Leadership line, station 1 of 4
From Engineer to Tech Lead
Lead the technical work of a team: direction, design reviews, delegation, mentoring, predictable delivery and a working partnership with product and engineering management.
- 6lessons
- 3.5 hto read and do
- Intermediatelevel
- 6podcast episodes
- 2checked exercises
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
The first leadership step for most engineers is becoming a tech lead: still technical, but now responsible for how the whole team builds. The job needs new skills, such as setting direction without dictating, reviewing designs so people learn, delegating real work, mentoring, and keeping delivery predictable. It is easy to get wrong by coding more and leading less.
You step up as tech lead of Mangrove Market's Store app team, the app store staff use on about 1,000 handheld scanners, alongside Imran, the product manager, and Ken, the engineering manager. Across six lessons you write a two-quarter technical vision and a design doc for offline stock counts, run design and code reviews that teach, break the feature into thin slices with a capacity plan and an honest forecast, delegate the sync engine and mentor a junior engineer, decide which technical debt to pay with data, agree the team's rules for AI coding tools, and learn to say no well when the head of store operations wants something tomorrow.
Every lesson has a podcast episode, filled-in templates you can copy, quick checks, practice tasks with model answers and flashcards, and two lessons have auto-checked JavaScript exercises. The course ends with a capstone plan for leading the Store app for two quarters and a final exam for a free certificate.
What you will be able to do
- Explain what a tech lead owns and does not own, choose between the tech lead, manager and staff paths, and plan your first 90 days in the role
- Write a short technical vision and design docs people follow, and run design reviews that teach instead of judge
- Slice a big feature into thin, valuable slices, plan capacity honestly and give forecasts as ranges with named risks
- Delegate real work at the right level, mentor engineers with a plan, and give feedback that changes behaviour
- Build a code review culture, decide on technical debt with data, and agree team rules for AI coding tools
- Work as a partner with product and engineering management, make trade-offs visible and say no well
Syllabus
6 stops, about 3.5 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
What a tech lead is (and is not)
You have just become tech lead of Mangrove Market's Store app team. This lesson shows what the job owns and what it leaves to the engineering manager and the product manager, the shapes the role takes at different companies, how your week has to change, the trap of coding your way out of every problem, and a plan for your first 90 days.
Technical leadershipDelegationMentoringStakeholder communication
Technical vision and design docs
A tech lead sets direction mostly in writing. This lesson shows you how to write a short technical vision for the next two quarters, how a design doc turns one big change into a decision, how to record that decision so nobody has to argue it again, and how to run design reviews that leave every engineer a little better.
Technical leadershipDesign reviewsDesign docs and ADRsStakeholder communication
Slicing and planning work
Offline stock counts is about two months of work for the Store app team. This lesson shows you how to cut it into thin slices that each work on a real scanner, put honest ranges on the estimate, count the days your team really has, and find the risks early with short spikes. You finish with a delivery plan you can defend to Imran and Ken.
EstimationTechnical leadershipStakeholder communication
Delegation and mentoring
Offline stock counts is too big for you to build alone, and if you try, the team stops growing while you become the bottleneck. This lesson shows you how to hand over real work with the right amount of freedom, how to support each engineer according to how ready they are for that task, and how to grow people on purpose with pairing, feedback and a plan per person.
DelegationMentoringTechnical leadership
Quality, debt and AI tools
As tech lead you own the health of the code, and you cannot review every line yourself. This lesson gives you three working systems for the Store app team: a code review culture that keeps work moving and teaches, a technical debt register that turns complaints into costed decisions, and written team rules for AI coding tools whose effect you actually measure.
Technical leadershipTechnical debtMentoringCode reviewAI coding tools
Leading with product and management
A tech lead never leads alone. You share the team with a product manager, an engineering manager and a designer, and most of the hard moments in the job (an urgent request, a slipping date, a disagreement about what comes first) are decided between you. This lesson shows how to split the work between you, keep a shared rhythm, trade off well, say no without damage and escalate together.
Stakeholder communicationTechnical leadershipEstimation
Capstone: Lead the Store app's next two quarters
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Lead the Store app's next two quarters
You have just become tech lead of Mangrove Market's Store app team: five engineers (Sam, Mira, Joel, Tara and Hugo), with Imran as product manager and Ken as engineering manager. The Store app runs on about 1,000 handheld scanners in about 320 stores, and a stock count fails today whenever the scanner loses Wi-Fi, which happens in roughly one count in six. The next big feature is offline stock counts that sync safely, piloted in Ama's store, then 20 stores, then all 320. Write the plan you would share with your team, Imran and Ken: a two-page technical vision for the next two quarters, a design doc for offline stock counts with the alternatives you rejected, a delivery plan of thin slices with a capacity calculation and a forecast range, your team's working agreements for code review and AI coding tools, a technical-debt list with the cost of each item, and a delegation and mentoring plan for each engineer. Pick a real team of your own instead if you lead one, and say so.
You will hand in
- A two-page technical vision: current state, where the system is going in two quarters, principles, non-goals and how you will know it worked
- A design doc for offline stock counts (or your own team's next big feature) with goals, non-goals, the design, two alternatives considered, risks and a rollout plan
- A delivery plan: thin slices that each deliver value, a capacity calculation, a forecast as a range, and a risk list with spikes
- Working agreements: code review rules, the team's rules for AI coding tools, and a technical-debt list with the cost of each item and what you will pay first
- A delegation and mentoring plan for each engineer, and a one-page agreement with the product manager and engineering manager on who owns what
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 6 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 3 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Is a tech lead a manager?
Usually not. A tech lead guides the technical work: direction, design, quality and how the team delivers. An engineering manager looks after people: hiring, performance, careers and team health. Some companies combine the two in a tech lead manager role. The first lesson compares the shapes and helps you pick a path.
I lead a QA, data or DevOps team. Is this course for me?
Yes. The examples follow a software team building a scanner app, but vision, slicing, delegation, reviews, debt decisions and working with a product manager apply to any technical team. The capstone lets you use your own team instead of the Store app.
How much code is in the course?
Very little. Two lessons have short auto-checked JavaScript exercises (a capacity calculation and a ranking of technical debt), and the rest is templates, worked examples and decisions. You should be comfortable reading code and pull requests.
What should I take before and after this course?
GitHub for Teams helps, because the course assumes you know pull requests and code review. After it, Engineering Management covers the people side of leading teams, and Communication & Leadership covers writing for decisions and working with stakeholders.
How do I get the certificate?
Finish every lesson and pass the final exam: questions plus two short tasks, with 70% needed on each part. The capstone is reviewed separately and you can submit it whenever it is ready.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How long does it take?
Each lesson shows an honest time for reading and doing. Most people finish a course in two to four weeks at three or four hours a week.