t know’’ is a great atmosphere to create.  Make small wins visible and celebrate improvements in the process as much as shipping features.

During standups, don’t just ask “What are you working on?” but “How can I help?”

A healthy culture is the sum of daily positive behaviours, and you, as the tech lead, set the tone.

7. Handling Chaos Like A Pro.

Real technical leadership is tested in chaos, when plans unravel, product owners escalate, management grows uneasy, and pressure mounts. In those moments, the true leader doesn’t crumble; they rise and steady the team.

There have been scenarios when deployment of a release caused a regression that brought down parts of the app, and tensions rose, fingers pointed, and I have seen some tech leads who didn't panic; rather, they led the rollback, documented the failure, coordinated with support, and stayed with the team through the night. 

The next day, my former tech lead presented a blameless retrospective and outlined long-term fixes. No scapegoats, no denial, just accountability.

From that day, I saw a pattern on a team that sticks together. In other words, when you take responsibility in public and share credit in private, your team will follow you anywhere.

8. Leadership Without The Title 

You don’t need a formal title to lead technically; leadership is a posture and not a promotion. The moment you come to terms that leadership is about influence and not hierarchy, that day a new dawn begins

In my chat with a CTO who rose from a Solution Architect/Team lead role to the new CTO role, I found out that he was already mentoring peers and improving the CI/CD pipeline on his own initiative. Leadership recognized him because he was already doing the job.

If you're a developer reading this, ask yourself: Are you making your teammates better? Are you raising the bar? Are you stepping in when no one else will?

In that process, technical leaders are born.

The True Craft of a Tech Lead

Technical leadership isn’t glamorous. It won’t always earn you the spotlight but it’s what transforms a group of developers into a high-performing team.

A tech lead is a mentor, an architect, a communicator, a shield, and a servant-leader. You write less code but you make every line written by others better. You don’t just ship features, you ship confidence and shepherd the team.