Getting to Staff Engineer
You can’t just “level up” by doing good work. You have to change how you operate.
👋 Hi, this is Nitin with another post in my series The Engineering Manager’s Pocket Guide. In every post, I cover topics related to tech and leadership through the lens of an engineering manager. In this post, I share some learnings on supporting senior engineers get to staff level. To get all the posts, subscribe here.
Before we begin — I’m on a mission to make engineering management easier and have created a starter kit for new EMs. It would mean a lot if you checked it out — Engineering Manager’s Starter Kit 🚀
I’m sure you’ve heard, or maybe even given, growth advice that sounds like this to a senior engineer looking to get to staff level: “Take on more ownership”, “Think about the big picture”, “Drive impact across teams”, etc. These words are empty unless you translate them into actions you can see, measure, and repeat.
If you manage, mentor, or are a senior engineer, you can’t just “level up” by hoping someone notices your good work. You have to change how you operate.
Stop Optimizing for “Being the Best Coder”
At the senior level, people reward you for fixing gnarly bugs and shipping clean code. At staff, they expect you to make other people better. If your commits are high-quality, but nobody else moves faster, you’re not going to staff.
Don’t jump in and fix everything. Start by helping others fix things themselves. Write the design doc, teach the system, give a clear code review that unblocks — not just nitpicks.
Own a Problem, Not a Codebase
Staff engineers are defined by the hardest problems, not the most code. If you want to grow, find a real business or technical pain point — something nobody “owns” — and make it your problem. Examples: slow customer onboarding, persistent reliability issues, or the legacy system nobody wants to touch.
Don’t wait for someone to assign you work. Find the pain points, rally help, and be the person who drives forward progress.
Make the Invisible Visible
You can’t get credit for work only you notice. Staff-level impact is often behind the scenes: system design reviews, cross-team alignment, technical debt paid down. If you’re not sharing how these unlock real impact, people will assume you’re just “heads down on something”.
Every month, write a short summary of which problems you helped solve, who it affected, and what changed. Circulate it. Treat this as a changelog rather than self-promotion.
Be a force-multiplier
Staff ICs aren’t lone wolves. If you aren’t unblocking whole teams, your title is just a pay grade. This means:
- Spotting process bottlenecks and fixing them.
- Mentoring junior folks — without being their manager.
- Proactively reviewing and unblocking, not gatekeeping.
- Sharing context so others don’t have to rediscover it.
Lead Without Authority
If you need manager permission to do everything, you’re not operating at staff. The staff engineers I trust step up, pull in the right people, arbitrate technical debates, and make decisions — then ask forgiveness, not permission.
Say No, and Explain Why
Junior engineers say yes to everything. Seniors say yes to the hard stuff. Staff engineers say no to distractions and busy work, and can explain — clearly — why it’s not worth doing. Learn to prioritize for the org, not just yourself.
Learn to Communicate Up, Not Just Down
When you get invited to strategy meetings or OKR reviews, don’t just listen. Ask sharp questions. Offer technical reality checks. Summarize trade-offs for non-engineers. If you can’t do this, nobody will trust you with the hardest, most ambiguous problems.
If you’re a manager or staff yourself
Don’t just say “think bigger.” Give your senior engineers real problems to own, coach them on how to bring others along, and push them to make their impact visible. Don’t wait until promotion cycle to tell them what’s missing.
Most importantly: Staff is a different job, not just a reward for doing your current one really well. If you want to help people get there, show them what actually matters. And cut the vague advice — nobody gets promoted for being inspiring on Slack.
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