Technical Lead (IDEA) - Bazel

About the role

At JetBrains, code is our passion. Ever since we started, back in 2000, we have been striving to make the most effective developer tools on earth. Our tools speed up production by automating routine checks and corrections, freeing developers to grow, discover, and create.

The Bazel team at JetBrains is now looking for a Tech Lead. Bazel is complex, and the IntelliJ platform is complex. Our challenge and goal is to make the two work together so seamlessly that it appears to just work for our users. We've come a long way, but we have an even further to go. We need you to bring this experience to tens of thousands of developers just like you.

We're looking for someone who can be both a mentor and a critical thinker – someone who can tell their team lead or product manager that estimations are too optimistic (and explain why), but also find a way to deliver anyway while explaining the necessary trade-offs. We need a good communicator who will proactively learn and share their knowledge, and an active contributor to our code who is able to see the bigger picture.

Key tasks associated with the role:

• Staying on top of technical developments in Bazel itself and the ecosystem, as well as within IntelliJ IDEA and Platform, and making sure our plugin is prepared for whatever comes.

• Engaging with language plugin and platform teams to make changes enabling better Bazel support. This includes topics like project model, source compilation, and highlighting

• Participating in the design and implementation of important features, like making the edit-build feedback loop fast for the user in an incremental live editing environment while working with a build tool optimized for batch compilation.

• Investigating and fixing performance bottlenecks in areas such as project sync and project model representation.

• Working directly with customers to investigate issues arising on their codebases.

• Pairing up with other team members and reviewing their code. Helping us to avoid pitfalls.

• Being the final arbiter in all our controversial technical discussions.

Desired background and experience:

• You should have previous experience dealing with complex systems with many moving parts and have a track record of handling them successfully.

• It would be ideal if you already have some hands-on experience working with Bazel, especially Bazel tooling.

• We would be especially excited if you have experience with IntelliJ plugin development or some other IDE development.