Tech Lead - Python/Django

Team Lead, CTO / CPO Dashboard Product

Location: Fully Remote (Overlap with New York Time required) (exclude Asia and Australia)

Type: Permanent Full-Time

Sema is seeking a scale-up experienced Team Lead, with a bias for data and action, to help lead a focused, senior Engineering team and also personally build the next iterations of our new CTO/ CPO Dashboard product (a product that developers actually like...). This hire will be at the table for the product strategy and company direction- this is a must have, you are not just an executor.

General information

• Our client is a software company providing development executive-style reporting tools and services for business leaders and project stakeholders. They've analyzed > 1200 companies worth over $1.6TN for non functional codebase health (security, maintainability, IP risk, etc.).

• Based on feedback & requests from their major clients, they have been building a SaaS product... not only to help senior Engineering leaders have a full understanding / single pane of glass for all engineering metrics, but also to understand if the product roadmap is on track. They use AI not because it's sexy but because it's the right tool for the job dealing with differently structured and incomplete Jira data.

• Product's in MVP stage and the feedback is extremely positive.

• Tasks and Deliverables

• Building SaaS Platform to unify Engineering metrics and "triangulate" the actual product roadmap based on code, Jira, and PDFs

• Team Lead = 80% coding, 20% guiding 3 extremely senior Engineers

• Required Experience

• FullStack & prior experience taking MVPs to early production grade

• Python/ Django

• Dashboard creation

• Recommended Skills

• AWS

• Terraform

• Dev Tools APIs (ex: GitHub, Sonarcloud, Veracode, WhiteSource, CAST)

• Data pipelines

• Working schedule

- Commitment: full-time

- Duration: permanent. Only interested in folks who want to convert to permanent full time if there's a mutual fit.

- Timezone: team is in Europe and New York. Need to overlap with both at least a little.

About Sema:

We've built powerful tools that bridge the gap between technologists and non-technologists.

We explain code to non coders ("Codescans"), and help teams understand the real product roadmaps("Compass"), with the best of them.

We've analyzed over $1.6T worth of codebases for some of the world's best investors and operating companies-- and they help set our future roadmap.

Required Experience:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in senior technical leadership

• Strong background in cloud architecture and distributed systems

• Strong business acumen and ability to align technical and business strategies

Technical Knowledge Areas:

• Data Processing Pipelines

• Security and Compliance

• Modern Development Practices

• System Architecture and Design

• Performance Optimization

What We Offer:

• Opportunity to shape the technical future of a growing company, and the future of product roadmaps and technical debt around the world

• Remote-first culture with flexible work environment

• Competitive compensation package

• At the table for the product strategy and company direction- this is a must have, you are not just an executor

• Resources to build and grow world-class engineering teams

Our values:

A. Competence: we meet our commitments or acknowledge when we fall short. We don't take on commitments we can't achieve, but "argue upfront."

B. Excellence: Some things we maximum quality, like team and the reliability and accuracy of our results...

C. Scrappiness: ... in many other areas we figure out how to iterate quickly, balancing speed and quality, to save everyone's time.

D. Growth: we embrace continuous learning, share bad news quickly, and lean in to criticizing the CEO when he's wrong.

E. Ownership: We take complete responsibility for outcomes while also letting others in to help.

Management styles:

It is our hypothesis that effective leaders in this role will be able to, and enjoy, leading from at least one of these three styles.

If you see yourself in one or more of these, great.

If not, let's discuss in the interview to make sure it's a great fit for you and for us.

1. Director (fiery red)

Extraverted Thinking

A director is a person who is focused primarily on results. Their biggest priority is to get the most important task they have done to a high standard and on time, and they are not afraid to make big decisions and to implement those decisions assertively. These qualities make them excellent leaders, but they need to be careful so they don’t come across as pushy or impatient.

2. Motivator (fiery red and sunshine yellow)

Extraverted Intuition

The motivator has the same drive to get results as the director, but this is tempered by an emphasis on positive thinking and a sense of fun. This person has high levels of enthusiasm and can get a group motivated to take on a task or to overcome a challenge. Their ability to enthuse people into implementing plans makes them well suited to roles where they inspire their staff to achieve their goals.

3. *** Reformer (cool blue and fiery red)

Extraverted Sensing with Introverted Intuition

The reformer wants both high standards and strong results, which makes them extremely determined. They have a strength in monitoring performance and discipline, making them well suited to roles where decisions might need to be made based upon logic and data, rather than people and relationships.

Our expectations about GenAI in the SDLC:

Here's a perspective from one of our Engineers about how software development will be changing in the next few years.

I believe programmers will be obsolete, "as we know them", in 2-3 years—similar to how developers coding in Assembly were obsolete due to languages like Fortran. The problem to solve is properly defining the business logic and all the edge cases, which could be solved by exhausting testing that the same AI could code. So developers will still "code" but in natural language, talking to an AI.

Does this sound exciting? Intriguing? Do you have small/medium/large questions about maintaining codebase health & the integrity of software development while embarking on this journey? Any of those (or all of those!) are welcomed.

If you are opposed to this direction, then we wouldn't be the right fit for you.

Writing from our Founder: Code is a Craft, not a competition

https://dev.to/this-is-learning/code-is-a-craft-not-a-competition-and-why-it-matters-f3o

We've baked this philosophy into what we build and how we work.