Tech: lead and staffCVs for tech roles5 min read
Tech lead, staff and manager CV: show your leverage
Your own code is no longer the point. A lead is hired for leverage: the decisions, systems and people that make a whole group better. Most lead CVs still read like a senior developer’s with bigger numbers. Here is how to write one that reads like a lead.
Updated 18 October 2026
From what you did to what you made possible
A senior bullet says what you built. A lead bullet says what changed for others: a team that shipped faster, a design three teams now build on, an incident that stopped coming back, engineers who grew. The question behind every line is how far your influence reached.
Instead of
- Led a team of 8 engineers.
- Responsible for the architecture of the platform.
Write
- Grew the payments team from 4 to 9 engineers; two promoted to senior, no one left in 18 months.
- Wrote the event-based design adopted by 5 teams, replacing nightly jobs and cutting data delay from 24 hours to 5 minutes.
Team size and titles are the frame, not the result. The strong lines show what the team and the company got from your leadership.
Know which track you are applying for
- Staff and principalLead with technical direction across teams: designs adopted, migrations finished, standards set, risky bets you stopped. People skills show through influence, not reports.
- Engineering managerLead with the team as your product: hiring, retention, delivery, people growing, and engineering tied to business goals. Keep one line that proves you can still go deep.
Tech lead sits between the two. Decide which way the job you want leans, and make your first three bullets lean the same way.
The AI question you will be asked
Every company is working out how AI changes the way its engineers work, and leads are the ones expected to answer. A line that shows you led that change, with sensible rules and a measured result, is one of the strongest things a lead CV can carry today.
Change you ledGuardrailMeasured result
“Rolled out AI coding assistants to 40 engineers with review rules for generated code; time from commit to production fell from 5 days to 2, with no rise in incidents.”
Name the trade-offs you managed: security, cost, quality, and how juniors still learn the fundamentals. That is the judgment a lead role is really about.
Shape the page
Open with a summary that states your level and the scale you work at: team size, systems, domain. Give each role two to four bullets about outcomes for the team or the business. Keep technologies to one short line at the end: at this level they support the story, they do not sell it.
What to leave out
Avoid
- Ceremonies you ran (“facilitated stand-ups and retros”). Every lead runs them; say what they produced.
- Only people numbers, or only system numbers. A lead CV needs both the delivery and the team behind it.
- Confidential details. Use percentages and ranges instead of revenue figures or client names you cannot share.
- Hiding that you still code. If you review, prototype or write designs, say so: many lead roles need it.
- Hired for leverage
- Show what others gained
- Pick a track: staff or manager
- Lead the AI change, with guardrails