Fractional Engineering Lead

Company Description
North Partners is a strategy and execution partner that helps companies scale through product, technology, and AI innovation. The organization focuses on measurable outcomes such as adoption, efficiency, and growth, embedding with client teams to deliver long-term impact. Offerings span product strategy and roadmapping, modern technology engineering, AI-powered solutions, and fractional COO support for operations and scaling. North Partners combines product thinking, engineering excellence, and practical AI to build secure, scalable solutions tailored to business needs. Its mission is to own outcomes, build trust, and drive sustainable growth with every client engagement.
About the Role
One of our US based clients are looking for a Senior Staff-level Tech Lead or Engineering Manager with a strong background in data infrastructure, distributed systems, and team leadership. This is a hands-on leadership role — ideal for someone who thrives on solving complex, ambiguous problems, mentoring high-performing engineers, and bridging technical depth with strong people management.
Key Responsibilities
Lead and mentor a high-performing engineering team focused on data infrastructure and analytics.
Design, develop, and deploy distributed data systems leveraging Kubernetes (K8s), Spark, Flink, Kafka, and related technologies.
Translate abstract or ambiguous technical concepts into scalable code and architectures.
Collaborate cross-functionally with researchers, product managers, and team members with mathematics and physics backgrounds.
Drive technical excellence, code quality, and architectural decision-making.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from any premium IIT/NIT is a MUST
8+ years of professional experience in software engineering or data infrastructure.
3+ years of hands-on experience with Kubernetes (K8s).
2+ years of experience in data infrastructure, analytics, or distributed systems.
Experience with Spark, Flink, Kafka, or distributed databases is a strong plus.
1–2 years of prior management or tech lead experience preferred.
Strong people management and communication skills.
Proven ability to mentor junior engineers and foster a collaborative team environment.
Strong academic foundation in Computer Science, Engineering, or related fields.
Experience in a FAANG or comparable high-performance environment is highly preferable
Comfort working in a cross-domain environment with experts in physics and mathematics.
Qualifications
Strong software engineering background with experience in application development, modernization, and cloud-native architectures.
Proficiency in DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, automation tooling, and monitoring for production systems.
Experience in data engineering, analytics, and integrating AI or machine learning capabilities into products and workflows.
Ability to lead and mentor distributed engineering teams, set technical direction, and establish engineering best practices.
Comfort working as a fractional or contract leader across multiple clients, with strong stakeholder management and consulting skills.
Demonstrated experience aligning technology decisions with product strategy, business objectives, and measurable outcomes.
Familiarity with security, compliance, QA processes, and code review/ refactoring to improve reliability and maintainability.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences.
Previous experience in high-growth or scaling environments; background in B2B SaaS or AI-powered products is a plus.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Work arrangement
No