Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California
Technical Lead Manager jobs in California are among the most actively recruited in the country, concentrated in software engineering, cloud infrastructure, and product development across the technology, fintech, and enterprise software sectors, with openings from first-time leads through senior engineering directors. The largest hiring markets are San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Jose, where companies like Google, Apple, and Salesforce maintain major engineering operations and consistently bring on technical lead managers at multiple levels. The most in-demand specialties are distributed systems leadership, platform engineering management, and AI or machine learning team leads. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
Find Technical Lead Manager JobsOverview
Showing 5 of 42+ Technical Lead Manager jobs











At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.
Technology continues to transform every aspect of society, including healthcare. Lilly envisions digital capabilities as an extension of our medicines, not just a marketing tactic. We, as consumers, have come to expect digital experiences to augment and support our experiences with medicines — especially to help reduce the burden of coping and managing through chronic disease for us, our loved ones, and health care providers. Hence, Lilly's Software Product Engineering team is committed to exploring how next-generation therapeutic ecosystems, connected solutions, and data analytics can transform the customer (patients, health care providers, and payers) experience, demonstrate value, and most importantly — improve patient outcomes.
The SPE Technical Lead & Engineering Manager will be responsible for developing and leading technical solutions supporting one or more Digital Health platforms. You will need to engage multiple teams to define technical requirements, develop designs, and align technology that enables the platform architecture all while meeting medical device regulatory expectations. Additionally, the organization will look to you to be a leader across SPE projects influencing other tech leads in how we develop platform solutions following best practices and driving our platform innovation roadmap.
What You'll Be Doing:
Architecture & Technical Direction
- Own and approve system architecture and design decisions across your platform area.
- Lead technical design reviews and ensure consistent, scalable, and resilient implementation.
- Partner with product and design teams to architect maintainable solutions and evaluate UX feasibility.
- Collaborate with other technical teams on the design of dependencies and shared services.
- Provide technical evaluation of proposed ideas, software changes, and future releases.
- Align SPE technical solutions with Lilly-supported technologies.
People Leadership & Team Management
- Directly manage a team of 2–5 engineers.
- Own performance management, coaching, career development.
- Set team priorities, manage capacity and workload, and remove obstacles to delivery.
- Foster team health, engagement, and a high-performing engineering culture in a geographically separate location.
- Partner with the Delivery Manager on staffing, planning, and delivery commitments.
Planning, Strategy & Innovation
- Drive the development and execution of the platform innovation roadmap, including working proof-of-concept models in new technology spaces.
- Provide input on future features and strategy across a 6–12 month horizon.
- Lead cutover planning and ensure system dependencies are well understood and delivered appropriately.
- Identify and scope spike work; recommend new technologies and tools.
- Support and drive transformation initiatives.
- Champion the responsible adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices — including AI-augmented development tooling — to accelerate delivery, raise code quality, and expand team capacity.
Security, Quality & Standards
- Enable technical delivery of SPE software components, including understanding and addressing risk, privacy, cybersecurity, and legal constraints.
- Support cybersecurity architecture evaluations.
- Develop and drive adoption of platform development standards and architecture patterns across the organization.
- Maintain technical documentation, including system design artifacts, security plans, and SOPs.
- Document open-source standards in the Quality Management System and enforce SPE engineering standards.
- Apply knowledge of medical device delivery models and quality systems to ensure solutions align with regulatory expectations and timelines.
Collaboration, Mentorship & Influence
- Influence tech leads across SPE on how we develop platform solutions following best practices.
- Mentor team members and participate actively in guilds and learning forums.
- Facilitate knowledge transfer to operations and ensure their involvement in technical planning.
- Build effective relationships with key technical resources and architects to influence SPE technology solutions.
- Engage business stakeholders to understand requirements and align technical solutions.
- Provide guidance to Lilly and non-Lilly software delivery teams in best-practice Agile delivery.
- Apply knowledge of Lilly business processes and technology to keep deliveries consistent with strategy and roadmap.
Your Basic Requirements:
- Bachelor's Degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field.
- 8+ years of experience delivering software solutions across the full development lifecycle (design, development, testing, deployment, and support).
- 5+ years of technical leadership experience in delivery of software projects.
- 3+ years of direct people-management experience leading engineers.
What You Should Bring:
- Demonstrated success managing and developing a small engineering team, including performance and career conversations.
- Ability to manage and keep control of multiple software development and integration efforts.
- Demonstrable examples of leading software design and architecture.
- Demonstrated ability to propose new ideas and influence peers.
- Proven initiative to learn new technologies and seek opportunities to apply them.
- Practical knowledge of Agile software development concepts and implementations.
- Experience with architected asynchronous systems, using tools like Kafka or similar.
- Experience with AWS, Azure, and other cloud service providers.
- Experience with identity management or authentication providers (preferably Okta).
- Experience with GitHub.
- Experience with CI/CD capabilities and industry best practices.
- Experience using Atlassian (Jira/Confluence) or similar toolsets.
- High level of intellectual curiosity, external perspective, and innovation interest.
Additional Information
Role is located in San Francisco, CA with a hybrid work model — relocation required.
Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.
Lilly is proud to be an EEO Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, gender expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, ancestry, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.
Our employee resource groups (ERGs) offer strong support networks for their members and are open to all employees. Our current groups include: Africa, Middle East, Central Asia (AMECA), Black Employees at Lilly (BE@Lilly), Chinese Culture Network (CCN), EnAble, Evolve, Lilly Indian Network (LIN), Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), Pride (LGBTQ+ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN) and Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL).
Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location. The anticipated wage for this position is $138,000 - $246,400.
Full-time equivalent employees also will be eligible for a company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance). In addition, Lilly offers a comprehensive benefit program to eligible employees, including eligibility to participate in a company-sponsored 401(k); pension; vacation benefits; eligibility for medical, dental, vision and prescription drug benefits; flexible benefits (e.g., healthcare and/or dependent day care flexible spending accounts); life insurance and death benefits; certain time off and leave of absence benefits; and well-being benefits (e.g., employee assistance program, fitness benefits, and employee clubs and activities). Lilly reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion and Lilly’s compensation practices and guidelines will apply regarding the details of any promotion or transfer of Lilly employees.
WeAreLilly
See All 42 Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Technical Lead Manager JobsTechnical Lead Manager Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Technical Lead Manager Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Waymo10

- Aurora5

- OpenAI3

- Glean Technologies2

- Nuro2

Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software26
- Artificial Intelligence7
- Automotive6
- Science & Research5
- Electronics & Hardware3
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in technical lead manager jobs across California.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a closely related technical field
- Five or more years of software engineering experience with at least two years in a lead or staff role
- Demonstrated experience managing or mentoring engineers on cross-functional California-based or distributed teams
- Proficiency in one or more major programming languages such as Python, Java, Go, or C++
- Experience owning technical roadmaps, system design reviews, and architecture decisions end to end
- Familiarity with Agile or Scrum delivery frameworks and engineering best practices at scale
Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a technical lead manager in California?
The standard path is to build several years of hands-on software engineering experience, move into a senior or staff engineer role, and then transition into people management by leading a small team or project. California employers typically look for candidates who have owned a meaningful technical domain, mentored junior engineers, and driven delivery outcomes before promoting into a formal management title. No state-issued license is required, but a computer science degree or equivalent demonstrated engineering depth is a strong foundation.
How much do technical lead managers make in California?
Technical lead managers in California earn a median of about $218,290 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $129,970 for the lowest 10% to over $325,970 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire technical lead managers in California?
Employers hiring technical lead managers in California right now include Waymo, Aurora, and OpenAI, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of June 2026. California's concentration of headquartered technology companies and major engineering hubs means openings appear across both established enterprise employers and growth-stage firms in the Bay Area and greater Los Angeles area.
Which California cities have the most technical lead manager jobs?
Mountain View, San Francisco, and San Mateo have the most technical lead manager openings in California. The Bay Area's density of technology headquarters and large engineering organizations drives the volume in San Francisco and San Jose, while Los Angeles has expanded rapidly as a hub for media technology, fintech, and enterprise software companies that have established substantial engineering teams in the region.
Are there remote technical lead manager jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 60% of technical lead manager openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of June 2026, reflecting how naturally the role fits distributed engineering environments. The parts of the role most commonly done remotely are one-on-ones, code reviews, roadmap planning, and cross-team coordination, while in-person work tends to cluster around onboarding, major planning cycles, and executive reviews.
How can I get hired as a technical lead manager in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry point is a senior individual contributor role at a California employer that offers formal lead programs or rotational engineering tracks, such as those run by large Bay Area technology companies and enterprise software firms. Moving from a staff engineer, tech lead, or principal engineer title into a management role after demonstrating people leadership on a project is the most common lateral path. Building a portfolio of architectural decisions, mentoring contributions, and delivery ownership is the credential that opens the door when a formal management background is absent.
Where can I find and apply to technical lead manager jobs in California?
You can find and apply to technical lead manager jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings from employers actively hiring for the role. Find roles that fit your experience level and location preference and apply directly to the ones that match.
See All 42 Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Technical Lead Manager Jobs