Engineering Lead

Woundtech is seeking an Engineering Lead . This is a player-coach role for an experienced software engineer who combines strong hands-on technical expertise with people and delivery leadership. Engineering Leads remain active contributors to software design and development while leading a small engineering team, typically consisting of 3–6 engineers .

This is intentionally a hands-on engineering role. Engineering Leads are expected to spend at least 60% of their time contributing directly to software engineering , including coding, technical design, code reviews, architecture, testing, troubleshooting, and other hands-on development activities. The remaining time is focused on team leadership, coaching, delivery, planning, and cross-functional collaboration.

Engineering Leads are accountable for the technical execution and engineering quality of their teams. They lead sprint planning and technical execution, coach and develop engineers, remove blockers, and ensure engineering best practices are consistently applied. They are expected to lead by example—not only directing how software should be built, but actively building it alongside their teams.

The Engineering Lead works closely with Product, Design, QA, DevSecOps, Architecture, Data, Security, and other stakeholders to take initiatives from discovery and technical design through development, deployment, and production support.

Primary Responsibilities

• •Hands-On Engineering & Technical Delivery
• •Spend at least 60% of your time actively contributing to software engineering and development activities .
• •Design, develop, test, and deliver product features using technologies such as React, Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, and PostgreSQL.
• •Take ownership of complex, high-risk, or architecturally significant development work.
• •Translate business and product requirements into secure, scalable, reliable, and maintainable technical solutions.
• •Lead by example through high-quality code, thoughtful technical design, appropriate testing, and strong engineering practices.
• •Maintain sufficient hands-on knowledge of the codebase to effectively guide technical decisions, review implementations, troubleshoot issues, and support engineers.

• •Team Leadership & Coaching
• •Serve as the player-coach for a small engineering team, typically 3–6 engineers , while remaining a hands-on contributor.
• •Conduct regular one-on-one meetings with engineers to provide feedback, coaching, and support.
• •Support engineers' career development by identifying strengths, development opportunities, and appropriate growth objectives.
• •Mentor Software Engineers and Senior Software Engineers on technical design, problem-solving, architecture, engineering practices, and professional development.
• •Establish clear expectations and reinforce individual and team accountability.
• •Foster a culture of engineering excellence, collaboration, ownership, continuous learning, and constructive technical debate.
• •Recognize performance issues or skill gaps early and partner with engineering leadership to address them appropriately.
• •Model and promote effective use of Claude and AI-assisted development workflows, coaching engineers on best practices for using AI to improve development velocity, code quality, testing, documentation, and problem-solving.

• •Engineering Quality & Shift-Left Testing
• •Establish and enforce a shift-left quality mindset , where quality is owned by engineering throughout the development lifecycle rather than treated as a downstream QA responsibility.
• •Ensure appropriate unit, integration, system, and end-to-end testing is a non-negotiable part of software delivery .
• •Perform code reviews and ensure changes meet Woundtech's standards for quality, maintainability, performance, security, and test coverage.
• •Reject or require remediation of pull requests that lack adequate automated test coverage or fail to meet established engineering standards.
• •Partner with QA to continuously improve test automation and reduce reliance on manual regression testing.
• •Drive improvements in defect prevention, automated testing, code quality, deployment confidence, and production reliability.
• •Ensure technical documentation is maintained for important systems, architectural decisions, and development standards.

• •Technical Leadership & Architecture
• •Lead technical design and architectural discussions within the team's domain.
• •Make sound technical decisions while evaluating tradeoffs across scalability, performance, security, reliability, maintainability, cost, and delivery speed.
• •Conduct architectural and technical design reviews for significant changes.
• •Partner with Architecture and DevSecOps to ensure solutions align with broader platform, cloud, security, and engineering standards.
• •Identify and proactively address technical debt while balancing immediate product priorities with long-term platform sustainability.
• •Promote reusable patterns and solutions that improve consistency across Woundtech's technology ecosystem.

• •Sprint Leadership & Delivery
• •Lead the team's technical execution throughout the software development lifecycle.
• •Actively participate in and help lead sprint planning, refinement, estimation, demos, and retrospectives.
• •Partner with Product Managers to ensure initiatives are appropriately scoped, technically feasible, and ready for engineering execution.
• •Break complex initiatives into clear and achievable technical deliverables.
• •Ensure engineers understand technical requirements, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and quality expectations before development begins.
• •Identify delivery risks and blockers early and drive them toward resolution.
• •Remove technical and organizational blockers that prevent engineers from delivering effectively.
• •Hold the team accountable for commitments while maintaining appropriate engineering quality and technical standards.
• •Use delivery and engineering metrics to identify opportunities to improve predictability, quality, and team effectiveness.

• •Product & Cross-Functional Collaboration
• •Partner closely with Product Managers to balance technical and business priorities and ensure engineering considerations are incorporated into product decisions.
• •Collaborate with Product, Design, QA, DevSecOps, Architecture, Data, Security, and other engineering teams to resolve dependencies and deliver cohesive solutions.
• •Participate early in product discovery to help evaluate technical feasibility, complexity, dependencies, and risks.
• •Communicate technical concepts, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• •Challenge assumptions constructively and help the team make pragmatic, data-informed decisions.
• •Escalate significant delivery, architectural, security, or organizational risks early rather than allowing them to become blockers.

• •Production Reliability & Continuous Improvement
• •Participate in production deployments, incident response, troubleshooting, and root cause analysis for critical systems.
• •Lead technical investigations for significant production issues and ensure corrective and preventive actions are implemented.
• •Partner with DevSecOps to improve observability, deployment reliability, application performance, and operational resilience.
• •Proactively identify recurring problems and implement systemic improvements rather than relying on short-term fixes.
• •Continuously improve engineering processes, tooling, automation, development workflows, and standards.
• •Take ownership of production outcomes—not simply feature completion.

• •Security & Healthcare Engineering
• •Ensure secure development practices are incorporated throughout solution design and development.
• •Partner with Security and DevSecOps to identify and remediate vulnerabilities and reduce technical and security risk.
• •Understand the responsibilities associated with developing software that processes sensitive healthcare information.
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