| Detail | For this role |
|---|---|
| Department | Information Technology |
| Level | Mid level |
| Reports to | Technical Lead |
| Direct reports | Software Engineer, Junior Software Developer |
| Experience | 5 to 8 years of software development, with at least 1 year leading a feature or module |
Module Lead job description template
Copy this job description, replace the text in square brackets and post it on your careers page or a job portal.
Job title: Module Lead
Department: Information Technology
Reports to: Technical Lead
Location: [City], [office, branch or site]
About the role
A Module Lead owns one module of a larger application, such as billing, inventory or user management, and leads the small group of developers who build it. They break module work into tasks, write the harder code themselves, review every pull request, coordinate with other module leads and answer for the module's quality and delivery dates. In Indian IT services firms the role sits between senior software engineer and technical lead. A good Module Lead knows the module inside out, keeps its defects low and grows the developers working under them.
Key responsibilities
- Go through module requirements with the business analyst and clear up gaps before development starts.
- Break module work into tasks, estimate effort and assign tasks to developers by skill and workload.
- Write low-level designs for module features, including data model changes, APIs and validations.
- Build the complex parts of the module and set the coding patterns the rest of the team follows.
- Review every pull request for the module for correctness, standards, performance and test coverage.
- Agree interfaces and shared data with other module leads, and flag integration risks early.
- Answer testers' questions and fix or assign module defects found in QA and UAT.
- Report module progress, risks and blockers to the technical lead in daily and weekly meetings.
- Handle production issues in the module and write root cause notes for recurring defects.
- Mentor junior developers through pairing, review feedback and small design tasks.
Requirements
- B.E., B.Tech, MCA or M.Sc Computer Science
- Certifications in the project's technology stack are an advantage
- 5 to 8 years of software development, with at least 1 year leading a feature or module
KRAs and KPIs for a Module Lead
Key result areas for the appraisal form, each with a KPI you can measure every month or quarter.
| Key result area | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Module delivery | Module features delivered within sprint commitments in at least 85 percent of sprints |
| Code quality | No critical code review or static analysis issue left open at release |
| Defect density | QA defects per module feature falling release on release |
| Production stability | No severity 1 production defect traced to the module in the quarter |
| Review turnaround | Pull requests for the module reviewed within 1 working day |
| Mentoring | A monthly feedback session with each junior developer in the module |
Skills and tools
Tools used day to day: IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse or Visual Studio, Git with Bitbucket or GitLab, Jira, SonarQube, Postman, SQL client.
Reporting line and career path
Next roles: Technical Lead, Technical Architect, Engineering Manager
Interview questions for a Module Lead
- How do you split a module feature among three developers with different experience levels?
- A pull request works but is hard to read. What review comments do you give?
- Your module depends on an API another module has not finished. What do you do?
- Tell me about a production defect in your module and how you found the root cause.
- How do you estimate a feature when the requirement is still changing?
- In your last company, how was a module lead different from a technical lead?
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What does a module lead do?
A module lead owns one module of a software application and leads the developers working on it. They break work into tasks, write low-level designs, code the complex parts, review every pull request, coordinate with other modules, fix or assign defects and report progress to the technical lead. The module's quality and delivery are their responsibility.
What is the difference between a module lead and a technical lead?
A module lead is responsible for one module and a small group of developers. A technical lead is responsible for the technical direction of a whole project or team, covering several modules, architecture decisions, standards and client technical discussions. In Indian IT services firms the module lead role is usually the step before technical lead.
How many years of experience does a module lead need?
Most module leads in Indian IT companies have 5 to 8 years of development experience. The promotion usually comes when an engineer has shown they can own a feature end to end, review other people's code well and guide juniors, rather than on reaching a set number of years.