Engineering

We're currently hiring intermediate and senior developers on the frontend team!

Engineering roles are grouped into two tracks: one for developers, who focus on individual contributions (IC), and for engineering managers, who focus on managing people.

According to their role's progression level, engineers can evaluate their effectiveness and scope of responsibility based on competencies across axes including technological expertise, ownership of system architecture, interaction with teammates, involvement with engineering processes, and influence in each of the above.

An overview of roles on frontend and backend teams link to specific position titles, which describe the expertise, skillsets and experience needs for each role.

The engineering department is lead by the CTO (currently: 'Head of Engineering')

Tracks

The framework has 2 different tracks, in line with our company-wide system:

• Developer (IC): has a deep level of technical expertise, executes on product deliverables, and (at higher levels) owns system, architecture & production support of features and products, trains other engineers.

• Engineering Manager: manages other engineers; is responsible for the consistent output, career growth and level of happiness of team members, and (at higher levels) owns team resource allocation (who's working on what).

Developer (IC)	Engineering Manager
Entry-level	-
Intermediate	-
Advanced	-
Senior	Manager
Staff	Senior Manager
Principal	Director of Engineering
Distinguished	VP of Engineering

Axes

We provide an axes framework, inspired by existing resources, which empowers employees to evaluate their career progression and have meaningful conversations with their managers about the expectations of each position and how to plan for the next level in their career.

The chart above defines 5 axes:

• Technology: knowledge of the technology and tools

• System: level of ownership of the system(s)

• People: relationship with the team(s), leadership role, meeting facilitation

• Process: level of engagement with the department process

• Influence: scope of influence of the position

The influence axis can be seen as a different dimension since it is orthogonal and applies to all the other axes.

Each axis has 5 levels of competency. Note that each competency level includes the previous one(s). For example, someone that evangelizes technology, specializes and adopts it as well.

Technology

1. Adopts: actively learns and adopts the technology and tools defined by the team

2. Specializes: is the go-to person for one or more technologies and takes initiative to learn new ones

3. Evangelizes: researches, creates proofs of concept and introduces new technologies to the team

4. Masters: has very deep knowledge about the whole technology stack of the system

5. Creates: designs and creates new technologies that are widely used either by internal or external teams

System

1. Enhances: successfully pushes new features and bug fixes to improve and extend the system

2. Designs: designs and implements medium to large size features while reducing the system's tech debt

3. Owns: owns the production operation and monitoring of the system and is aware of its SLAs

4. Evolves: evolves the architecture to support future requirements and defines its SLAs

5. Leads: leads the technical excellence of the system and creates plans to mitigate outages

People

1. Learns: quickly learns from others and consistently steps up when it is required

2. Supports: proactively supports other team members and helps them to be successful

3. Mentors: mentors others to accelerate their career-growth and encourages them to participate

4. Coordinates: coordinates team members providing effective feedback and moderating discussions

5. Manages: manages the team members' career, expectations, performance and level of happiness

Process

1. Follows: follows the team processes, delivering a consistent flow of features to production

2. Enforces: enforces the team processes, making sure everybody understands the benefits and tradeoffs

3. Challenges: challenges the team processes, looking for ways to improve them

4. Adjusts: adjusts the team processes, listening to feedback and guiding the team through the changes

5. Defines: defines the right processes for the team's maturity level, balancing agility and discipline

Influence

1. Subsystem: makes an impact on one or more subsystems

2. Team: makes an impact on the whole team, not just on specific parts of it

3. Multiple Teams: makes an impact not only his/her team but also on other teams

4. Company: makes an impact on the whole tech organization

5. Community: makes an impact on the tech community

Competencies

Engineering uses the above progression framework to expect certain competencies from developers and engineering managers at each progression level.

For additional specific skillsets and responsibilities, see our frontend and backend roles.

Developer

Progression level	Technology	System	People	Process	Influence
1 (Entry-level)	Adopts (1)	Enhances (1)	Learns (1)	Follows (1)	Subsystem (1)
2 (Intermediate)	Adopts (1)	Designs (2)	Supports (2)	Enforces (2)	Subsystem (1)
3 (Advanced)	Specializes (2)	Designs (2)	Supports (2)	Challenges (3)	Team (2)
4 (Senior)	Evangelizes (3)	Owns (3)	Mentors (3)	Challenges (3)	Team (2)
5 (Staff)	Masters (4)	Evolves (4)	Mentors (3)	Adjusts (4)	Multi team (3)
6 (Principal)	Creates (5)	Leads (5)	Mentors (3)	Adjusts (4)	Company (4)
7 (Distinguished)	Creates (5)	Leads (5)	Mentors (3)	Adjusts (4)	Community (5)

Engineering Manager

Progression level	Technology	System	People	Process	Influence
4 (Manager)	Evangelizes (3)	Owns (3)	Manages (5)	Challenges (3)	Team (2)
5 (Senior Manager)	Evangelizes (3)	Owns (3)	Manages (5)	Adjusts (4)	Team (2)
6 (Director)	Evangelizes (3)	Evolves (4)	Manages (5)	Defines (5)	Team (2)
7 (VP)	Evangelizes (3)	Evolves (4)	Manages (5)	Defines (5)	Multi team (3)

Teams

Frontend

Below is the progression for frontend developers in the IC and manager tracks. Click on a position title for more details.

Developer (IC)	Engineering Manager
Entry-level	-
Intermediate	-
Advanced	-
Senior	Manager
Staff	Senior Manager
Principal	Director of Engineering
Distinguished	VP of Engineering

Backend

Below is the progression for backend developers in the IC and manager tracks. Click on a position title for more details.

Progression level	Developer (IC)	Engineering Manager
1	Entry-level	-
2	Intermediate	-
3	Advanced	-
4	Senior	Manager
5	Staff	Senior Manager
6	Principal	Director of Engineering
7	Distinguished	VP of Engineering

Resources

• jorgef/engineeringladders
• Buffer progression, management and salaries
• Gitlab career framework
• Brendan Reid's director -> VP progression
• Zendesk product design progression
• Charlie job titles