Roles are not boundaries, don’t feel restricted by your role.

Project Tech Lead

A team member is assigned to each project as a tech lead. The tech lead is the focal point for a project. The tech lead is not expected to decide everything themselves, but to be the facilitator that allows the team to keep its coherence. Having the Tech Lead rotate per project allows sharing this responsibility and give everyone their chance to improve their skills.

Work with engineering manager to define project plan and roadmap
Primary point of contact to understand the state of the project, and the technical and organizational constraints
Primary point of contact for communication with other teams, manage incoming and outgoing dependencies
Responsible for breaking work into manageable pieces that can be shared across the team
Identify risks and mitigations early
Primary contact to solidify the technical constraints of the project (software and system architecture / gardening)

Software Engineer

Contribute to discussion around software practices, architecture and delivery
Ensure code quality through testing, design patterns and attention to code quality
Ensure that value is delivered early, in an iterative process
Support the tech lead by providing input, ideas, suggestions, and participating in discussions related to current projects
Provide visibility on the work being done by using the appropriate communication channels (phab, etherpad, ...)
Work with the engineering manager to propose new features and direction for the team
Work collaboratively with team members to complete defined work
Identify challenges, blocks and ensure that the team is aware of those
Take a proactive role in team rituals

Computational Linguist

Contribute to discussion around language support
Ensure quality of language support through careful quantitative and qualitative analysis
Ensure that value is delivered early, in an iterative process
Provide visibility on the work being done by using the appropriate communication channels (phab, etherpad, ...)
Work with the engineering manager to propose new features and direction for the team
Work collaboratively with team members to complete defined work
Identify challenges, blocks and ensure that the team is aware of those
Take a proactive role in team rituals

Engineering Manager

The engineering manager's primary responsibility is supporting the team to deliver quality solutions that satisfy our users' needs. In the absence of a product manager, the engineering manager has some responsibility to advocate for our users and provide a long term product vision.

Address impediments that block the team progress
Facilitate team rituals, build effective internal processes for the team
Ensure that the team is aligned and has a common understanding of goals and priorities
Provide visibility on work of the team to our communities and higher management
Tie breaker in case decisions are stuck at the team level
Provide an escalation path in case of conflicts with other teams