There’s more to being a Lead Developer than great coding
You don't need to be the best coder on the team to lead it. In addition to coding, the job is to help the team get better, find the problems worth solving and get working software into production.
There are plenty of routes into this role, and the role is unique to each person and workplace. You need to find the balance of different leadership roles you are willing to take and that fit the environment you are working in.
The four problems of a lead developer
I think of the job as a problem-solving role. There are at least four kinds of problems to solve, and they can arise at the same time. The lead developer does not need a ready answer to all of these. Their job is to lead the team in solving them together. And here, it’s important to distinguish the role from a managerial one.
A manager can lead but a lead should not manage.
The technology problem is the one people expect: planning architecture and setting a technical vision, taking care of code quality and improving tests that keep technical debt under control, or at least visible. Sometimes it’s about spotting risks early while researching and choosing technologies. It can also be about roadmap work. And yes, it’s also about the coding itself, not just waving hands.
The people problem is the one that often gets underestimated. It covers building team culture, mentoring and coaching junior team members, supporting recruitment activities and helping the team find better ways of working together. Much of it comes down to making goals, expectations and roles clear, because a team without clear ownership of decisions will stall, no matter how good its code is. Another big part is building trust within the team, so that everyone can shine and grow in their own roles.
The product problem means giving the business teams guidance and boundaries on what is technically easy, difficult, or even possible. The business needs this to decide on what to build and when. It’s about shaping and prioritizing the backlog together with different aspects of product development, and weighing business needs against user value and quality. Above all, it means finding the right problems to solve.
The productivity problem is about keeping work moving: removing obstacles that slow the team down or stall progress. It can be about making deployments smoother or more frequent. Improving how the team works helps make software delivery more predictable for everyone.
Nobody is equally strong across all four of these. I know I'm not. The goal is to identify your strengths, build on them, and prioritize these different problems across the organization. For example, if there are trust issues in the team, it’s hard to work on productivity. Each environment also gives you a chance to work deliberately on the areas you want to improve.
The part that doesn't fit on a CV
In some ways, technology is the easier part. The harder question is how we do this work together as people. Most of what separates a good lead developer from a strong senior developer shows up in moments that have nothing to do with code: when nobody knows the answer, and it needs to be said out loud.
Speaking up pays off.
I’ve often seen someone raise a question in a meeting and get thanked afterward by people who had the same question but didn’t ask it. The same goes for owning your mistakes. We all make them, and when someone has the guts to say they messed up and nothing bad actually happens, it’s much easier for the next one to do the same.
I've written down ten habits I try to follow. I will talk more about these in our upcoming meetup, but in short, they're about being someone the team can trust: you own your decisions, admit what you don't know, keep your word, and put your energy into helping other people think and grow. Basically, it’s about trying to be the best possible teammate you can.
They seem obvious at first, but practicing them every day of every week, with deadlines and a team that has differing opinions, is hard. These habits are also what to look for if you’re a manager; you'll usually see them in someone long before they have the title. And the good part is, you don't actually need the title to act like a lead – anyone can do it.
And AI?
While AI is drastically changing the industry, I don't see the lead developer’s job changing completely. Sure, I can say that in some projects, AI already writes all of our code, but as stated earlier, writing code isn’t all we do as lead developers.
Someone still has to decide what we build, when we build it and how we get it out. Behind every agent there's a person who sets its tasks and answers for the result. There is also a lot of work to be done before the agent can even be asked to do anything. As long as there are humans on the loop, these other elements of the job are as important as ever.
If you're already a lead, your job matters more than it used to. When code gets written faster, you can go a long way in the wrong direction before anyone notices. Technology moves fast, but people move slowly. Our bodies and brains are still largely built for the Stone Age, and we won't change at the speed the tools do. AI shortens the coding loop, but the rest of the job doesn't get faster on its own. To speed that up too, you have to be willing to take on problems that have nothing to do with code.
The same things that made someone a great colleague ten years ago will still make them great ten years from now.
Where to start?
Start right now: lead developers use skills you can practice in whatever role you have.
I'm a good example. My degree is in mathematics, and I didn't come into software as a programmer. Since moving into IT in 2013, I've been a developer, a consultant and an engineering manager. Now I'm a lead developer at Wonna. I started giving this talk when I was asked to speak to early-stage computer science students at the University of Helsinki.
If you'd like a head start, I'll go through this in detail – the four problems and all ten habits – at Wonna's meetup on Thursday 8 October, 17:00–19:00, at our office (Elimäenkatu 5 in Vallila, Helsinki). Mikael Korpi from Ilmiö Talent Agency will talk about the job market for developers right now. The session is in Finnish and won't be recorded.
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Author
Tiina Romu
Tiina is a Lead Software Developer who makes the whole team better. In over a decade, she has built software from scratch as Huuva's first tech employee, led frontend engineering at Aiven, and consulted for clients in industries from aviation and health to ecommerce and news media. Along the way, she has guided development, coached agile ways of working, and introduced practices that help people do their best work. Frontend is her home turf, and AI is simply part of how she builds, from customer projects to her own experiments.