Job Description — Engineering Team Lead

Job Title: Engineering Team Lead

Company: Chapter One NFP

Location: Remote (United States / US East Coast preferred)

Compensation: $170,000–$190,000 USD base

Reports To: Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO)

About Chapter One

Chapter One is a nonprofit on a mission to make sure every child has the reading skills they need to thrive. For over 30 years, we've paired high-impact, 1:1 tutoring with purpose-built technology to deliver early literacy instruction to K–5 students, with operations spanning the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Technology isn't the product here — the human connection between a tutor and a student is. Our engineering team builds the platform that empowers tutors and volunteers to stay closely connected with their students and guides them through a successful session, every time.

Our engineering organization is intentionally lean, with the US the largest of the three markets we operate in by headcount. Our team is one, across all markets: there's no layer of bureaucracy between your decisions and the classrooms and communities we reach.

Role Purpose & Dual Mandate

We're hiring an Engineering Team Lead to become the technical anchor of our core platform — a Rails backend (authentication, admin tooling, core APIs, platform telemetry) paired with a series of React/TypeScript client-side applications — while running the day-to-day leadership of our engineering pod.

This is a genuinely dual-mandate role: deep technical fundamentals and hands-on team leadership are equally essential. You will be the person the team turns to both when a complex technical problem needs a pragmatic call and when priorities need to be set clearly.

You won't own comp decisions or hire/fire authority on day one — those stay with the CPTO while you build a track record. You will own performance reviews for your team from day one, along with daily cadence, mentoring, unblocking, and setting clear expectations.

[ 50% Technical Leadership ] ---> Architecture, Code Reviews, AI Workflows, PII Security
[ 30% Team Leadership      ] ---> Mentoring, Sprint Cadence, Performance Reviews, QA Partnering
[ 20% Operational Governance] ---> Asana Time Logs, GitHub PR Parity, Daily Slack Pulse

Detailed Responsibilities

Technical Leadership (50%)

• Be the most senior engineer in the room for our core platform, Rails backend, and React/TypeScript client-side applications alike — making pragmatic architecture and code-quality calls.
• Set and uphold engineering standards without turning into a bottleneck, reviewing code and design decisions with judgment.
• Serve as technical lead on new feature work — assessing feasibility, providing estimates, flagging tradeoffs, and working directly with the CPTO to draft development proposals.
• Structure database and API isolation layers to safeguard sensitive student PII data for district compliance contracts (e.g., NYC DOE / LA County).
• Use AI-assisted and agentic development workflows to move faster yourself, setting the standard for how the team uses them.
• Model pragmatic, iterative development — shipping in small, testable increments rather than over-engineering.

Team Leadership & Mentoring (30%)

• Run day-to-day leadership for a small, close-knit engineering pod — setting cadence, prioritizing work, and unblocking the team.
• Bring recommendations for what's working and what isn't directly to the CPTO and leadership team.
• Mentor engineers actively through pair programming sessions and code reviews, identifying leveling-up opportunities.
• Conduct performance reviews for the pod from day one.
• Partner closely with QA and Release Management on shipping features predictably from staging to production.

Operational Governance & Daily Pulse (20%)

• Asana Auditing: Conduct daily audits of Asana portfolios and swimlanes. Enforce the policy that any task marked "In Progress" must have an active time log entry.
• GitHub Parity: Ensure tasks marked "Code Complete" in Asana match active PRs in GitHub.
• Communication Cadence: Monitor daily Slack check-ins and QA testing channels to resolve blockers quickly.

30 / 90 / 180 Day Success Criteria

• 30 Days — Getting your bearings, with intent:

• Dig into the Rails backend and React/TypeScript client-side applications deeply enough to form clear technical opinions.
• Understand your team: what each person is working on, where they are stuck, and what motivates them.
• Articulate clearly what the team is prioritizing right now and why.

• 90 Days — The mandate is visibly yours:

• The team comes to you for architecture calls.
• Planning and prioritization run directly through you.
• Complete your first cycle of performance reviews for the pod.
• Work moves forward predictably without needing constant manual pushes.

• 180 Days — Reaching further:

• Lead cross-repo and wider organizational initiatives beyond your core remit.
• Measurably elevate team members through active mentorship.
• Build the track record that opens the door to broader engineering leadership.

Growth Path

This is a leadership role by design. Day one, you're anchored on our core platform — leading initiatives that span our other codebases and repos is an earned target for your first 6–9 months. On the leadership side, demonstrated readiness opens the door to full people-management of the engineering team and broader leadership as Chapter One scales.