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Tell me about a time when you helped a software engineer in your team advance to a lead/senior position. I usually ask this question while interviewing software development managers, and most of the time, candidates tend to focus on technical skills. However, technical skills are only one of many qualities expected from a lead software engineer.
The expectations from a lead software engineer varies from one company to another, but generally, they are capable of delivering software independently, although the technology might not be clear. Lead engineers might act as force multipliers, where they ensure proper mentoring of junior software engineers, and the adoption of development and operations management best practices. Last but not least, they focus on customer problems and make trade-offs across engineering excellence and reducing time to market.
#1 Functional and Technical Skills
A lead engineer designs, implements and deploys software, they should have the knowledge to break down projects into smaller tasks that the team can work on in parallel. Lead engineers are completely self-driven, who understands the product development lifecycle from ideation to delivery, and are capable of delivering incrementally, defining rollout and rollback plans. During the execution phase, a lead engineer…
