Team Lead (Storage Team)

As a Team Lead (Storage Team) at Neon, your primary responsibilities will be to lead a talented engineering team, oversee the development of foundational data services for our serverless PostgreSQL platform, and ensure the overall success of the team through effective project and team management. You'll be involved in mentoring engineers, making crucial technical decisions, and enhancing system performance and correctness.

To be considered for the Team Lead (Storage Team) role at Neon, you will need at least two years of experience in a technical leadership position and over five years as a developer, with proficiency in a systems programming language such as C++ or Rust. You should also demonstrate strong mentoring abilities, emotional intelligence, and experience in building complex systems focused on accuracy and performance.

Candidates applying for the Team Lead (Storage Team) position at Neon should have experience with complex systems where correctness and performance are critical. Familiarity with databases, message brokers, operating systems, and filesystems is essential, particularly in running 24/7 production systems, either SaaS or on-premise.

Yes, the Team Lead (Storage Team) position at Neon is fully remote, allowing you to work from your home. We prioritize flexibility and ensure all formalities are handled to accommodate remote work, fostering a healthy work-life balance in our fully distributed team.

Neon promotes an open-source culture built on principles of transparency, accountability, contribution, and proactivity. We believe in collaborating effectively while valuing a diversity of thoughts and backgrounds, creating a flat organizational structure that encourages innovation and high performance among our engineers.

When answering this question, emphasize your leadership style, communication strategies, and techniques for fostering collaboration among remote teams. Discuss specific experiences you have had with team dynamics, conflict resolution, and how you set goals and expectations in a remote setting.

To effectively answer this question, share your approach to prioritization, such as leveraging frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix or Agile methodologies. Give examples of how you've determined critical paths and managed time-sensitive issues while maintaining team morale and productivity.

In your response, highlight your mentoring philosophy, techniques for knowledge sharing, and how you've fostered growth and skill development among junior team members. Include examples of formal programs or informal practices you've implemented to support their learning.

Discuss specific challenges you've encountered in systems projects—like performance bottlenecks or team disagreements. Explain how you diagnosed the issues, the strategies you employed to resolve them, and the outcomes that resulted from your interventions.

In your answer, highlight your understanding of PostgreSQL internals and how that knowledge has influenced your architectural decisions in past database projects. Discuss specific features or extensions you've worked with, and illustrate how you've applied that expertise in your leadership role.

To effectively respond, narrate a specific instance where you had to persuade stakeholders or team members about a particular technical direction. Outline your reasoning, the data you presented, and how you achieved buy-in or addressed concerns — showcasing your communication and persuasion skills.

Your response should touch on essential traits like emotional intelligence, technical expertise, decisiveness, and vision. Discuss why these attributes are crucial for fostering a successful engineering team and how they align with Neon's principles.

Share the various methods you utilize to stay updated—like attending conferences, reading relevant literature, engaging in online forums, or pursuing continuous education. Emphasize your proactive approach to learning new technologies and trends in storage engineering.

Discuss your practical experience managing 24/7 production systems, including strategies you've employed to monitor system health, implement backup processes, and handle incidents to maintain uptime. Highlight any tools or methodologies that have proven effective in your past roles.

When answering, focus on your openness to feedback, discussing how you solicit input from team members and stakeholders. Illustrate your approach to processing criticism and how you use it as a stepping stone for personal and team growth.