Engineering Career Framework

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I
1	Description
2	Status: Currently in use. This is a fluid document and examples in particular will evolve. No major changes will be made to this framework without wider advice and discussion.
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5		Scope of Influence		Building		Executing		Leadership
6		How much impact the work you do has on Buffer as a whole. As you progress, the work you has a bigger and bigger positive effect on Buffer		How you embody and promote coding practices to ship high quality products and services		Effectiveness in getting things done. Delivering well-scoped programs of work that meet their goals, on time, within constraints, and harmoniously		Showing an 'ownership mindset'. You challenge the status quo and effect positive organizational change outside of your mandated work
7	Engineer I	Individual tasks within a project		Receives closer guidance and technical mentoring to avoid becoming blocked/stuck.		Effectively delivers well-specced individual tasks		You take ownership of your work and learning and share feedback for team or product improvement
8		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
9		Learning and being actively developed by others	Developing knowledge of a single component of our architecture	Makes minor modifications to existing screens, or minor server changes to support client needs	Implemented sticky footer, Queried database appropriately	Completes well-specced tasks effectively, asking for help at the appropriate juncture to avoid becoming blocked/stuck.	Delivered a new support page	Raises meaningful questions or concerns	Voices concerns or need for clarification to their manager.
10		Tests new code thoroughly, both locally, and in production once shipped	Caught a bug on staging before it went live	Delivers features requiring simple local modifications	Added existing button to a different iOS surface	Communicates project status clearly and effectively	Keeps Jira up to date with progress and blockers	Takes ownership of learning and shows initiative	Accepts and integrates constructive feedback effectively, Objectively evaluating whether they've met their goals.
11	Engineer II	A project overall within a team / area. You work directly in parallel with your peers		Develops new instances of existing architecture, or minor improvements to existing architecture		Effectively delivers smaller projects, making steady progress on tasks within the project		Co-owns an area with guidance & takes initiative (e.g fixes bugs unprompted). Self-directed learning process
12		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
13		Self-sufficient in primary area of work, contributing to the project as a whole	Debugs effectively within their primary area to help find root cause.	Clearly articulates code design choices that need to be made	Identified need for new index in MongoDB	Knows when to ask for help when they are becoming stuck; does not go down rabbit holes.	Ensures stakeholders are aware of current blockers, Picks bugs off the backlog proactively when blocked elsewhere	Trusts teammates, assumes good intent in technical discussions, and is able to disagree and commit.	Gives helpful and timely feedback to managers and peers
14		Owns small-to-medium features from technical design through completion	Planning, scoping and implementing the Alt Text for Twitter images feature	Makes large functional changes with uneventful code reviews.	Built credit card input component that's functionally solid. Code review feedback is focussed on growth and improvements.	Balances pragmatism and polish appropriately	Engages with Product Management on feasibility of requested features, clarifying requirements where necessary.	Has a self-directed learning process, seeks feedback from others to find ways to improve	Received and integrated critical feedback positively and is consistently exemplifying a growth mindset
15		Works in parallel with peers, building a stronger team through effective collaboration	Proactively seeks input from teammates and finds ways to help teammates achieve their goals.	Determines data needs from product requirements	Updated Facebook API version and codebase dependencies	Defines and hits interim milestones	Mastering ability to break down tasks, plan, estimate, and cut scope to ship on time. Prioritizes in alignment with company goals. Seeks learning through retrospectives.	Makes design or quality improvements unprompted, making small improvements to leave code better than you found it.	Recognizing when a feature you’ve built isn’t quite right and calling that out and fix it proactively rather than leave it for later or for someone else.
16	Engineer III	A larger project overall within a team / area. You work in parallel with peers and often take a leading role on features or refactors.		Designs standalone systems of moderate complexity, or major new features in existing systems		Effectively delivers projects through a small team, consistently making meaningful progress.		Fully owns a service or component. Taking a considered approach to your work and your team.
17		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
18		Self-sufficient in at least one large area of the codebase with a high-level understanding of other components	Directed team response effectively during outages (able to be on-call independently or proactively address problems surfaced by advocates)	Clearly articulates code design choices that need to be made, and suggests a viable path forward	Gives helpful and kind code reviews with actionable feedback about behaviour and maintainability	Consistently stays on track with work and keeps work in line with bigger picture goals.	Scopes out work methodically, based on iterative learning. Sets realistic deadlines that drive effort and support healthy work habits. Cuts scope as needed, mitigating risk by shipping frequently.	Shows maturity around what code not to write and thinking before you code, demonstrating critical thinking	Shows curiosity and seeks to understand other points of view and alternate approaches. Engages in productive dialog with conflicting views, both inside and outside the team.
19		Contributes to the foundational good of their domain and engineering overall, defining (and refining) patterns and canonical examples, plus paying down tech debt.	Created our Open Source page and FAQ and lead efforts to help teammates safely open source code	Acts as a primary maintainer for existing critical systems	Implemented Google Auth login	Communicates technical issues and decisions clearly and proactively	Shares bad news quickly. Expresses complex issues and concepts simply and clearly.	Identifies and suggests solutions to problems impacting team.	Gives actionable feedback to others and trusts them to decide to what extent to incorporate it.
20		Proactively develops a stronger team	Leads and coaches within their team where possible and is trusted with team decisions.	Implements complex features with a large product surface area	Delivered "drag and drop" functionality for a web or mobile app	Recognizes and surfaces risks in projects or unknowns/gaps in requirements, at the scale of a roughly 1-2 week long tasks.	Asks good clarifying questions and successfully anticipate rabbit holes. Rarely needs to re-work or revisit previous code.	Exemplifies a "user first" mindset	Promotes a no-ego attitude to ideas and code, listening deeply to others and striving to do what's best for the user
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22	Senior Engineer I	Whole team/product area		Builds complex, reusable architectures that pioneer best practices and enable engineers to work more effectively		Effectively delivers projects through a large team, or with a significant amount of stakeholders or complexity		Has a consistent record of very strong leadership for their area
23		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
24		Gives guidance & unblocks others at minimum on their team/area. Their area can be outside of Buffer too, but does not have to be outside Buffer.	Upgraded our Stripe API from an old version to the latest, acting as a resource for a wide area of billing, pricing and permissions work	Seeks design/architecture or specialized input when needed (and knows when it’s needed).	Suggests multiple viable approaches and clearly communicates risks, advantages, pros and cons (tradeoffs) for each approach in architecture proposals.	Translates rough ideas into clear, executable projects with discrete tasks	Finds ways to deliver requested scope faster, and prioritizes backlog. Tackles tech debt proactively.	Recognizes patterns or process that hurt the effectiveness of your team or that don’t serve your overall, longer term goals and effectively works towards resolutions	Trusted to de-escalate conflicts and build consensus between team members about technical matters.
25		Sought out by others as technical resource	Makes others better through effective mentoring, pairing, and code reviews	Makes good, informed decisions around technical debt and tradeoffs	Avoids subtle architectural mistakes when considering new systems	Communicates with non-technical team members to give technical advice	Coordinates communication among team & stakeholders, including the right people at the right times.	Exemplifies grit and determination in the face of persistent obstacles	Helps others maintain resilience in periods of change / challenge
26	Senior Engineer II	A whole team / whole product area		Builds complex, reusable architectures that pioneer best practices and enable engineers to work more effectively		Effectively delivers projects through a large team, or with a significant amount of stakeholders or complexity		Has a consistent record of very strong ownership for their area, e.g. figuring out on-call schedules, establishing monitoring
27		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
28		Acts as a resource to unblock and enable the whole team	Implements and taught others the Redux middleware/Observer pattern to help a team work more effectively across a wide area	Reduces the complexity of projects/services/processes in order to get more done with less work	Implemented an effective testing framwork that increases both code quality and team velocity	Consistently and accurately recognizes and communicates key risks in projects	Identifies, defines, and solves strategic problems, thinking holistically about the whole system.	Exemplifies grit/tenacity in the face of obstacles, distractions or long and challenging tasks	Help others maintain resilience in periods of change.
29		Sought out by others as a mentor and provider of technical guidance and kind coaching.	Makes others better through mentoring, pairing, architecture reviews, and code reviews, exhibiting care and attention to their fellow engineer's growth	Researches and leads adoption of new approaches, systems or technologies to stay current and strive for excellence on your team	Architected frontend client with React & Redux to move away from Meteor.js and improve performance and developer experience	Communicates with non-technical team members to give technical advice	Trusted to always share status with all stakeholders, and proactively remedy communication issues.	Builds leaders within their team or domain, educates across domain.	Acts as a multiplier who shares knowledge and delegates to help others grow.
30		Routinely and consistently pushes the team forward	Reaching out to other teams within and beyond Buffer to share knowledge and implement better ways to work, such as Texture to iOS in conjunction with the Pinterest team	Exhibits excellent judgment regarding decisions across many aspects of the project	Makes architectural decisions that eliminate entire classes of bugs	Manages dependencies on other projects and teams	Managed infrastructure migration to VPC	--	--
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32	Staff Engineer	Multiple teams/projects		Sets strategic foundational direction for an engineering team / area		Manages major company pushes delivered by multiple teams		Exhibits ownership across the org - this person is a guardian of Buffer
33		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
34		Acts as a resource to unblock and enable teams across various projects.	Gives pragmatic guidance that empowers teams to develop their own solutions	Defines long-term goals and ensures active projects are in service of them.	Defined and drove complete migration plan to Swift or Kotlin	Looked to as a model for balancing product/business and engineering concerns.	Delivered multi-month engineering project on time	Exhibits excellent judgment regarding decisions across teams	Thoughtfully and effectively seeks wide context and builds buy-in for decisions affecting multiple stakeholders
35		Exhibits excellent judgment regarding decisions across many teams	Regularly accountable to architecture review outcomes and prioritization for their team, product or area	Defines the strategic vision for foundational work and supporting technologies, reducing complexity to get more done with less work	Defined and developed Buffer's continuous delivery strategy used across all product teams	Successfully plans and delivers complex, multi-team or system, long-term projects, including ones with external dependencies.	Managed a key database migration	Instills and promotes a culture of learning and development within the entire engineering team	Empowers team members to develop themselves and coached others on how to become mentors too
36		Routinely and consistently pushes multiple teams forward.	Architects and guides implementation of shared component libraries that work for several teams	Leads architecting new systems/technologies/processes to stay current and move the bottom line. Your decisions that have positive, long term, wide ranging consequences.	Defined microservices migration plan	Considers larger company context, business objectives and external constraints when planning	Managed technical migration to SOA	Exhibits ownership across the org - this person is a guardian of Buffer	Identifies and eliminates single points of failure throughout the organization
37	Principal Engineer	Entire Organization		Sets strategic foundational direction for Buffer		Manages Buffer-wide initiatives		A key strategic leader at Buffer
38		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
39		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it out with examples. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it fully. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it fully. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it fully. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.
40	Engineer of Distinction	Industry		Influences strategic foundational direction for multiple organizations		Manages initiatives influencing mutiple organizations		A key strategic leader in the industry
41		Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example	Concept	Example
42		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it fully. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it fully. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it fully. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.		We don't yet have folks at this level, so to stay lean I've not illustrated it fully. It still exists and will be figured out properly in Version 2.0.
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