Engineering

Career Framework

A clear, honest guide to every level in the engineering organisation. What is expected at each level, what good looks like, and how to think about your own progression. No vague language, no moving goalposts.

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Framework shape

Two Paths

There are two distinct career paths in engineering, and it is worth being explicit about that upfront. The Individual Contributor path measures impact at the individual level through technical contributions, code, design and influence that flows from deep expertise. The People Manager path measures impact as a multiplier: how many people you are making more effective, and how that compounds. Neither is more senior than the other.

Progression map

Individual contributor

SE1 -> SE2 -> SE3 -> SE4 -> SE5 -> SE6

Impact grows through technical depth, execution quality, and influence.

People manager

EM -> Sr EM

Impact grows through multiplying team effectiveness and developing leaders.

Cross-path on-ramp: After time in SE4, engineers can step into a Tech Lead position to test the manager path with real support before making a full commitment.

Individual contributor

Individual Contributor Track

Six levels from early career through to company-wide engineering leadership. SE3 is explicitly valid as a long-term destination. Progression beyond it is optional and depends on what you want, not on the organisation needing everyone to keep climbing.

SE1 - SE6

SE1

Software Engineer 1

Progress toward SE2/SE3 expected within 1-2 years

Just starting out in your career. You work on well-defined tasks with support from the team, ask a lot of questions, and are building the habits and confidence that will carry you through every level that follows.

Impact expectations

Delivers well-defined tasks in collaboration with more senior engineers.

Common activities

Writes well-tested code and documentation in line with company principles.
Demonstrates understanding of common software engineering concepts.
Develops usage of tooling and systems, including their development environment, source control and internal tooling.
Proactively learns from the work of others.
Proactively communicates to their team what they are working on, why, how it is going, and what help they need.
Asks questions to understand how to write effective code, and prioritises their own learning to better serve their team.
Proactively improves the test coverage and documentation of existing code.

SE2

Software Engineer 2

Progress toward SE3 expected within 1-2 years from SE1

Building the foundation of being a solid individual contributor. You're working within your team with support from senior engineers, but starting to own pieces of work rather than just executing tasks handed to you.

Impact expectations

Delivers tasks and designs effective solutions to product features or small-scope engineering challenges.
Makes steps toward independently owning the development of a feature or problem space, including the ability to identify, define and scope problems.
Breaks down medium-sized engineering problems in collaboration with more senior engineers.
Demonstrates ownership of smaller problem spaces and repeatedly achieves successful outcomes.

Common activities

Writes clear, well-separated code that reflects coding guidelines and can be easily understood by others.
Proactively tests their work appropriately.
Provides clear and actionable technical feedback on pull requests, aligned with engineering principles.
Takes responsibility for the quality of their work, owning and fixing defects.
Demonstrates awareness of non-functional principles in their discipline and acts on them.
Gives direct feedback to others in their team, and accepts feedback from others graciously.
Makes consistent, steady progress on assigned work.
Proactively communicates progress, attempts to unblock themselves, but seeks timely guidance where needed.
Proactively documents existing and new features and projects.
Makes consistent contributions as a release owner.

SE3

Software Engineer 3

Progression to SE4 typically takes up to 2 years

A solid individual contributor capable of taking on any technical problem in your discipline. You lead feature design and implementation, mentor less experienced engineers, and make the people around you better. This is a valid long-term destination - not everyone needs or wants to go further, and that's completely fine.

All engineers are expected to be capable of reaching this level. Progression beyond SE3 is optional.

Impact expectations

Owns, implements and delivers medium-sized features or products with their team.
Confidently breaks down small to medium engineering problems and leads others to solve them.
Contributes to a higher-performing team through onboarding and mentoring.
Relied upon as a trusted problem solver for critical bugs and incidents in their area of expertise.
Enthusiastically engages with team initiatives where they're best placed to help.
Identifies and addresses gaps in systems, and independently manages escalations.

Common activities

Works with their team to solve almost any technical problem in their discipline.
Writes code that peers regard as high quality.
Provides context and clarity through documentation and proposals so others can understand what's being built and why.
Balances short-term needs against long-term stability when responding to incidents.
Proactively identifies problems in products and improves code they work on - leaving things better than they found them.
Works confidently with others to help them understand what engineering is building.
Regularly mentors engineers less experienced than themselves, and onboards new engineers into the team.
Proactively seeks and gives timely, actionable feedback with a positive impact on those around them.
Participates in hiring - giving effective feedback in scorecards and during debriefs.
Effectively escalates problems with wider scope than their team, supporting them to a successful conclusion.
Reliably delivers work, solves project-level problems themselves, and escalates quickly when unexpected blockers emerge.
Promotes good practices in accessibility, performance and security to help others deepen their knowledge.
Works confidently under uncertainty and ambiguity, pulling in support where needed.
Proactively contributes to all systems and identifies gaps in alerting.

SE4

Software Engineer 4

Progression to SE5 typically takes 2-3 years

Your scope is felt at the team level, with influence beginning to spread wider across the business. You bring distinct individual strengths and create impact through them. Importantly, there are different 'shapes' of an SE4 - a generalist consistently raising technical quality across everything their team does is as valid as someone leading complex cross-functional projects.

Not every engineer will be capable of or want to reach Level 4. This is a genuinely challenging step up from SE3.

Impact expectations

Leads and consistently delivers on projects of highly ambiguous scope, high complexity and critical business impact.
Deployable to the highest-priority business problems - resolves them quickly and helps the business understand how to avoid recurrence.
Proactively contributes to the growth of other engineers through sponsoring, mentoring and candid feedback.
Gives technical and strategic feedback on relevant projects that leads to better outcomes.

Common activities

Leads architectural and system design on the most complex systems.
Demonstrates high product awareness for the areas of the business they work with.
Has a proven track record of implementing significant improvements in quality, stability and scalability.
Fosters a culture of quality in their team - champions testing and gets buy-in when that isn't appreciated.
Understands multiple concurrent workstreams and offers effective technical support for each while maintaining strong personal velocity.
Understands product-market fit and works closely with product leadership to make the right decisions.
Proactively identifies problems that challenge the company's scale or direction, communicates them effectively and supports adaptation.
Widely considered an expert in one or more areas by peers and company leadership.
Steps up to lead when required, even when not explicitly asked.
Regularly challenges their team to have greater urgency around company priorities.
Remains calm during incidents or critical emergencies, leading others toward structure rather than chaos.
Proactively proposes engineering strategy within their discipline and knows how to get buy-in and drive it forward.
Effectively delegates to load-balance their work, using delegation as a development opportunity for others.

SE5

Software Engineer 5

Progression to SE6 is bespoke and not time-bound

Your impact is felt across multiple teams and product areas. You are a trusted authority on complex architectural decisions, a visible technical leader within the engineering organisation, and someone who actively raises the ceiling for those around you.

Progression to SE5 is possible for many engineers, but opportunities are more limited based on discipline and area of the company.

Impact expectations

Meaningfully contributes to company goals and directly increases company value over time.
Sought out for the most pressing and highest-priority business challenges because they're known to be effective.
Leads large, strategic, complex engineering projects that often cross team boundaries.
Drives architecture and system design across multiple teams.
Regularly and positively influences the direction of system design across the company.
Proactively sponsors, mentors and levels up more senior engineers.
Comfortably leads the resolution of any engineering problem in their discipline.

Common activities

Leads architectural and system design on the most complex systems.
Demonstrates high product awareness for the areas of the business they work with.
Has a proven track record of implementing significant improvements in quality, stability and scalability.
Fosters a culture of quality in their team - champions testing and gets buy-in when that isn't appreciated.
Understands multiple concurrent workstreams and offers effective technical support for each while maintaining strong personal velocity.
Understands product-market fit and works closely with product leadership to make the right decisions.
Proactively identifies problems that challenge the company's scale or direction, communicates them effectively and supports adaptation.
Widely considered an expert in one or more areas by peers and company leadership.
Steps up to lead when required, even when not explicitly asked.
Regularly challenges their team to have greater urgency around company priorities.
Remains calm during incidents or critical emergencies, leading others toward structure rather than chaos.
Proactively proposes engineering strategy within their discipline and knows how to get buy-in and drive it forward.
Effectively delegates to load-balance their work, using delegation as a development opportunity for others.

SE6

Software Engineer 6

An engineering leader with impact across broad areas of the company, wider than a single discipline. You set high-level vision and strategy, and directly use your engineering knowledge to create solutions to the most challenging problems. Respected by both the wider engineering team and the industry at large.

Progression to SE6 is not a given. It depends on having a specialism or unique skill critical to the company. The journey is bespoke, agreed with your line manager and senior leaders.

Impact expectations

Significantly and directly impacts business success and the engineering discipline across the entire company.
Leaves lasting impact - work sets the business up for the future and creates a legacy so large problems are only revisited at appropriate cadence.
Impact felt business-wide, acting as a multiplier on productivity, performance and control.
Consistently puts in place measures to ensure strong engineering leadership into the future.
Makes the business architecture known to be robust, effective, scalable and strategically sound.

Common activities

Sets overall architectural vision at company-wide scale, designed to grow and flex with business plans.
Identifies root causes and initiates changes to processes and technologies that underpin the business.
Operates confidently at huge scale complexity - the person the company sends to its most complicated problems.
Pairs on or writes code for particularly complex, high-impact or novel problems when a team needs a temporary boost.
Defines and sets out principles and patterns, extending them to previously unknown spaces.
Speaks or writes for both internal and external audiences.
Recognised beyond the company as a leading expert in their field, and contributes back to it.
Spots where multiple disciplines are solving the same challenge and brings people together around a unified solution.
Identifies technology that can play a strategic enablement role in growing the business.
Leads technology as a discipline - inclusive of engineering, data and agile.
Thinks on a 3-5 year time horizon, helping others see what's ahead and what that means for decisions made today.
Supports hiring for the most senior engineering positions.
Is involved in the wider business strategy, not just the engineering dimension.
Provides actionable direction to teams of multiple stakeholders in the most challenging situations.
Creates and gets buy-in for a multi-year technology strategy, from board level to individual engineers.
Makes and communicates difficult decisions when necessary.
Proactively fosters an inclusive, diverse and positive engineering culture across the business.

People manager

People Manager Track

Two levels covering team-level and multi-team leadership. Choosing this path means committing to the multiplier model: your primary measure of success becomes the output, growth and culture of your people, not your individual technical contribution.

EM - Sr EM

Engineering Manager

Progression to Senior EM typically takes 2-3 years

You've committed to the multiplier model. Your measure of success is no longer your individual technical output - it's the output, growth and culture of your team over time. Good EMs are ensuring the team delivers, actively developing their engineers, maintaining technical context, and shielding the team from noise while keeping them connected to what matters.

Impact expectations

Consistently delivers team goals through clear planning, prioritisation and removal of blockers.
Actively develops engineers at every level through regular 1:1s, meaningful feedback and career conversations.
Builds and maintains a team culture that is psychologically safe, high-trust and high-output.
Owns hiring for their team, building pipelines and running structured, effective processes.
Communicates team progress, risks and needs clearly to senior leadership.

Common activities

Maintains technical credibility with the team while shifting primary focus to people and process.
Partners effectively with product and design on roadmap and planning.
Identifies and addresses performance issues directly and constructively.
Represents the team's technical needs and constraints in broader organisational conversations.
Develops engineers' careers with genuine investment, not just performance management.
Runs effective team rituals without letting process become overhead.
Acts as a shield and a bridge - protecting the team from noise while ensuring they understand what matters and why.

Sr EM

Senior Engineering Manager

Progression to Director typically takes 2-4 years

Management at scale. Where an EM is responsible for a single team, you are accountable for multiple teams - potentially including managers of managers - and operate at a strategic level within the engineering organisation. Your work is organisational: design, culture at scale, cross-team coordination and contribution to the company's broader technical and product direction.

Impact expectations

Sets clear direction and strategy across multiple teams or a broad engineering domain.
Develops engineering managers - investing in their growth, giving real feedback, building their capability.
Drives organisational design decisions that allow teams to scale and operate effectively.
Owns the engineering culture across their area - actively shaping it rather than passively observing it.
Partners with product, design and business leadership at a strategic level.

Common activities

Operates as a credible voice on technical strategy, not just people strategy.
Manages cross-team dependencies, conflicts and resource allocation with clarity and fairness.
Represents engineering at senior leadership conversations where relevant.
Thinks about the organisation's engineering capability 1-3 years out, not just this quarter.
Builds the next generation of engineering managers deliberately.
Connects engineering strategy to business strategy in a way that is understood at every level.

Dir

Director of Engineering

Progression to VP is selective and not time-bound

You are accountable for an entire engineering function or a significant cross-cutting domain. The Director role is where management scope becomes genuinely organisational rather than just multi-team. You set the conditions for engineering excellence, own the relationship between engineering and the wider business at a senior level, and make decisions that will play out over years rather than quarters.

Director is a significant step up in organisational complexity and business accountability. Not every Senior EM will move to this level, and that is completely valid.

Impact expectations

Owns the performance, culture and strategic direction of a major engineering function.
Makes hiring, organisational design and investment decisions that shape the team for years ahead.
Ensures engineering is aligned to and actively enabling the company's business strategy.
Develops Senior EMs and high-potential managers with deliberate, honest sponsorship.
Represents engineering at executive and board level when required, with credibility and clarity.
Removes systemic blockers that would otherwise constrain the entire engineering organisation.

Common activities

Designs and iterates on the engineering organisation structure to reflect where the business is going, not just where it is.
Builds and maintains trusted relationships with peers in product, design, data and business leadership.
Owns headcount planning and budgeting for their function, making the case clearly and defending it credibly.
Defines and reinforces engineering standards and culture across a large, diverse group of people.
Identifies gaps in leadership capability and acts on them - through coaching, hiring or reorganisation.
Translates business priorities into clear engineering direction that Senior EMs can execute against.
Drives cross-functional initiatives where engineering is a critical dependency, not just a participant.
Sets the bar for technical quality and process rigour across all teams in their domain.
Is a visible, accessible engineering leader - not just a name on an org chart.
Supports and participates in exec-level hiring to maintain quality at the top of the organisation.

VP of Engineering

The VP of Engineering is an executive role. You are responsible for the entire engineering organisation: its output, its culture, its capability and its long-term health. You work at the intersection of company strategy and engineering execution, translating one into the other with precision. Your leverage is enormous - and so is the accountability that comes with it.

VP is an executive appointment. It requires not just engineering leadership experience but demonstrated ability to operate effectively at board and C-suite level, and to carry commercial accountability for engineering investment.

Impact expectations

Accountable for the engineering organisation's output, quality, culture and long-term capability.
Partners with the CEO and C-suite to define how engineering contributes to company strategy and growth.
Makes investment decisions - people, tooling, infrastructure, vendor - at a company-wide scale.
Builds the conditions for sustained engineering excellence over a multi-year horizon.
Ensures the company can attract, retain and develop exceptional engineering talent at every level.
Provides engineering perspective in board-level conversations with authority and commercial fluency.

Common activities

Sets the vision for what great engineering looks like at this company, and holds the organisation to it.
Owns the engineering budget and makes allocation decisions that reflect strategic priorities.
Builds and develops a leadership team of Directors and Senior EMs capable of running the organisation independently.
Operates as a peer to the CPO, CFO and other C-suite leaders - not as a function head reporting upward.
Leads the company's engineering brand: how it hires, how it is perceived externally, and how it contributes to the wider community.
Makes difficult structural decisions - reorganisations, redundancies, pivots - with clarity and humanity.
Connects engineering investment directly to commercial outcomes, making the value legible to the board.
Identifies and resolves existential technical risks before they become business problems.
Maintains enough technical context to ask the right questions, challenge assumptions and recognise when something is being underplayed.
Creates and communicates a multi-year engineering strategy that the entire organisation understands and believes in.
Shapes company culture from the top - engineering values do not exist in isolation from how the whole business operates.

Operating principles

What Makes This Work

A career framework only works if it is actually used, not just published and forgotten. These are the principles that make the difference between a useful tool and a document nobody reads.

Honest timelines

Vague language like "when you are ready" is not useful. Concrete guidance sets expectations on both sides and creates a basis for real conversations.

SE3 is a destination

Not everyone needs or wants to progress beyond SE3, and that is explicitly valid. Removing implicit pressure to keep climbing makes career conversations more honest.

Different shapes are real

SE4 especially has multiple valid profiles. A framework that only recognises one archetype of senior engineer systematically fails a large portion of its senior people.

Used in both directions

It is a tool for engineers to understand what is expected of them, and equally a tool for managers to have calibrated, evidence-based conversations about performance and progression.