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Ultimate Guide on Software Engineer Career Progression

March 29, 2023

13

min read

Valentine Steph

Ultimate Guide on Software Engineer Career Progression

What is an engineer career progression, how to build career ladder for engineers, and how to automate this process with AI.

If you are looking for ways to become a better manager and build a high-performing team of motivated developers, you definitely need to know about software engineer career progression and how to build a software engineering career ladder.

Successful tech companies like Etsy, Dropbox, Spotify, Buffer, Songkick Technology, and many others, have already developed and implemented their own career path framework, in order to retain top engineers and make better decisions.

Ace AI will help you explore the experience of these companies and help managers to build their own software engineer career progression framework with the help of AI, adapted to their company’s needs.

What is career progression?

Before we start talking about how to create a career ladder in your company, make decisions about promotions and help engineers skip level and raise grade, you need to define the terms and find out — what is a career ladder, or career progression?

An engineering career ladder is not just a list of developer positions and responsibilities. This is a systematized career growth roadmap, which inсludes skills, career goals, salary expectations and a professional development plan. To simplify, the career ladder is a way to chart individual career progress.

Roles and titles

Roles and titles are terms that define the place of a software engineer in a company. However, there are differences:

  • Job role is the area of responsibility of an employee, which reflects what kind of work they perform in the company. The area of responsibility defines the scope of duties: what the employee does at work every day, what kind of tasks they have. Job roles examples: Developer, Designer, Product Manager.
  • Job title is the name of the position that a person occupies in a company. This usually consists of a job level (Junior, Middle, Senior) and a specialization (QA Manual Engineer, Python Developer, Go Developer). If the job role involves managing people, this is also usually reflected in the job title (Team Lead, Technical Officer, Project Manager), etc.

That’s what Chuck Groom says about the importance of defining titles and roles:

 Chuck Groom says about the importance of defining titles and roles

Levels (or grades)

Job levels (or job grades) denote the level of responsibility in the company, within the job role. The higher the job level, the more expertise, independence and initiative the company expects from an engineer.

Companies use roles to build grades, set OKRs for reaching the next level, and motivate an employee to reach new heights. A simple software engineer levels system looks like: engineer level 1, 2, 3, 4 or Junior Developer, Middle Developer, Senior Developer, Tech Lead, but as the company grows, it can become larger or even branch out.

Such systems allow a developer to move along their career path and develop within the company. This means that, if a company uses this method, developers have professional growth opportunities and have more motivation to stay with the company.

Next, we will move on to examples of the different types of software engineer career ladder examples and explore what software engineer career progression frameworks exist, depending on the size of the company.

Career ladder examples

As we said earlier, the software engineer career ladder can be more or less complex, depending on the structure and needs of the company.

We will give examples of different types of software engineer career frameworks. When building your own career framework, it is important not just to copy existing models, but to focus on the goals and values of your company, as well as discussing its structure with the team at the formation stage.

Small companies (<20)

Often, small companies and startups don’t feel the need to build a career ladder framework and are limited to job titles. Career development implementations happen as the company grows, are often unplanned, and the KPIs that have to be based on the skills and traits of engineers are unclear.

In this case, developers do not have professional development goals and may lose motivation over time. So, the best talent will go to other companies, where they will be offered career growth opportunities.

The basic software engineer career path looks like a change of levels — engineers skip from one level to another within the framework of the role approved at the start: Junior Developer, Middle Developer, Senior Developer, Tech Lead.

Engineer career path
Engineer career path template in Ace

Medium companies (<100)

As the company grows, the career progression framework should become more complex — intermediate positions (levels) on the career path can be introduced.

But the most important point is to build a career progression for those engineers who want to develop professionally, but don’t have the desire to grow into managers and hone their people skills. Here, a branched career path becomes relevant. It often has two tracks — engineering career path, technical or management, where a developer can become a manager and develop in leadership, or become an IC (individual contributor) and develop as an expert.

This division of the career path is called the dual-ladder approach.

Some successful companies have developed this approach in building software engineer progression for their teams. Here are some examples worth exploring.

Buffer has developed their own career progression framework that allows employees to develop professionally and move along the career ladder without becoming a manager. This framework has two equal growth opportunities - the individual contributor track and the managerial track.

Buffer career ladder template
Buffer career ladder template

One of the variations of a dual-ladder approach was developed at Songkick Technology.

Songkick career ladder template
Songkick career ladder template

Bigger Companies (>100)

Large companies, with complex structures, develop their own, more complex career progression frameworks. There may be several levels within a career path, depending on the needs of the company.

Levels.fyi collected data from the world's leading IT companies about what levels are present in their frameworks and what is the process of moving from level to level. The companies in the scheme below show several typical cases in the organization of software engineer levels.

Top IT companies' career levels for engineers
Top IT companies' career levels for engineers

You can explore the experience of top IT companies and get more details on how their frameworks were developed and implemented:

Benefits of career paths

Career ladders help to achieve the best results in self-developing both employees and companies. Let's take a closer look at what benefits the participants receive from the process.

For developers

A career path helps a developer avoid burnout, due to development uncertainty. Is there a future in this company? Who can I be here? How can I increase my salary? These questions don’t go unanswered, if the company has an employee professional development plan.

Gain a broader skill base

A well-built career path includes a professional development plan, within which an employee receives an assessment of the current level of their skills and tasks for developing the focus skills necessary for promotion.

Ben Gateley tells about their experience of implementing a career progression framework:

Ben Gateley tells about their experience of implementing a career progression framework

Unlock earning potential

Together with a manager, employees can define professional development goals and career goals, including their salary expectations. Then they build a career development plan jointly, that will help achieve these goals in the shortest possible time.

Avoid stagnation

A well-defined development plan allows engineers to constantly develop and achieve their goals in the fastest way, while increasing job satisfaction and feeling their contribution to common business goals.

Anirudh Todi shares Dropbox experience on implementing career path framework:

Anirudh Todi shares Dropbox experience on implementing career path framework

Clear promotion requirements

It means employees understand what is required to get promoted and get a pay raise. If the career progression framework is organized correctly, then grade raises take place every six months, which allows software engineering managers to plan the career path of developers.

Opportunity to choose and plan the career path

With a career progression framework, software engineers are free to choose in what direction they develop professionally - take the managerial track and improve soft skills, or build expertise by moving along the technical track.

Sarah Drasner explains why career planning talks with employees are important:

Sarah Drasner explains why career planning talks with employees are important

For managers

A job ladder provides a basis for discussing the career development of employees: it ensures the regularity of meetings about professional growth, expansion of responsibilities, and salary increases. Here are the major benefits of implementing an engineer career progression framework:

Building a high-performing team

Career progression allows a manager or a team lead to create and maintain a growth mindset and continuous learning in the company. So, the team is constantly growing, developing skills and performs better, in general.

Increase motivation

Long-term goals motivate the team and help to avoid stagnation. Motivation directly influences performance, while a high-performing team is one of the business success factors.

Improve retention

Career growth and professional development are the best ways to motivate employees, save top talent and keep the best engineers. For most developers, one of the key factors in choosing a job (or when making the decision to get an offer from another company) is the opportunity for career development and getting new professional perspectives.

Ability to make better decisions

Having clear guidelines, a manager can make transparent and reasoned decisions about pay rise, grade raise, hiring, etc. And also to make these decisions transparent, both for the team and for senior management and HR.

Bradford Fults speaks of the importance of the professional development for engineers:

Bradford Fults speaks of the importance of the professional development for engineers

For HRs

A hiring bar for each level makes it fairly easy for HR to decide in favor of one or another candidate. It is better to compare specialists with each other, using the system - this is how the company eliminates the human factor.

Fairness and transparency in decision-making process

One of the tasks of a recruiter is to find objective criteria for understanding whether a developer is ready for promotion or not. Clear steps towards achieving career goals within the company make employees understand that their growth or lack thereof is a fair decision.

Jerry Talton tells about Carta’s experience:

Jerry Talton tells about Carta’s experience

Optimize the hiring process

Understanding the professional level of a potential employee allows you to more confidently determine the cost of hiring, identify the skillset and, in general, clarify whether the developer will fit into the team and can contribute to the company's goals.

Transparent decisions on pay raise

If career paths are clearly defined and pay grades are tied to specific levels, then this greatly reduces the difficulty in negotiating decisions on salary increases.

Michael White speaks of how a software engineering career ladder helps to support engineers at Square:

Michael White speaks of how a software engineering career ladder helps to support engineers at Square

Improve a company’s brand image

When a company cares about the professional development and well-being of its employees and is ready to invest in their education, this always increases its credibility among candidates, making the company a place everyone wants to work.

Now you have an understanding of what a career progression is and why it’s important both for an employee and the company. It’s time to find out how to organize a career progression planning for a team and build a career ladder.

Toolkit for manager

Before we move to the part on how to professionally plan a career progression for your team, you need to get a basic toolkit. This is a list of tools (with useful links and templates) that will help manage the career growth of engineers and effectively form a career progression framework for them.

Tool #1: Skill matrix

Skill matrices include a set of skills, required for a certain role. These skills are mapped to levels on a career path, so a manager can understand how to identify the grade of each employee and what skills are required to help engineers skip level.

Companies can create their own skill matrices or simply use skill matrix template and adapt them to the needs of their team.

Useful link: Skill matrix template for 50+ tech roles.

Tool #2: Career path template

A career path is a roadmap that contains grades and skills and helps developers understand what needs to be done to reach a new career level: both in the manager track and an IC track.

Typically, grades represent the path from junior to senior. But as a company grows, the engineer career path can become more complex. To learn more about grades systems, read the previous article in this thread - What Is a Software Engineer Career Progression.

Useful link: Career path template for 50+ tech roles.

Tool #3: 1-on-1 meetings

Personal meetings help to discuss career goals, set OKRs, and build a professional development plan with employees. Also during these meetings, a manager can monitor the employee’s progress and make decisions on grade raise and pay raise.

Useful link: 1-on-1 meeting templates.

Tool #4: PDP

PDP is a professional development plan that helps a manager approach the engineer career ladder organization systematically and meet both engineer’s career goals and the goals of a company.

Useful link: Why Tech Companies Need Professional Development Plan For Software Engineers?

Build career ladder with AI

So, now you have the set of tools you will need to create a career ladder framework for your tech team. Let's move on to the steps of its creation and find out how you can hack the process with the help of AI.

4 steps to build engineer career ladder:

  1. Create a list of skills
  2. Identify career path levels
  3. Build PDP
  4. Monitor progress

Now, let’s dive into details and consider each step mentioned above.

Step 1: Create a list of skills

At this stage, a list of skills is formed that are necessary for a particular role. The manager can create their own list, or use ready-made skill matrix templates and customize them to the needs of their team.

Step 2: Identify career path levels (grades)

At this stage, a manager assesses an employee’s current level of skills, finds potential skill gaps, and identifies their career path level (or a grade). To do this, you should hold a skills review for the whole team and then analyze the review report.

To identify career path levels easily and fast, we recommend using AI tools that can do it for you.

Ace AI automatically identifies carer path levels of the whole team when you connect Git data. See how it works in practice:

Ace AI identifies career level based on Git data Ace AI identifies career level based on Git data
Ace AI identifies career level based on Git data

Step 3: Create PDP

After a manager identified a career path level, it’s time to build a professional development plan (or PDP). It will help team members to reach their career goals.

Good PDP should include a combination of educational activities and working tasks on developing focus skills in order to successfully implement continuous learning in the workflow of a tech team and meet career goals faster.

To save time on the search for personalized learning activities for each developer, you can use Ace AI which gives personalized recommendations on mentors and learning activities such as courses, books, etc. based on their skill gaps. See how Ace AI recommendations work in practice:

Personalized recommendations in Ace AI
Personalized recommendations in Ace AI

Step 4: Monitor progress

In order to make the process of professional development effective and implement continuous learning in your tech team’s workflow, an engineering manager should hold regular 1-on-1 meetings with team members to track the progress and adjust their PDPs if necessary, as well as provide feedback on their skill development.

To help you with that, Ace AI writes automatic feedback for specific skills for you to save time:

Automatic feedback for skills in Ace AI
Automatic feedback for skills in Ace AI

Also, Ace AI builds automatic agenda for your 1-on-1 meeting to discuss progress based on developer updates from Git and completed tasks.

Automatic agenda for 1-on-1 meeting in Ace AI
Automatic agenda for 1-on-1 meeting in Ace AI

Key ideas

  • Creating an engineering career ladder is not just a list of positions and responsibilities, but a systematized career growth roadmap that includes skills, career goals, and a professional development plan.
  • To create an effective career progression framework, managers need a toolkit that includes a skill matrix, career path template, 1-on-1 meetings, and a professional development plan (PDP).
  • The four steps to build an engineer career ladder include creating a list of skills, identifying career path levels, creating a PDP, and monitoring progress of professional development.
  • Using AI tools like Ace AI can help managers automate the process of building a career ladder for engineering team, as well as help them promote.
  • The ultimate goal of creating an engineer career ladder is to help employees develop professionally, meet career goals, and contribute to the success of the company.
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