Team Lead, Engineering

Altana•Brooklyn, NY

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Altana is building an AI-powered product network that helps governments and businesses create a more resilient and secure global economy while keeping trade flowing. The Engineering organization builds a platform driven by AI and designed to scale across large volumes of data and a diverse customer base. The Team Lead will lead a small team of 3–4 engineers while remaining hands-on in engineering. Working closely with product and design, the Team Lead will make day-to-day product and technical decisions, translate customer needs into shipped and adopted products, and own the team's architecture and quality standards. Success is measured by customer value, the pace and consistency of delivery, and the reliability of the team's systems as output grows. The role is based in Brooklyn, New York, with hybrid work flexibility. Candidates must be within commuting distance of Altana's Williamsburg office.

Requirements

Professional experience writing back-end or data-driven software in demanding environments.
Strong hands-on engineering skills and sound technical judgment.
Experience deploying production code to cloud environments and knowing when to seek additional input on a design.
Experience coaching, mentoring, and leading engineers on complex projects as a tech lead, project lead, or senior engineer driving a team effort.
A track record of staying close to customers, translating their problems into well-scoped work, and delivering incremental releases from prototype to production.
Experience running sprint planning and delivery for a team that consistently meets its commitments.
Comfort with operations, including incidents, on-call responsibilities, and system costs.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with good judgment about when to decide independently and when to escalate.
Experience building production systems with LLMs, agents, evaluations, or retrieval.
Must be within commuting distance of the Williamsburg, Brooklyn office.

Nice To Haves

Experience directly managing engineers.
Experience using engineering metrics such as DORA or SPACE to improve team practices.
Background in trade, supply chain, compliance, or working with government customers.

Responsibilities

Lead a team of 3–4 engineers and contribute hands-on to engineering work.
Own the team's architecture and quality standards and serve as the final line of defense before work reaches customers.
Define customer problems, make tactical product decisions, and own a metric tied to a customer outcome.
Engage with customers weekly through calls and session-recording reviews, and identify the most significant friction points.
Clarify goals, break ambiguous problems into milestones and MVP/GA releases, manage the backlog, and sequence work for steady, predictable progress.
Use LLMs, agents, evaluations, and retrieval as standard building blocks, and set standards for verifying AI-assisted code before release.
Track engineering velocity, identify bottlenecks, address operational debt, and raise cross-team gaps with leadership.
Lead incident response, including a quick-response escalation rotation; treat cost as a design input and flag cost anomalies with proposed fixes.
Uphold security standards in code review and promptly fix flagged vulnerabilities.
Demo the team's work to customers, the commercial team, and product and engineering leadership.
Coach engineers, write reviews, and partner with the engineering manager to provide timely, actionable feedback.
Interview candidates and help create a team where everyone's ideas are heard.
Run sprint planning and delivery so the team makes and meets commitments.

Benefits

Competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full-time offers.
A discretionary bonus or variable compensation plan, depending on the role.
Flexible Time Off policy.
Paid parental leave: 14 weeks for non-birthing, adoptive, and foster parents and up to 26 weeks for birthing parents, paid at 100% of base salary.
Medical, vision, and dental benefits with generous employer contributions.
High-deductible health plan fully paid by the employer for employees, plus an employer contribution to a Health Savings Account.
Flexible Spending Account option and Dependent Care FSA.
Life, short- and long-term disability, and AD&D insurance coverage at no cost.
Fidelity 401(k) retirement savings program.
Commuter benefits using pre-tax funds for public transit or parking.
Free premium Calm subscription.
Pet insurance and a pet veterinary service and telehealth discount plan.
Free access to a confidential Employee Assistance Program.