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Engineering Levels

Ranatchai Chernbamrung
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Heavily inspired by SoundCloud & Patreon

Categories

Technical Mastery

This category focuses on technical skills, including an engineer’s mastery, best practices, code reviews, code stewardship, quality & testing, design, and debugging.

Execution

This category focuses on the way that an engineer gets things done: planning, scoping, estimation skills, getting unstuck, taking ownership, strategic alignment, product/business understanding, and vision.

Collaboration & Communication

This category describes teamwork, communication skills, asking for and giving feedback, collaborating, and documentation.

Influence

This category looks at an engineer’s level of impact and influence within the organization, including leadership, knowledge sharing, mentoring, hiring, onboarding, and representation of our brand.

Mindset & Maturity

This category looks at the traits that make an engineer trustworthy and professional: accountability, self-awareness, respect, consensus building, handling conflict, and receiving feedback.
⁠

What Is Expected at Each Level?

Level 1 — The individual scale - Entry Level
Focusing on themselves and improving their own skills. Successfully delivering as part of a team with the help of other team members.
Level 2 — The team scale - Mid Level
Focusing on their team and improving the team’s efficiency and productivity. Successfully driving a team project.
Level 3 — The area scale - Senior Level
Focusing on their own team and some neighboring teams and improving collaboration between these teams, e.g. successfully driving a cross-team project.
Level 4 — The organization scale - Principle Level
Having an impact on the entire engineering organization. Improving efficiency and collaboration across the organization.
Level 5 — The company scale
Having an impact on the entire company. Driving cross-organization initiatives, and leveling up Cleverse as a business.
⁠

Level 1 - Entry Level

Technical Mastery

Competent in primary tech, knowing and applying best practices
Writing clean codes, unlikely to find obvious bugs
Participating in code reviews and pursuing one if needed
Focusing on growth and learning the tech stack

Execution

Be accountable for the tasks assigned, delivers it within the expected time frame
Asks questions to clarify estimations, building estimation skills
Able to deliver small stories
May participate in on-call rotation, if applicable for their domain
Integrates contributions as early as possible (no long-lived changes in branches)

Collaboration & Communication

Collaborates effectively with team members in both working and meetings
Effectively and proactively asks questions and reaches out for help when stuck
Voices concerns or need for clarification to their manager
Keep the team updated on work status
Communicates constructively, positively, honestly, and sensitively
Takes feedback graciously

Influence

Has project/team-level impact
Participate in tech discussions

Mindset & Maturity

Treating others with respect, honoring commitments to the team
Looking for & integrating feedback
Seeks to take on more responsibility
Have a positive attitude; raises constructive improvement ideas instead of complaining
Self-aware of strengths and weaknesses
Helps where possible

Level 2 - Mid Level

Technical Mastery

Proficient in the tech of the team
Makes informed decisions about tools, algorithms, and architecture for specific problems
Scopes and implements project-level solutions
Write codes which comply with the team guidelines
Provides helpful, timely code reviews
Builds up knowledge of neighboring systems
Understands trade-offs between alternative solutions
Keeps availability, robustness, scalability in mind

Execution

Drives simple epics
Break down tasks, plan, estimate and cut scope to ship on time
Provides story estimates and breaks up bigger ones
Keeps track of technical debt
Identifies potential technical risks
Finishes or hands-off works before planned absences

Collaboration & Communication

Helps the team stay focus
Explains & Advocates certain decisions/solutions
Can represent the team on questions/meetings
Actively contributes to meetings
Engages in productive dialog even when there are conflicting views, seeks to understand other points of view
When communicating, makes sure messages are arrived and understood

Influence

Doing pair programmings and code reviews
Can onboard new members (has a basic understanding of the product)
Suggests process improvements, be active in retrospective meetings

Mindset & Maturity

Thinks critically and makes informed decisions based on first principles
Admits mistakes and shares learnings
Holds themselves and the team accountable for the work
Aware of and actively works on their gaps in relevant tech skills
Cares about a specific system/service/component - acts as an owner without being possessive
Proactively supports positive culture by confronting negative behavior - leading by example
Trusted to do what they say they will do, or communicate if there are any problem

Level 3 - Senior Level

Technical Mastery

Designs systems that are easy to understand and works with
Drives technical aspects and owns them
Be the go-to person for the primary technology of the team
Handles open-ended & ambiguous problems well
Competent in diverse technologies
Understands the implications of a decision for other teams/services/components
Consistently delivers code that sets the standard for quality
Writes insightful, comprehensive code reviews

Execution

Drives larger projects reliably by delegating and coordinating
Splits larger projects into smaller parts effectively
Gives reasonable estimates and sets realistic deadlines that drive effort but support healthy work habits
Uses analytics and product thinking to inform decisions and measure the impact
Provides multiple solution proposals with different costs
Identifies and manages risks on the team
Plans all aspects of a project (testing/monitoring/alerting)

Collaboration & Communication

Collaborates across multiple teams/functions
Facilitates technical decision-making in the team
Serves as a team representative in cross-team meetings and initiatives
Participates in broad architectural conversations
Builds relationships cross-functionally, with operations and support teams, and with senior engineers
Communicates technical issues and decisions clearly and proactively to a cross-functional audience, sharing bad news quickly
Mastering ability to express complicated issues simply

Influence

Mentors other engineers (pair programming, code reviews, feedback)
Proactively increases the visibility of the team's works
Convinces others about technical trade-offs & decisions
Shares their experience and expertise to help others grow
Broaden the impact, considers effects of their work on other teams, as well as identifying and helping to resolve problems facing the team
Coaches and helps teammates prioritize
Identifies if currently used technologies are appropriate
Enables surrounding people to be more effective

Mindset & Maturity

Keeps the team honest and accountable to commitments
Encourages team members to deliver with high quality
Proactively improves the tools the team is working with
Shows empathy for other teams
Constantly puts effort into understanding the business/product big picture
Regularly assesses security and legal risks
Able to change direction quickly based on shifting company needs

Level 4 - Principle Level

Technical Mastery

Be an expert specialist or proficient generalist
Considers engineering as a whole by making the right trade-offs (security, performance, maintainability, availability, cost)
Well informed about technical solutions peer companies use
Systematically thinks through potential design impacts on other teams and the company

Execution

Is a tech consultant for major product ideas
Drives long-term, large-scale projects
Coordinates work across a functional area
Identifies and manages risks for an area/cluster
Manages external tech vendors/partners
Refers to return on investment in prioritization discussions
Identifies, defines, and solves strategic problems, thinking holistically about the whole system

Collaboration & Communication

Proactively builds up relationships with stakeholders
Trusted to always share status with all of the stakeholders, and proactively remedy communication issues
Acts as a tie-breaker in technical discussions, resolving conflicts and put personal opinion aside
Facilitates effective meetings across a functional area
Communicates technical issues, and ties work to company objectives

Influence

Enables teams around them to be more effective
Acts as a technical consultant to other teams
The engineering leadership team is aware of their work
Researches and evaluates new technologies that can influence an area/cluster
Creates content/framework for learning
Leads "build or buy" decisions
Sets/directs technical strategy

Mindset & Maturity

Identifies and addresses company-wide gaps in skills/delivery/strategy
Understands the company KPIs and different revenue streams and the business in general
Regularly zooms out and thinks outside their expertise/area
Improves tools and development processes for an area/cluster
Help others maintain resilience in periods of change
Builds consensus for decisions

Level 5

Technical Mastery

Can ask difficult questions in all technologies
Focused on technical leadership, defining patterns and operational guidelines for their domain(s)
Creates and leads organization-wide guidelines
Proactively learning the tech of the company
Has experience in scaling up a system through multiple stages of growth
Evaluates and brings in new technologies/tools used across the company
Incredibly knowledgable both inside and outside of the company in their area(s)
Anticipates technical challenges, exploring alternatives and trade-offs thoroughly
Independently scopes, designs, and delivers solutions for large and complex challenges

Execution

Drives and leads company-wide projects that positively affect all areas
Creates impactful and foundational solutions to the company
Able to prioritize the most important works and break them down effectively
Be a decision-maker on major tech topics (deprecating tech stacks, strategy)
Plays a key role in defining the company's multi-year tech strategy and roadmap, despite uncertainty
Defines and drives vision for their area(s)
Trusted with any critical project or initiative

Collaboration & Communication

Coordinates communication among team & stakeholders, including the right people at the right times
Proactively identifies and solves communication gaps and issues
Represents the engineering org across all business functions
Facilitates tech vision discussions for the entire engineering org
Inspires while communicating - motivates others to follow them through their leadership
Can act as the external face of the company for engineers

Influence

Looked to as a model for balancing product and engineering concerns
Creates new business opportunities for the company
Seeks out, recruits, and grows other levels 4 or 5 leaders
Uses their leadership platform to promote and hire for diversity
Leads initiatives across domains, even outside their core expertise
Leads by example and inspires others to establish new cultural norms
May work with exec team on high-level technical guidance

Mindset & Maturity

Proactively offers regular, constructive feedback to others
Trusted to de-escalate conflicts and build consensus between team members about technical matters
Models and engages others around developing maturity
Balances and is aware of technical and non-technical sides to company-wide challenges
Develops new company-wide processes
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