Description

Trailhead is the engine powering the next generation of digital learning, and we are looking for a Lead Member of Technical Staff (LMTS) to guide the team building the biggest shift in software since the cloud. We are currently mobilizing our community as a force multiplier for the "Agentblazer" movement—a global effort to equip leaders and early adopters with the skills needed to navigate an AI-driven world. In this role, you will lead a distributed, collaborative team of engineers dedicated to scaling this learning ecosystem exponentially. You will be responsible for fostering a culture of transparent communication, high-quality code reviews, and continuous feedback, ensuring that Trailhead remains the most engaging and effective way for our customers and partners to learn.

Technically, you will guide the evolution of our platform as we blend our core stack with Salesforce’s latest innovations. While our foundation is built on Ruby on Rails, Node.js, and React deployed on Heroku, we use Salesforce’s own Lightning Web Components (LWC) off-core to create a seamless experience for our Trailblazers. You will leverage your deep technical expertise to oversee this transition, ensuring that our technical content, developer events, and hands-on workshops are delivered through a high-performance, scalable engine. Your leadership will be vital in helping our engineers "skill up" on this modern stack while maintaining the stability and fun factor that defines the Trailhead brand.

The ideal candidate is a self-starter who thrives on ownership and can navigate the pressures of a fast-paced project portfolio with a great sense of humor. Success in this position requires more than just technical management; you must be an effective collaborator who can provide insightful feedback on projects outside your immediate domain and possess exceptional communication skills to align a distributed workforce. We value leaders who don't just manage but influence, helping to transform Trailblazers into Agentblazers who drive real change within their organizations.

Responsibilities:

Drive Execution: Build and deliver new features by writing maintainable, high-quality code across the full stack (Ruby on Rails, Node.js, and React).

Technical Leadership: Spend 30-40% of your time mentoring the team on design concepts (SOLID), refactoring, performance techniques, and architectural principles.

Architectural Oversight: Collaborate with technical architects to design and document new systems with a quality-first mindset, minimizing technical debt.

Quality & Testing: Develop test strategies and automation frameworks; write unit, functional, and integration tests (using tools like Cypress and Jest) to drive code coverage.

Code Review & Mentorship: Provide oversight through rigorous code and design reviews, ensuring the team's output is well-factored and scalable.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Engineering Managers to guide team priorities and support editorial/marketing teams in debugging production issues

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Minimum Qualifications:

Experience: 10+ years of professional experience with object-oriented programming (Ruby, Python, Java, or Go).

Technical Leadership: Proven ability to lead, motivate, and grow a team of developers while spending 30-40% of your time on mentorship and design teaching.

AI & Agentic Mastery: Champion, influencer, and early adopter of Agentic Engineering. Proficiency in and active adoption of modern AI development tools and LLMs is required, including Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini, and OpenAI/OpenAPI.

Full-Stack Proficiency: Strong professional experience with Ruby on Rails or an equivalent framework and React/Node.js.

Web Fundamentals: Expert-level command of HTML, CSS, and modern JavaScript (ES6+).

Quality & Testing: Deep knowledge of the full software lifecycle, including code reviews, SCM, CI/CD, and writing maintainable unit, functional, and integration tests.

Datastore Knowledge: Solid experience with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases and an understanding of schema design.

Communication: Strong proactive communicator who can describe software product features and participate in architecture designs.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Skills:

Component Architecture: Ability to build and maintain native React components within a standardized design system (e.g., Salesforce Lightning Design System).

DevOps & Deployment: Professional experience managing applications on Heroku or via containerization tools like Docker.

Advanced Tooling: Working experience with TypeScript, Storybook, VSCode, and automated testing frameworks like Cypress.io.

Agile Expertise: Experience working in an Agile environment with short release cycles and a "hybrid engineering" model.

Problem Solving: Ability to be nimble and comfortable working with minimal specifications to solve production issues.