Tech lead vs senior developer: what’s the real difference?

Answer:

A tech lead is usually a senior developer who has taken on team-level technical decision-making and delivery accountability, not a separate career track. Most companies promote into the role from within their senior engineering pool rather than hiring it as a distinct discipline.

Aspect	Senior developer	Tech lead
Primary focus	Writing and reviewing code for their own workstream	Coordinating the team's technical direction and delivery
Time spent coding	Most of the week	Reduced, often half or less
Decision authority	Owns decisions within their own code and features	Owns technical decisions for the team as a whole
Code review	Reviews peers' pull requests as one contributor among several	Sets review standards and often has final say on contested changes
Mentoring	Informal, ad hoc guidance to junior colleagues	Structured responsibility for growing the team's skills
Stakeholder contact	Limited, mostly within engineering	Regular contact with product managers and other teams