When my team at Rent the Runway created our engineering career ladder, we consciously chose to define the role of tech lead as a set of characteristics an engineer could take on at many points on the ladder, rather than a specific level. We took this tack because we wanted to recognize that, as teams change and evolve, the tech lead role may be held by many different stages of engineer, and may be passed from one engineer to another without either person necessarily changing his functional job level.
