R&D Team Lead

Lightrun shapes the Future of Autonomous Application Remediation—Software That Fixes Itself. As the market leader in Developer Observability, Lightrun is revolutionizing how developers and SREs address high-impact business challenges. We’re shifting from reactive troubleshooting to real-time, AI-driven remediation—minimizing downtime and ensuring mission-critical systems stay operational.

Recognized by Fast Company and G2, and trusted by industry leaders like Citi, SAP, AT&T, ADP, Booking Holdings, Inditex, and more, Lightrun is redefining observability. Join us to build cutting-edge AI-powered solutions, collaborate with world-class engineers, and shape the future of autonomous software.

About the Role
We are looking for a highly motivated and experienced R&D Team Leader to guide and grow a team of talented developers. This role requires strong technical leadership, hands-on backend development expertise, and a deep understanding of modern cloud-native architectures. You will play a key role in shaping the future of our Dev-Native Observability Platform, collaborating closely with product and engineering leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of Backend, Full Stack, and QA developers by providing technical direction, constructive feedback, and professional growth opportunities.
  
  
• Participate in architectural decisions and the development of core components of the platform.
  
  
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers and other engineering teams to align technical efforts with business goals.
  
  
• Take an active role in the recruitment and onboarding of new team members.
  
  
• Drive best practices in software engineering, CI/CD, and DevOps culture.
  
  
• Set performance goals, conduct regular 1:1s, and help the team stay focused, motivated, and productive.
  
  

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in a managerial or team leadership position within an R&D or software engineering environment
  
  
• At least 5 years of experience as a backend developer
  
  
• Strong system design and architecture skills
  
  
• Proven experience with Java or C#
  
  
• At least 3 years of experience with relational databases
  
  
• Experience with microservices, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (preferably AWS)
  
  
• Experience working in startup environments
  
  
• Strong communication and collaboration skills
  
  
• Self-motivated, fast learner, and hands-on team player
  
  

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience working with SaaS products
  
  
• Experience with observability/profiling/remote debugging tools
  
  
• Experience building LLM-based or AI-powered features
  
  
• Experience with additional languages like Python, Node.js, C++, or Go
  
  
• Prior involvement in product roadmap discussions or customer-facing technical roles