Career Ladder Inspiration · Engineering
Artsy's engineering career framework
Engineering career ladder from Artsy covering 12 competency areas across 5 IC levels from Engineer 1 to Staff Engineer. Based on their open-source GitHub framework.
Company Artsy|Year 2026|Discipline Engineering|Tracks TBD|License
Scroll horizontally to explore all 5 levels
Clone this templateEngineer 1 (IC2) | Engineer 2 (IC3) | Senior Engineer 1 (IC4) | Senior Engineer 2 (IC5) | Staff Engineer (IC6) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skills Technical Understanding | Has broad knowledge of CS concepts. Proactively learns about Artsy best-practices. Routinely pushes code through the entire lifecycle. Familiar with basic troubleshooting and debugging tools. | Consistently applies best practices. Exhibits basic understanding of security, performance, and scalability concerns. Can trace production behaviors across multiple layers. | Knows their own technical area well, has basic familiarity with shared systems. Can systematically trace and troubleshoot end-to-end issues. Proactively considers security, performance, and scalability when designing software. | Knows the production infrastructure very well and contributes to it. Regular contributor to the entire software development lifecycle. Exhibits advanced understanding of engineering best practices. Leaves systems in a better state after each release. | Demonstrates advanced knowledge in specific domains as well as basic expertise across the whole stack. Outstanding technical contributions recognized throughout the engineering team. Actively contributes to complex shared systems. Routinely contributes to maintenance of large scale services. |
Skills Technical Decision-Making | Can create or update an API, test, or component by following existing examples or with guidance. Shows understanding of when to take shortcuts and when to pay back. | Consistently improves codebase while recognizing when to ship vs. invest. Carefully considers the appropriate layer or system. Routinely designs small-to-medium features that align with best-practices. | Can identify opportunities to evaluate new technologies or decide to stick with existing ones. Shows excellent technical judgment in when to build vs. use external solutions. Uses industry practice and situational awareness to choose appropriate technical approaches. | Is trusted to think through all aspects of a problem. Seeks out and effectively weighs input from others. Invests in getting the engineering group familiar with decisions. | Consistently makes decisions about the engineering team's technical roadmap and overall architecture. |
Skills Code Quality | Writes code that is easy to read, has no obvious bugs and has corresponding unit tests. Can identify minor refactoring opportunities. | Contributes code that is correct, follows accepted patterns, and is commonly mergeable with minimal guidance. Identifies straightforward refactoring opportunities. Uses tests, QA, and monitoring to guide the right changes. | No description available | No description available | No description available |
Skills Industry Knowledge | No description available | Spends some time staying up to date on technology trends by attending practice meetings, lunch and learns, reading blog posts. | Generally up-to-date on the current technology landscape and relevant trends within area of expertise. | Is attentive to the technical landscape and aware of current trends. Can assess when to start using new technology vs. what's worth waiting for. | Exhibits strong opinions and knowledge about the current technology landscape. Can argue for/against technologies and their place at Artsy. |
Skills Team Impact | Completes well-defined tasks. Actively seeks out learning opportunities. | Contributes small improvements to shared tools and libraries. | Advocates for ways to improve infrastructure or product in the context of team deliverables. Helps prioritize the team's backlog. Contributes to longer-term planning. | Translates product/design specs into technical tasks. Brings ideas to the PM and can run with bigger projects. Can take on Tech Lead responsibilities or lead a key project. | Comes up with larger ideas of changes to the product roadmap and advocates for them. Anticipates technical issues at the org level and helps with architectural decisions. |
Skills Product Impact | No description available | Can be relied upon to deliver features on the team's critical path. | Delivers significant business value. Identifies and delivers technical improvements. Regularly leads larger initiatives requiring coordination with 2-3 engineers. Breaks down ambiguous business problems. | Can lead very large initiatives for complex projects. Keeps an eye on entire team's quality and holds team to high standards. Accelerates team impact by leading technical plans, spikes, and proofs of concept. | Has made an obvious positive impact on engineering or product top line metrics. Drives process changes across the entire engineering team. Track record of sweeping improvements in stability, performance, and scalability. |
Skills Team Influence | Builds relationships with team members. Actively participates in team rituals. Provides clear updates about progress or obstacles. Makes time for code review and QA. | Provides constructive feedback during retrospectives. | Suggests process changes in the team. Takes ownership for retro action items. Routinely facilitates existing team ceremonies. | Proactively organizes retrospectives and other team discussions. Actively works to make the team function more effectively. Can drive change without formal authority. | No description available |
Skills Engineering Influence | No description available | Provides help and support to other engineers. Participates in interviewing process. Takes time for constructive pull request feedback. | Mentors and trains other engineers. Participates in practice-level decision making. Can rally people beyond their team to solve well-defined problems. Sought after as collaborator. | Regularly administers technical interviews. Fluent with interview best practices. Helps organize team events. Thinks about team-wide culture. Sets up internal training. | Multiplies effectiveness of others by facilitating cross-team work. Recognized for consistently good judgement. Takes responsibility for team culture and morale. Identifies knowledge gaps and sets up training programs. |
Skills Cross-functional Collaboration | No description available | Effectively collaborates with engineers and cross-functional partners. Can have conversations with PM about scope and tradeoffs for small-to-medium features. | Trusted by PM, Data, Design and team to reliably ship, make technical decisions and be a thought partner. | Proactively partners with PMs, Data, Design, and Business Stakeholders to drive the best possible outcome. | Frequent thought partner and technical advisor for PMs. Respected by non-technical stakeholders. Can represent the entire engineering team in business conversations. |
Skills Communication | No description available | Knows how to debate important trade-offs while exhibiting flexibility. Is always constructive in communication. | Communicates clearly and concisely with appropriate level of technical detail. Learns from debate and keeps an open, constructive attitude. | Assumes positive intent and models positive, empathetic communication. Builds trust with those beyond engineering. Can present team's work to non-technical audiences. | Communicates unambiguously and makes main points very clear. Encourages ideas even when wrong; can constructively redirect. Recognizes and handles topics of emotion or defensiveness. |
Skills Oversight | Can sequence assigned tickets with guidance. Understands team mission and backlog. Can work autonomously on small tickets with minor supervision. | Self-directed, prioritizes own work. Knows when to ask for help. Understands business impact of their and their team's work. Makes steady progress without constant input. | Makes tradeoffs between business impact and technical strategy. Regarded as reliable team member who can own complex tasks end-to-end. Demonstrates fluency with team and business OKRs. | No description available | Understands the Artsy business and makes decisions based on its direction. Proactively sets short to medium-term strategic technical direction. Actively promotes knowledge about what's important for the business. |
Skills Initiative | No description available | No description available | Has a bias for action. Jumps on outages. Persistent in the face of roadblocks. Takes initiative to identify opportunities and solve problems outside focus area. | Trusted to basically run with things with very little supervision. | Can drive change at the org level by identifying critical needs, spinning up working groups and seeing to completion. Responsible for coordinating technical projects and holding people accountable. |
Framework by Artsy · Licensed
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