Taking over the Tech Lead role in another team
A pathway to becoming a Tech Lead: taking on the role in another existing team.
Intro
There are three main pathways that can lead you into a tech lead role.
Today I am focusing on 2. Taking over the Tech Lead role in another team.
How you end up in this scenario
One common way is: the Tech Lead of another team is leaving, and your manager asks you to step in because there’s no one else with the necessary skills. You agree.
Transitioning into the role
To make the transition smoother, jump in as soon as possible. The more overlap you have with the current Tech Lead, the better as you’ll be able to create a transition plan together ( like I did with my Tech Lead when I took over the Tech Lead role in my current team. You can read more about here ).
The downside of this approach
This pathway comes with extra challenges. Beyond just transitioning to Tech Lead, you also have to go through a full onboarding process with the new team. They’ve already established their own way of working, and as a new leader, you may face some friction as they adjust to you.
If overlap with the outgoing Tech Lead isn’t possible, focus on relationship-building first, rather than diving into the technical or product side. Forming a few allies early on can help you access the knowledge you need.
All this makes it a bit trickier than taking over a team you’re already familiar with, where you’d know the people, product, and technical solutions.
The benefits of this approach
The upside is you’re walking into a fresh start: new team, new people, new rules. This is a chance to define how you want to be seen as a leader right from the beginning.
Wrap up
This is just one of the three most common paths toward becoming a Tech Lead.
The other two are:
Agreed on the challenge about getting known by your new team and adapt the internal dynamics.
Soft skills are a must in this.
I saw some cases in which the Tech Lead didn't care at all about it, since he was there just to "put things back on track" and that's it.
Other challenge I see is the get up to speed with the code of the different applications.
Thanks for sharing Ane!