Technical Leader

Being a tech lead means mentoring a team of developers,guiding them throughout their projects,answering their questions,solving their problems...
...and, of course, helping out with the code when needed.
— I can feel a disturbance in the force.
— What are you looking at, exactly?
Come on, let’s go, we’ve got work to do.
[Experience my job as a Tech Lead]
Day-to-day, my role as tech lead nvolves overseeing 4 to 6 developers on various projects.
I use the Agile Development methodology to innovate and deliver our projects more quickly.
— I’ve put everything here, solution planning.
A development project is like climbing a mountain.
You need a guide who knows the project inside out: the product owner.
— We can stop off at 4,500 feet.
The product owner is the product’s manager day-to-day, and my main contact.
They liaise between the client and our team, to improve a feature of the product.
— Is that clear for everyone?
You also need an experienced team.
— OK, for the sprint, it would be best that
Antoine and Pauline, you take care of the user stories on the east face.
Demba, Sarah, you do the pair programming on the north face. It's a little trickier.
We all meet up at base camp for the first version.
What do you think? Good for you guys?
OK, go!
Being a tech lead also involves spending 40% of your time coding.
You need to keep your skills sharp.
— Wait until you see this.
I’m taking the gloves off.
Tech leads undergo regular training and stay on top of industry developments, such as new coding languages,methods or frameworks.
This means that they often attend conferences or talks, where they meet other tech leads, as part of a guild.
— How’s the snow?
— The snow is good!
— Great!
Today, we’re going to look at distributed databases.
I read something really interesting.
A development lead has to understand the product owners’ language and work day to day with the developers.
In other words, managing the macro part of a project,like how a new information system will affect Societe Generale, and the micro part - the lines of code within that same system.
Basically, you need to be bilingual.
— Here, you can see the top of the mountain.
It is shiny, nice and bug free.
— Here’s the beta we need,with the front end and back end managed by Alex, Benoît and Sophie.
Watch out for the slow JavaScript here, and the debugging over there.
Tech leads also have to be open to innovation.
— Wait... couldn’t we just be dropped off there, in a helicopter?
That would be quicker!
There, there, at the top.
Tech leads can develop into IS architects, managers, or become IT specialists in a specific technology or programming language.
— And although Societe Generale's offices are called The Dunes...
Sometimes we feel like we’re moving mountains!
— Wow, you’ve really got your head in the clouds, haven’t you?
You need to come back down to earth...

Hi, my name is Daniel. I am a Tech Lead and I joined Societe Generale in 2003.
The Tech Lead has many responsibilities, but I would like to highlight three. The first responsibility is a super power, the ability to turn technology into value. This has become very important these days.
The second responsibility is an ability to coach. They must develop their team and support it in its development. The third responsibility is that they are the guarantor and bearer of the technical solutions that they have co-created with their team.

I joined Societe Generale in 2003 as a senior developer. I already had a bit of experience. I came across quite technical subjects relating to security, PKI, authentication directories.
I wanted to take on more and more technical responsibilities. Around 2008, I wanted to try my hand at project management. This was a period in my life where I wanted to experience something really different. I tried a bit of project management, but very quickly I realised that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I work mainly on web projects, but I am a full stack developer, meaning we make both the front and back ends of our applications.

For the front end, we use technologies that are quite well known such as React. We're bringing in some Vue. For the back end, we use Java, Python and Node. What all these technologies have in common is that they are open source. One of the things I am particularly proud of is having had the opportunity to participate in the Expertise Programme. The Expertise Programme is a forum which really makes it possible to talk to top management and influence the decisions made. Through its Expertise Programme, Societe Generale has truly recognised and valued the work of development. The developer is no longer just someone who makes things, but rather a fully-fledged player in value creation. This is what's really interesting.

If you have ambitions, if you have a different way of looking at things, if you want to innovate, join us.