Job Description

Technical Engagement Lead

Elevate Digital is at the forefront of digital transformation and enterprise solutions, partnering with major brands to deliver mission-critical digital experiences across content, commerce, and product. We specialize in blending strategy, design, and technology to drive meaningful outcomes for enterprise clients across QSR, retail, CPG, and financial services.
Join an innovative and vibrant team where we value transparency, efficiency, and collaboration. We offer competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, and extensive opportunities for professional growth — including meaningful exposure to the most consequential technology shift in a generation: AI-augmented engineering.

Role Overview
The Technical Engagement Lead is a senior hands-on technical operator embedded across multiple client engagements at a time. This role owns the full delivery lifecycle — from intake filtering and Jira hygiene to hands-on code review, production deployment authority, and direct client-facing communication.

The Technical Engagement Lead is the single point of accountability for whether work is built right and shipped on time within their assigned engagements. This is a senior engineering role, not a project management role. Candidates must be comfortable reviewing AI-generated and human-written code, making technical go/no-go calls on production deployments, and communicating delivery risk directly to clients.

This role reports to the VP of Engineering. Architectural standards, code quality baselines, and engineering best practices are established at the organizational level by the VP of Engineering. The T.E.L. enforces and applies those standards across their assigned client engagements.

Each Technical Lead typically manages 2–4 concurrent client engagements, calibrated to complexity and team size. This requires the ability to context-switch across different codebases, stakeholder groups, and delivery timelines simultaneously — a skill set typically developed through agency, consultancy, or multi-client services experience.

Key Responsibilities
1. Technical Deployment Authority
Own the final go/no-go decision for all production deployments across assigned engagements. The T.E.L. holds full technical sign-off authority within the framework and standards set by the VP of Engineering.
• Review release readiness from both a scope and technical quality perspective before every push
• Ensure rollback plans are defined and validated prior to all production deployments
• Coordinate deployment timing with clients, PMs, and DevOps — and make the final call
• Own post-deployment monitoring and incident escalation for assigned engagements
• Reduce production incidents through structured release gating and pre-deployment checklists

2. Code Review & Quality Enforcement
Serve as the technical quality gate for all code — including AI-generated output — entering production on assigned engagements.
• Review pull requests for correctness, security, performance, and adherence to established standards
• Apply and enforce the code quality baselines set by the VP of Engineering
• Identify and resolve poorly scoped, insecure, or substandard code before it reaches production
• Provide direct, constructive feedback to engineers to raise the quality bar over time
• Validate AI-assisted code with the same rigor applied to human-written output

3. Release Scope & Delivery Coordination
Own the full release lifecycle across assigned engagements — from initial scope definition through delivery confirmation.
• Define and maintain clear release scope for each active engagement
• Ensure every release has an approved task list, ownership assignments, and a confirmed timeline before engineering begins
• Monitor release progress and surface risks or delays early — to clients and internal stakeholders
• Coordinate cross-team dependencies and communicate release status proactively
• Maintain full visibility of what goes into each release and manage scope change impacts

4. Client-Facing Delivery Communication
Serve as the primary delivery point of contact for assigned client engagements. Own delivery communication end-to-end — not just internally.
• Lead regular delivery-focused client touchpoints including status calls and release reviews
• Communicate progress, risks, and timeline changes to clients before they ask
• Manage client expectations around delivery pace, capacity constraints, and scope impacts
• Escalate to the PM only when decisions require scope, commercial, or strategic input

5. Intake Filtering & Team Protection
Act as the structured intake point for all inbound requests on assigned engagements, ensuring the engineering team receives defined work — not a stream of ad-hoc asks.
• Translate client and PM requests into properly scoped, prioritized work items before they reach engineers
• Push back on unstructured or capacity-exceeding requests with clear rationale
• Protect engineering focus by managing inbound demand at the engagement level

6. Jira Ownership & Workflow Integrity
Own the full Jira workflow for all assigned engagements — ensuring the board always reflects reality, not aspirational state.
• Maintain structured, accurate workflows including epics, stories, subtasks, labels, and release versions
• Ensure every task includes a clear description, acceptance criteria, priority, owner, and scope estimate
• Monitor task movement and resolve stagnation, unclear ownership, or poorly scoped work
• Collect progress updates directly from developers without routing through senior leadership

Required Technical Skills (Non-Negotiable)
The following technical skills are required. Because the T.E.L serves as the final quality gate on production code, candidates must have direct, recent, hands-on experience in these technologies — not adjacent or transferable experience.
• Senior-level proficiency in modern web technologies including JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Node.js, REST and GraphQL APIs
• Hands-on experience delivering scalable digital solutions using CMS and eCommerce platforms such as AEM, Contentful, Shopify, Adobe Commerce, or Commercetools
• Active working familiarity with AI-assisted development tools including Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude, or equivalent — with clear perspective on appropriate use, review standards, and risk boundaries
• Strong command of CI/CD pipelines, Git-based workflows, and release management practices
• Demonstrated ability to review and validate code quality across performance, security, testing, and documentation standards
• Experience with testing frameworks and quality gates in enterprise or agency delivery environments

Qualifications
• Minimum 7 years of experience in software engineering, with demonstrated senior-level technical capability
• Direct experience owning or governing production deployments in client or enterprise environments
• Prior experience in an agency, consultancy, or multi-client services environment — with a demonstrated ability to manage multiple concurrent client engagements without sacrificing delivery quality
• Experience in a client-facing technical role — comfortable communicating delivery risk, timeline tradeoffs, and technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders
• Strong organizational discipline with a track record of maintaining structured delivery workflows across complex engagements
• Excellent communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences

This Role Is Likely Not a Fit If…
(We want to be transparent about the scope and level of this position to help candidates self-select.)
• Your recent experience is primarily in executive, VP, or director-level roles focused on organizational strategy, headcount planning, and long-range technology vision rather than hands-on delivery execution
• You have not actively reviewed pull requests or made production deployment decisions within the last 2 years
• Your hands-on experience is in tech stacks other than JavaScript/TypeScript, React, and Node.js (e.g., Java, .NET, Python backend-only) — even if you have strong engineering fundamentals
• You are looking for a role where you set organizational-level technical direction rather than enforce standards within client engagements
• Your career has been spent in a single-product or single-client environment and you have not operated across multiple concurrent workstreams with different stakeholders
Work Environment
• Full-time position, primarily remote
• Occasional travel may be required for client engagements, team collaboration, and industry events
Why Join Elevate Digital
• Own real technical authority across high-visibility enterprise engagements — not just process coordination
• Work at the intersection of technical delivery and client relationship in a culture that values craftsmanship and impact
• Enjoy flexible remote work, competitive pay, and benefits that support career growth
• Contribute to meaningful projects with a team that respects both engineering excellence and delivery discipline