Career Ladder Inspiration · Multi-Role

Bradford Fults's multi-role career framework

Open-source software engineer leveling matrix covering 18 competency areas across 5 IC levels. Created by Bradford Fults, licensed CC-BY.

Company Bradford Fults|Year 2026|Discipline Multi-Role|Tracks TBD|License

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	L1 - Software Engineer I	L2 - Software Engineer II	L3 - Software Engineer III	L4 - Staff Software Engineer	L5 - Senior Staff Software Engineer
Skills Software Design: Quality	Writes consistently good and maintainable code. Consumes documentation and asks teammates when needed. Understands basics of automated testing. Writes most code without obvious bugs.	Writes consistently great code requiring no syntax/convention feedback. Often adds new and relevant documentation to existing repositories.	Understands the organizational value of great documentation and spends time to maintain and extend it. Advises the rest of the team on quality of code, tests and documentation. Identifies and pragmatically applies better code practices or tooling.	Creates and structures documentation for large code projects concisely and consistently. Advises their team and other teams on best practices for code, test and documentation quality.	Considers and proposes new programming language and platform choices for the organization. Leads efforts to improve documentation and code skills sharing across teams.
Skills Software Design: Architecture	Some architectural design feedback may be necessary but understands and applies feedback consistently. Comfortable with basics of code interface design. Understands and can usually recognize technical debt.	Strong architectural design and approach experience; only the most complex designs refined with senior teammates. Good intuition for code interface design. Understands and consistently recognizes technical debt; looks for opportunities to negotiate and pay it down.	Deep architectural and design pattern experience; consults for teammates on more difficult designs and sets up new projects to ensure architectural success. Plans with technical debt in mind; negotiates to pay it down incrementally.	Works with Architecture team regularly to define and refine cross-team architectural approaches. Understands technical debt as a risk management tool. Guides organizational adoption of new data formats and patterns.	Succeeds by introducing simpler and time-tested approaches to technical problems to several teams. Fuses organizational strategy with technical architecture including cross-team design and code sharing.
Skills Running Systems	Uses out-of-the-box tools to instrument and monitor systems. Can do basic code profiling. Understands basics of failsafe design. Has some comfort working with live production systems.	Customizes out-of-the-box tools, may create small custom tools. Helps tune monitoring philosophy. Can do multi-application profiling. Strong understanding of failsafe design. Unqualified comfort working with live production systems.	Creates new tools when necessary to instrument and monitor systems. Defines and realigns monitoring philosophy. Acts as primary mentor on running systems for the rest of their team.	Can solve any profiling challenge at any layer of the stack. Seeks out running systems mentorship opportunities across teams.	No description available
Skills Project & Team Scope	Member of one or two small or medium projects at a time. Works mostly with their own team.	Usually leads one or two medium or large projects at a time. Recognized for occasional participation in cross-team projects.	Acts as an ambassador and proactive connector for their team. Usually leads at least one major project. Sometimes leads cross-team projects.	Works between and across teams almost as much as with their own. Participates in major projects and initiatives. Sometimes called in to mitigate large risks.	Significant contributor to Architecture team and leader of working group efforts across the organization.
Skills Technical Collaboration	Communicates accurately about all technical subjects. Can disagree constructively. Fully embraces team solutions and commits to delivery.	Leads technical explanations when appropriate. Approaches disagreement with inquisitiveness and empathy. Guides team toward decisions and holds self and teammates accountable.	Facilitates technical discussions between teammates. Has deep familiarity with technical topics at all levels.	Proactively seeks out gaps in technical understanding, especially cross-functional, and works to fill them.	No description available
Skills Communication & Empathy	Communicates concisely, effectively and clearly. May sometimes need minimal coaching on communication skills.	Coaching on communication skills is rare. Very strong speaker and listener. Can usually explain technical subjects to non-technical teammates.	Can explain deeply technical subjects to non-technical teammates with ease.	No description available	Often takes the lead to communicate technical topics to technical and non-technical directors and business leaders.
Skills Productivity & Time Management	Accomplishes tasks within an acceptable time frame. Can estimate work tasks with help from teammates. Understands and acts in accordance with given priority.	Maintains a strongly consistent personal velocity. Estimates work tasks accurately with minimal oversight. Understands, negotiates and applies work priorities correctly. Raises alarm early when tasks are off schedule.	Leverages own abilities and practices to mentor and improve the productivity of the entire team.	Successfully manages cross-team commitments and work completion. Improves productivity of teammates across multiple teams.	No description available
Skills Project Accountability	Avoids surprising stakeholders when expectations change. Consistently communicates with project stakeholders.	Proactively finds gaps in project plans. Effectively communicates project status without prompting. May occasionally help teammates overcome obstacles.	Consistently helps teammates overcome obstacles and complete project work.	Enables and improves cross-team collaboration by helping individual teammates and working with stakeholders.	Works with organizational leaders to improve project accountability across many or all teams.
Skills Production Support	Participates in team on-call and can resolve basic issues. Communicates effectively about production issues. Escalates appropriately.	Can comfortably and effectively resolve issues outside of their immediate scope. Proactively identifies risks for production issues.	Leads definition and refinement of on-call procedures. Can resolve nearly all issues escalated within their team. Leads RCAs and follow-up work.	No description available	No description available
Skills Autonomy & Self-Starting	Dives into new projects with curiosity. Makes effective use of existing documentation. Knows how to ask good questions. Has awareness of rabbit holes.	Gains understanding of projects that lack good documentation through systematic learning. Contributes knowledge back to projects. Very rarely falls down rabbit holes.	Achieves expert-level knowledge of new systems through rigorous learning. Takes primary responsibility for improving projects to enable self-starting by others.	No description available	No description available
Skills Product & Business Relationships	Understands how adjacent product and business teams operate. Builds and maintains friendly relationships with product counterparts.	Works proactively with product counterparts to build strong relationships within and across teams. Knows and understands business stakeholders' motivations.	Takes primary responsibility for relationships with product and business stakeholders to better plan for and position their own team.	Establishes strong relationships with product and business stakeholders across the organization.	No description available
Skills Engineering Team Relationships	Understands team and organizational engineering strategy. Works to represent self and team positively. May seek out relationships with engineering leaders.	Informs team engineering strategy by working with their manager. Actively participates in execution and some planning of organizational strategy.	Decides and collaborates on team engineering strategy. Sometimes involves self in organizational strategy. Seeks to build strong relationships with engineering leaders.	Effective relationship builder throughout the engineering organization. Often involved in strategic organizational plans.	Very effective relationship builder among most or all engineering leaders. Proactively involved in and often leads strategic organizational decisions.
Skills External Representation	Always represents self, team and company positively. Thinks about how external communication affects the brand.	Might be more proactive in seeking external representation opportunities. Contributes some external blog posts.	Contributes and solicits blog post opportunities from teammates.	Consistently represents self, team and company through excellent blog posts. Sometimes represents with external speaking engagements.	Consistently represents with external speaking engagements. May participate in industry working groups.
Skills Contributing to Product Enhancements	Understands drivers behind product roadmap items.	Sometimes participates in roadmap feedback with product team. Looks for opportunities to simplify product and technical design.	Regularly participates in the creation of the team roadmap. Builds a reputation for simplifying product and technical design.	Often helps refine roadmaps across teams based on technical strategy and constraints. Helps define and create new product abilities.	Proactively seeks to create or redefine roadmaps with product and business counterparts.
Skills Driving Efficiency	Takes responsibility for customer-impacting performance. Sometimes thinks about team practices.	Seeks to understand performance characteristics of systems. Regularly observes team practices and suggests improvements.	Consistently pursues performance improvements starting with customer impact. Thinks critically about team practices. Observes organizational practices and sometimes collaborates across teams.	Applies cross-team experience to provide consistent performance improvements. Regularly discusses organizational practices and processes.	Takes ownership and responsibility for organizational practices and their continuous improvement.
Skills Technical Strategy & Vision	Articulates a coherent future vision for a component or components they own.	Articulates a coherent future vision for whole systems and several components.	Articulates a coherent future vision for many systems tended by their team. Often assists teammates with building and articulating visions.	Articulates a coherent future vision for systems that span teams or many systems across teams. Helps define the model of good technical visions.	No description available
Skills Mentorship & Guidance	Knows when to seek out mentorship to grow their own experience.	Sometimes mentors teammates one-on-one. Always treats mentored teammates with respect and kindness.	Proactively mentors teammates one-on-one without prompting. Seeks out opportunities to create team redundancy and backfill ability.	Often mentors teammates across teams. Takes full responsibility for their own succession on their team.	Serves as a role model for mentorship within the engineering organization. Proactively seeks out mentoring relationships. Helps improve mentors.
Skills Influence & Alignment	Can persuade some direct teammates based on the merits of a technical approach. Makes well-informed technical decisions with all required information.	Balanced with good listening, can persuade their entire team of particular tactical approaches.	Regularly achieves strong alignment with their own team. Sometimes persuades other team leads of a new approach.	Regularly influences multiple teams to align around a cross-team goal.	Consistently works at a strategic level, influencing technical and non-technical decisions to achieve cross-team alignment.

Framework by Bradford Fults · Licensed

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