Tech Lead Manager, Student Experience
Niche.com · Remote
About this role
**Tech Lead Manager, Student Experience — Niche** **About Niche** Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply. **About the Role** We’re looking for an experienced **Tech Lead Manager (TLM)** motivated by building impactful products, growing individuals, and driving a high-performance team. The TLM is the **single technical and people leader** for our **student-facing team** within our two-sided marketplace—responsible for the **logged-in student experience**, guiding students and families through the higher education application and enrollment process. You’ll own the professional development, career growth, and performance management of your direct reports, and lead the team’s culture, direction, and execution. Together with your Product Manager, you’ll own how the team works and evolve it toward faster delivery and rapid learning. You’ll also stay hands-on in the codebase: taking on inbound technical work, owning technical debt in your scope, and maintaining enough depth to challenge technical approaches—not just track progress. You’ll serve as the primary technical representative for your team, model effective AI-assisted development, and monitor and act on team health. --- ## What You Will Do **During the First Month** - Learn about Niche through onboarding meetings and conversations with team members - Build rapport with direct reports and understand each ongoing project deeply enough to form real technical opinions - Understand the team’s current process (ceremonies, planning, review) before making changes **Within 3 Months** - Become a regular direct contributor to inbound technical work (bug fixes, compliance work, technical debt, smaller features) - Make your first joint call with Product on a process adjustment - Establish a working rhythm for 1:1s, performance conversations, and career development with each direct report **Within 6 Months** - Demonstrate ownership of a nontrivial technical decision or architectural direction - Show a track record of catching and correcting technical or product-design issues before they become delivery problems - Complete a full performance/calibration cycle for your direct reports **Within 12 Months** - Lead, jointly with Product, a deliberate evolution of the team’s process informed by learnings and experiments - Become a recognized technical authority for your domain, trusted with architectural calls without needing to route them elsewhere - Demonstrate a sustained balance of hands-on technical contribution and people leadership --- ## What We Are Looking For - Strong, current hands-on software engineering experience (writing and reviewing code regularly) - Experience owning both technical direction and people management—ready to take on both at once - Comfort operating without a separate Tech Lead; able to independently represent the engineering function - Experience with (or strong aptitude for) AI-assisted development tooling and workflows - Track record of making pragmatic technical trade-offs under real delivery pressure - Experience with (or openness to evolving) agile/Scrum
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