Titles

What to Expect

Here’s the gist of what to expect for each title.

Junior

• Makes no impact.
• “I need help.”
• No experience.

Midlevel

• Makes product impact.
• “I don’t need help.”
• Few years of experience.
• They are able take existing code with issues and improve it.

Senior

• Makes team impact.
• “How can I help?”
• 5-10 years of experience.
• They are able to create something new and not just iterate on what’s already there.

Staff

• Makes org impact.
• “Go help.”
• 10-20 years of experience.

Detailed Requirements

Senior Software Engineer (L5)

• Technical direction for small number of engineers (0-5+)
• Leads design and provides constant day-to-day mentorship on technical direction for team
• Complexity: 1-2 quarter projects; mitigates against single risks at a time (e.g., capacity)
• Craftsmanship: Often digs into low-level details, especially in code
• Scope of Work: Owns immediate area, self-directs, but also plans and scopes larger scale projects
• Sphere of influence: Sets direction for a small number of engineers
• 1-2 relatively narrowly scoped technical focus areas
• Technical Expertise: In design/code reviews, provides guidance about how to solve a problem. Which option is best?

Staff Software Engineer (L6)

• Typically having strategic impact over some combination of a large work group, a very technically challenging problem, and/or a long time horizon
• L6 influences velocity of team, mentorship, 10-30 engineers
• Solving large scale projects that involve the leadership in company
• Complexity: 1-2 year projects; balances multiple, interlocking risks (e.g., privacy and features), often many stakeholders
• Often delegates digging into low-level details to others, except in specific cases of substantial risk
• Proactively anticipate scaling issues and simplifying complex problems (i.e. simplify and standardize existing solutions, increase availability and reliability, or make data-driven optimizations and adjustments.)
• Often leading efforts across multiple teams in order to tackle problems at this scale with leadership involvement
• Drives product strategy, leads design discussions, collaborates with other engineering team’s coding 50%
• Drives efforts across a sizable product group providing clear leadership via setting strategy, resolving disagreements and building consensus
• Broader leadership across multiple teams
• Technical Expertise: In design/code reviews, may suggest radically different options informed by and impacting other areas.