I am lead engineer. I get screwed cause I have an engineer in my team that doesnt communicate often and does things on his own.
My manager complains to me.

How can I justify going forward?


I am looking for some guidance.

This is where you'll prove yourself as the tech lead.

You can't expect your team to do exactly as told, and that everything will fall nicely in your lap. Every team has this problem, and more, so as tech lead you have to figure out how to build the line of communication with this engineer.

Since you're the lead, your manager will be expecting answers from you. They don't see the nitty gritties in your team, and frankly they don't care. The job has been delegated to you. It's your responsibility to ask the hard questions and manage this engineer now.

Also remember you need to manage up as much as you manage down. Make your manager aware of your situation. Give updates on what you plan to do, and how it's going. You want to show them that you're on top of it, instead of them finding out when things go to heck.

Being a lead doesn't mean you can control another engineer's actions. You're responsible for setting expectations, communicating, documenting issues, and escalating when needed. If someone repeatedly ignores direction or works independently despite coaching, that becomes a management issue—not a leadership failure. Accountability goes both ways.
Or, if you want something shorter:
A lead should mentor and guide the team, absolutely. But a lead can't force someone to communicate or follow direction. My job is to set expectations, coach, document issues, and escalate when necessary. At some point, it becomes a performance issue that management needs to address.
That response acknowledges the responsibility of being a lead while making the point that leadership has limits when someone consistently chooses not to cooperate.

That's always tough. In my last role I had a junior engineer on my team who always came to me with problems and wanted me to unblock him, I'd walk him through it but he'd often argue his original point, but finally do what I said. But then he'd go to his boss and the PM and take all the credit. But if my fix didn't work I was quick to be thrown under the bus

I also had a senior engineer on my team who I'm shocked has made it so far, very much dead weight and would be better in a non design engineering role. But our tagups always seemed very productive, he'd have his notes open and write what I'd tell him to do, but in the end I'd find out he'd done something completely different and it caused problems for the project

In both cases I started recording my teams meetings, both so I could reference later but also creating a record for CYA.

Get on that engineer. Make that individual do the hustle. If that does not work, team up with the manager & do a 2 on one force it!

You are not a lead if you don’t make him xyz is not the right answer here, at least based on what you have shared.
A tech / engineering lead is accountable for the technical outcomes of the things owned by the team, setting the technical bar (or aligning with wider companies bar) and mentoring / pairing / guiding the team. And of course clearly communicating to the manager when timelines are slipping or team members are not meeting this bar. Performance management is the responsibility of the manager. In this situation I would clearly state to the manager the expected standard has been communicated to the engineer, the steps you have taken to support them and the ways they continue to not meet the bar. It is then on the manager to have the performance management conversation with the engineer and that you will contiue to support them how ever they need, but you literally cannot make them do anything. If they know what they need to know and refuse to engage, they will be performance managed out. You are there to support them, not to force them. Now a good lead will often be able to get the peer to where they need to be via mentorship but not always. The person needs to want to do a good or at least ok job. Some people will not change and that is a performance conversation, not a skill support/mentoring one.
No one likes these convos hence your manager is being lazy. But it is literally their job. Go to your skip one if you manager refuses to engage and just wants you to handle it. When speaking to your skip one frame it like you want to help your colleague but it has not been working for xyz reasons - but actually you are making them aware that it is bad enough to require perf management and that the manager hasn’t done that. So it doesn’t look like you are throwing manager under the bus, But your are and should in this case, because they are not doing their job. There are a lot of shit managers out there

As the lead, this is your responsibility to solve for. Some areas of opportunity to shore up that come to mind given they were not disclosed in your post:

General:
—performance management
—define in writing what good looks like for anything your team engages in
—document how ‘x’ is supposed to happen
—hold recurring one-on-ones. Coaching happens here. You can address areas of opportunity for anyone on your team to work on
—manage up (it’s expected)
—model the behavior you want from your team
—make the tough call if all else fails (remove)

ENG specific:
—consider dailybot or some other tool that supplements real touch points (even if standups happen I like this tool for accountability)
—sprint plan (I am assuming you are) but if an engineer deviates from the committed work - that’s a problem you can address head on (for example, in your one on one with them)
—hold post mortems (address any deviation issue here as well)

Promote that guy to be an principal or distinguished engineer who supposed to do his own thing then problem solved.

If you are put in a leadership position, then lead! But do so with compassion and respect. Keeping in mind that all men are created equal. Aim for growth and welcome others’ opinions. This adds value to your role. Follow wisdom; it won’t steer you in the wrong direction. And keep others’ opinions at bay, because they often speak from a proud heart. A wise man’s words are few, and a foolish man has many words and knows nothing. From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

My manager has the same issue. He keeps telling me that if I want to advance, I need to let others know what I am working on.
I would start with getting an end-of-day report. That will start the habit.

Document everything. Communicate with and work with this engineer. Lead!

FFF Fire Forward Fast

Consider this to be a challenge to solve. Root cause it. You haven't given a lot of information. Fire example, what have you done to address the problem besides complaining to your manager? My first impression is that you have a smart engineer that's bored. He's obviously a self-starter, which is very good to have. Maybe when properly harnessed, he'll be productive. Look at things positively. What is he doing "on his own"? Is he neglecting what's been assigned to him as a result? (You didn't mention this, so I'm guessing he is.) Or is the problem he's fixing things that are not priorities for the team? (Sign of boredom of smart person.) Not communicating sufficiently is frankly an endemic problem to engineering. Have communication expectations been clearly defined? If he knows what to do and isn't doing it, desire being coached, that's a performance issue on his part but if you silently expect him to do something and he blithely refuses to read your mind, that's your problem. Communicate to him clear boundaries on what his scope of work is if he's fixing things he shouldn't. Make sure you're communicating with him in the way you want him to communicate with you.

Look at this as an opportunity to tackle a solution and sharpen your interpersonal skills.

You are a lead so lead! All I ever hear are folks wanting a promotion without the responsibility. Make sure you have clear defined roles and responsibilities for you and the team you "lead". When someone is not performing talk to them. Write to them. Then escalate it if you need. If being a lead is not what you want then just be an Engineer.

Leading includes development (getting the individual to lean into the communication and role expectations) of the individual in your org. To me, your manager is justified. Start actively working with this individual to meet the expectations of your org.

Ive been a manager for many years. I hold true to a simple rule, expect mistakes If an employee is not making any mistakes ever it may be one of two things the individuals lying and covering up things or really not performing to their full capacity It's not the mistakes that reflect an employee's ultimate value It's how they deal with do they own them autopsy them and make sure they never happen with new policies or procedures or whatever is needed or do they run from them like a mouse.

I find that it's very difficult to truly do things on your own if your leadership wants to track you because you have a company owned github repository and they can look in on your progress unless they just aren't pushing back upstream. If they are pushing their work upstream just go over it. If it's just code with no summary you can get AI to summarize the code changes for you now with a shocking level of clarity. If they aren't pushing then you should ask your team member to push to their branches as they are getting work done.

And if your engineer won't comply then you need to weigh whether the contributions he/she provides are worth the lack of coordination. As the a lead engineer you are going to have some sway over whether or not to keep employees who aren't performing. In fact, it's part of your job. Of course you should make your expectations clear and try to remediate things on a person to person basis too. There's nothing worse than a tech lead who lets problems fester and then just gives people a bad performance review at the end of the year.

We assume from your comment that he's doing work wrong.... Perhaps focus on resolving that.

Set expectations. Put it in writing and have periodic 1on1 to check. If they're not meeting expectations document and have a plan moving forward. Ensure that subordinate acknowledges documentation to prevent assumptions and ambiguities.

Seriously, give an LLM as much information as you can and ask it. Think of it like someone who understands management, they're really smart, they're on your side, and they have all the time in the world to get into details. I'm amazed at how solid the advice is.

Organise weekly stand ups to track progress

i I worked with another engineer just like that. It was brutal. It’s called lone wolf and it’s impossible for manager and colleagues. I have read sales books on it. Good luck!

The first thing i noticed is you start with you are Lead.
That is what you are supposed to be doing.
Have you even spoken to the Tech?.
I would start there and LEAD.If he Follows or has Input to improve all good .If not then YOU are LEAD.
It is not a really difficult situation when you actually address the issue head on.