The Software Engineer Career Ladder Explained

The software engineer career ladder can be fairly confusing when you are first getting into the industry. I've found myself explaining this to even fairly seasoned software engineers so I thought it'd make sense to just create a video explaining the different levels. I decided to keep it fairly broad so instead of talking about specific companies I boil it down to the general career ladder you can expect in the industry which includes: Junior Software Engineer, Mid-level Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Staff Software Engineer, and then finally Principal Software Engineer.

As always, if this video left you with some unanswered questions please let me know in the comments section down below, I'd be happy to answer them.

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[CodyEngelCodes]

Hey everyone, thanks so much for watching. Let me know where you're currently at in your career and the biggest hurdle you're currently approaching, would love to help out :)

[elijah]

No editing, no fancy transitions or animations.... just plain, straight to the point answers with examples! Good job, I'm subbed now

[thebachelorpad]

As an engineer who has been in the industry for 12-13 years, this is one of the most important video I ever come across. There is hardly any content online to maneur at a 10+ level of experience. I truly appreciate you making this content and I will be following you for even more content. Thank you!

[nohate]

Thank you for the explanation of each level and expected responsibility. In my first 3 - 4 months as a full-stack engineer at a large company. I was given the task to build a new feature which was to implement the entire UI, endpoints, cloud infrastructure, and querying... I figured they had my best interest at hand, so I went for it, and you guessed it - I failed miserably. I blamed myself and was also labeled incompetent by my team and leadership because multiple senior-level engineers had to save the project. My confidence is still shaken from that assignment even though it was a few months ago, but I feel so much better after hearing this, thank you.

[ThereIsNoRoot]

I'm a Senior Principal and your explanation of being a mini-CTO is spot on. Great video!

[techleadershipwithmarkswan]

Nice clear explanations. The only thing I'd add to your Staff Software in a small company, is that in your ~50 people company, there's often overlap between "staff" and tech leads. You could have ~8 staff also doing light management tasks too.

[phantasyphotography]

Also for startups who have investor funding, it's not uncommon to find junior developers in a mid/senior level position in the company since it's so small. One pro of this is that if the company does well then those early engineers have a leg up on other engineers who start off as entry level at established companies but it comes at the risk of potential startup failure. If it does fail though, those developers usually have had enough autonomy and experience to apply for good positions in established companies.

[sitronco]

Thank you so much for this video. It really gives a great idea of the different level in the software engineer career :)

[CyberAbyss]

Thank you! Great video. By your definition, I'm a staff software developer. I work on 3 or more products / projects / teams at any given time. Sometimes, I'm the sole engineer and others I might be a site reliability engineer working with off-shore teams or a engineering contributor.

[edungdivinefavour]

Very straight to the point and 100% true

[turner-tune]

Love this video! Great explanations, and I just shared it with my team! :D

[rj]

I like how at the end he covered all the cases, true software engg 🤣🤣🤣

[perfectionbox]

The actual levels:
The intern that gives up after three months
The newbie
The script kiddie
The junior
The Slightly More Experienced Junior that Everyone Abuses
The visual basic or c# dev who can't wrap his head around pointers
The guy who used to be okay but stopped learning and is now stuck in legacy maintenance
The regular dev
The 10x dev who can't deal with "those useless idiots"
The embedded systems guy who only knows C and assembly
The dev with so much experience he's been coding for longer than you've been alive, whose code is either the epitome of elegance or something you'll never understand even if you outlive him
The guru who writes compilers, experiments with his own languages and advanced meta programming, consults with chip manufacturers on their architecture etc.

[NgolaNalane]

Thanks for the overview. I'm about to start as an intern soon.

[etymology_]

My first job as a Jr SWE was three months ago. I was doing full stack work & full blown features for a small start up, it was remote, very independent, & asking questing was looked down upon. Which I understand, it was a small start up & people don't have a lot of time. Once my contract ended, they said yea, you were doing mid level work the whole time, I am glad I did not renew my contract since I was getting paid a Jr salary. I just want to find a company where I can learn & grow, give me mid lvl work I don't care...where are these companies???

[cmdv]

What are some tips people can work on to move from their current level to the next one up? Great content 🚀

[JaydeeSan]

This is great video of the different levels on paper. Now in real life…👀

[lionmaru]

Hey, great video.
I work as a senior engineer for a medium-sized company in the UK. The next level would be Principal. I feel it's a tricky situation. Principal must tell what we need to do, they have to provide techincal leadership, good technical knowledge, larger problems etc. But in order for you to do that, you must know the systems and their technologies really well but that is something is not really there. We got the systems working and deployed and most tasks are about maintaining them, so how are we supposed to getting into that realm of principal if you don't know their systems except with longer time in the company? Most of the time you learn about something the moment you get a story to work with. Thanks!

[radbirdy]

Great talk. I'm hearing this idea of the technical track with engineering roles as you've described and the management track. Where does the role of software architect fit into the picture? Do companies have dedicated solution architect roles or are their responsibilities tied into an engineering role?

[joshuajames]

How long did it take you to get to the principal engineer role ? and as an incoming software engineer what are some things I need to do in order to get to be a principal engineer?