Roadmap From Trainee to Senior Level Position
Steps to change your career at any stage
Climbing the engineering career ladder can be exciting yet daunting.
But before you dive headfirst into the software engineering field, you might want to think through what will happen after you land that first job. What will be next? When should you expect a promotion? What title or position is next in line for you? In this article, you will learn what an engineering ladder is and how to navigate your next career move, depending on your software engineering role.
What is an engineering career ladder?
An engineering ladder is the career framework or step-by-step progression plan you have for your career in engineering. The ladder maps out the job titles you want to see in your future and arranges them in order from the one you’re currently in, to the next job and all the way to the top of the career ladder you imagine.
Engineer ladder roles
- Trainee or software developer intern (less than a year of experience)
- Junior software developer (less than two years of experience)
- Middle software developer (2–5 years of experience)
- Senior software developer (5–8 years of experience)
- Lead software developer (8–12 years of experience)
Trainee or intern-level
As with many things, getting started is the hardest part.
Any company providing a training program with mentors and the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice is a match for the start. The main thing here is to take the first step and try. Don’t surf for the perfect option. Your first internship may be far from the ultimate dream. But don’t put all your efforts into searching for the perfect internship.
- Training and mentoring are integral parts of an internship, but much depends on you and your self-study skills, from your proactivity and desire to go beyond the program by learning something new and applying all acquired knowledge in practice.
Junior to middle-level
A large outsourcing company is a good fit at this stage as such type of cooperation allows you to consolidate your knowledge in practice. You can try yourself in different domains and teams and get acquainted with other management styles and organization processes. In such companies, often, there are special training programs and mentorships. That will allow you to grow deep into your knowledge, asking for help if necessary.
Before moving on, it’s worth trying yourself in a few projects. Diversity (in processes, domains, and approaches) is significant at this stage. This will allow you to understand that similar problems in different situations should be solved in different ways. Instead of taking all decisions and approaches from one project on which you worked.
- A significant advantage is that you can change the project every 2–3 quarters while remaining within the same company.
- To grow your career as a full-time software engineer, you must start learning about the business. It will help you to make technical decisions, prioritize work, and better contribute to your role.
Middle to senior-level
At this stage, the hard skills are already quite pumped, and it is more important to focus on developing soft skills, allowing them to thrive in the competitive, fast-paced industry. You need not only to know how to create a specific part of the system/product but also to understand how they work and interrelate.
The results of a joint study by the Carnegie Mellon Foundation and the Stanford Research Institute indicate that the success of managers in Fortune 500 companies is 75% dependent on soft skills, while hard skills occupy only 25%.
We learn by working in an area, and the number of hours we put in earns our experience. It does count if it comes from different domains. For example, software engineers moving from backend to frontend engineering will carry valuable expertise by looking at various problems in different ways. At this point, you already can and want to influence decisions and be involved in processes. Hence, a product company that launches a new sub-product or a startup is a good fit here.
- A large amount of uncertainty forces you to make decisions on your own. The lack of some specialists requires us to look at the project more broadly to understand the consequences of specific changes and innovations. The path from complete chaos/startup to ordered chaos/company will teach you a lot.
- After working in such companies for 2 to 3 years, you can change jobs and try to get a senior position in another company. You can also grow to higher positions within the same company by changing projects and roles. As for your career duration within the startup, it is better to move on to a new place after turning a startup into a company.
Senior-level and beyond
After gaining experience in companies of different types, industries, teams, and processes, the time comes to systematize and apply all the knowledge gained. Then, combining the best and avoiding the worst of their experience, the specialist will quickly move in and start taking responsibility for some parts of the project.
Product companies with up to 100 people are well suited for this stage. When the chaos of a startup has already passed, but at the same time, much is still ahead. Because everyone works for the same goal and everyone is on the same side, it presents the opportunity of being not only an executor but also influencing decision-making at a higher level.
- At this point, both hard and soft skills are already at a high level. As a result, responsibility goes beyond what was before. During this period, your managers can delegate some of their tasks to you, allowing you to grow further.
This is a crucial stage during which you make decisions regarding your further development. The transition to the next level will be similar to the very beginning of the path in your profession because 80% of your activities will be much different from what you did before.
