These titles describe seniority along four main axes: domain knowledge, teaching and mentoring, culture and leadership, and customer success. Most industry ladders focus almost entirely on the first of these four, and expect anyone showing signs of good mentoring or leadership to move directly into management. This approach often takes very capable, happy engineers and turns them into mediocre, unhappy managers. That's bad for everyone involved.
Management Equivalent: n/a
Basic CS skills; some knowledge of coding in one or more languages, and limited experience with web, mobile, or data programming
Able to present and discuss work with other engineers, and receptive to feedback and coaching from team
Shows independent initiative and problem solving, and respects team and company values
Ships features with limited but measurable customer impact
Management Equivalent: n/a
Capable in one or more core problem domains: e.g., web, mobile, data, or systems programming; familiar with OO design, testing, and core development tools; able to work independently on basic projects
Provides detailed code reviews for teammates and helps document idioms and best practices; can help new hires and interns get up to speed with the team's style and existing code base
Identifies quality and reliability issues in systems they maintain; seeks input from teammates and outside experts on systems and feature design; collaborates well with product, support, and other teams
Consistently delivers systems and features that provide significant customer value
Management Equivalent: n/a
Proficient with UA engineering stack and preferred tools/style; able to design interfaces and reusable components for their own team; understands scaling, reliability, and maintenance trade-offs as they occur in practice
Consistently helps new hires and more junior engineers to "level up" and become more proficient over time; offers demos, talks, and recommendations to help their own team and others be more productive and ship better product
Helps to continuously maintain and improve quality across the stack; performs regular interviews for positions on the same team, providing detailed and useful feedback; takes on significant share of oncall duties, 5Y review, and other "housekeeping" tasks
Understands customer needs and motivations; responds to escalated customer issues and incidents in a proactive, timely fashion; understands how engineering projects contribute to business goals
Management Equivalent: Manager
Well-versed in multiple key product components; able to define and contribute to systems in multiple areas of the product; up to date on evolving standards, platform features, and critical vendor and community-provided technologies
Defines, documents, and evolves best practices for development in their team's area of focus; shepherds and aids in development of new projects across the organization; provides training and mentoring for multiple team members
Goes above and beyond basic requirements to support their own team and others; tackles hard debugging, incident response, and reverse-engineering tasks; regularly interviews candidates in a variety of engineering roles
Helps to identify key gaps in product offerings and functionality that will drive significant revenue and customer excitement; can take lead on non-trivial projects to address those needs
Management Equivalent: Senior Manager
Contributes to core technologies used by a variety of teams; helps to make critical product architecture and implementation decisions; helps to define and build out standards for how product features and services are built throughout the company
Recognized by engineers in multiple teams as an expert mentor and teacher; consistently in demand for design and code review; regularly provides training and support for new methods, tools, and patterns
Builds tools, frameworks, and projects that improve productivity for many colleagues; sets a positive example throughout the company for quality and responsibility; helps define hiring standards and practices
Able to anticipate and quickly adapt systems and practices to changes in load, usage, and customer requirements; works closely with engineering, product, and sales teams to ensure continued product/market fit; keeps entire team focused on important, high-value efforts
Management Equivalent: Director
Deep and broad knowledge of both current and emerging technologies that affect the business; core contributor to and maintainer of well-adopted libraries, tools, and services; expert in designing, implementing, and troubleshooting major portions of our production stack
Sought out by other employees as well as external teams and individuals as a mentor and educator; often invited as a speaker to industry events; may be a published author on relevant technical topics
Takes central role in decision making for both technical and organizational issues; helps to reconcile engineering POV with other groups; defines practices and processes that have an oversized, positive impact on the entire organization's output
Demonstrates deep understanding of customer needs and competitive landscape; able to estimate impact of and help lead efforts that significantly change product roadmap and footprint; plans and leads implementation efforts for major redesign, refactoring, and optimization efforts
Management Equivalent: Vice President
Title bestowed only by action of exec staff and/or the board. Candidates should show all of the characteristics and skills of a distinguished engineer, as well as being critical to the success, reputation, and technical excellence of the entire engineering organization.
Note: it is obviously not ideal to have a gendered term for this level. This is the standard industry term, but pull requests containing a more universal identifier will be gleefully considered.
Good managers can do a lot to make their team successful, but part of successful management is learning to delegate and stop doing the technical work that you used to own. Day-to-day management work is very interrupt-driven, which makes it hard to consistently produce good code.
Engineer Equivalent: Lead Engineer
Leads a team of 3+ engineers; helps to set project scope and requirements; mentors new team members on both technical and organizational challenges
Sets team goals and direction; determines hiring needs and helps to lead recruiting and interview activities; conducts regular 1:1s with all team members; manages performance for entire team
Aids product team in setting project scope and schedule; keeps team focused on quality and regular releases; works with other team leads to find creative solutions to customer issues
Engineer Equivalent: Principal Engineer
Leads a larger (8+) team of engineers and/or managers; contributes to efforts that cut across teams and projects; improves quality of shared engineering processes such as hiring, planning, and operations
Identifies and develops emerging leaders; sets goals for team members and tracks progress against them; identifies and addresses key talent and skill gaps through hiring, training, and organization changes
Understands and shows good judgement in deciding between engineering and customer preferences, as well as speed vs. quality; educates and informs product, sales, and other roles on current engineering efforts, needs, and contributions
Engineer Equivalent: Distinguished Engineer
Sets cross-team direction and helps to define global engineering goals; identifies and manages programs to benefit entire engineering group; sets staffing and budget expectations for multiple teams and functional roles
Coaches and develops managers; helps to define performance measurement tools and management processes across engineering; conducts 1:1s as well as level-skip discussions on issues across the organization
Works with product and sales teams to broadly prioritize and scope work for customers; defines and restructures teams and initiatives as needed to best address customer needs
Engineer Equivalent: Fellow
Owns success of engineering and cross-functional goals; works with other executive leadership and the board to define long-term initiatives; represents the company with vendors, partners, and industry groups
Identifies and addresses leadership needs for entire organization, including continuity and succession planning; owns medium to long-term plans for org growth; helps to set standards for how the entire org measures and talks about success
Able to establish and maintain strong relationships with customers' technical and marketing leadership; supports long-term deal-building and success via broad engineering efforts and priorities
Engineer Equivalent: n/a
Titles bestowed only by decision of exec staff and/or the board. Candidates should be exceptional in their experience, impact on the organization, and degree of sustained leadership and vision.