We’re excited to share Ockam’s engineering leveling framework, offering insight into career progression for engineers and a blueprint for founders or team leads designing their own structures. This guide outlines our approach to help junior engineers plan their growth and assist leaders in crafting clear role expectations.
Overview of Ockam’s Engineering Tracks
Ockam offers three career tracks to align with diverse goals: Individual Contributor (IC), Management, and Executive. Engineers typically progress through Senior Engineer levels (L4/L5) before considering a transition to management roles.
Engineering Levels
| Level | Individual Contributor | Management | Executive |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | Engineer I | – | – |
| L2 | Engineer II | – | – |
| L3 | Engineer III | – | – |
| L4 | Senior Engineer I | – | – |
| L5 | Senior Engineer II | Team Lead | – |
| L6 | Staff Engineer I | Head of Area | – |
| L7 | Staff Engineer II | Director of Product | – |
| L8 | Principal Engineer | Senior Director | – |
| L9 | – | – | VP of Engineering |
Individual Contributor (IC) Track
Our IC track is grouped into level pairs (L2/L3, L4/L5, L6/L7) based on shared responsibilities. At the lower level of each pair, engineers exhibit some to many of the described behaviors. At the higher level, they demonstrate mastery of most behaviors and begin showing capabilities of the next level.
L1: Engineer I
Impact & Scope
Writes, tests, reviews, and documents code per Ockam’s engineering standards and best practices.
Responsibilities
Completes assigned tasks and serves as an on-call first responder for the team.
Functional Skills
Technical Capabilities: Designs small features and fixes bugs under direct supervision. Completes minor system administration tasks with guidance.
Knowledge: Understands at least one key product component and its alignment with team OKRs. Can identify and document minor issues and grasps security fundamentals.
Behavior
Reliability: Delivers tasks on time and to specification, incorporating feedback to complete small tasks independently.
Collaboration & Communication: Seeks help effectively, communicates task progress clearly, and uses the RACI framework.
Living Values: Demonstrates initiative, adopts a growth mindset, accepts constructive feedback, and strives for self-sufficiency.
L2/L3: Engineer II/III
Impact & Scope
Develops, ships, and maintains small-to-medium product features with guidance from managers and senior engineers.
Responsibilities
Manages the full lifecycle of small-to-medium projects, including development, testing, and post-production fixes. Provides on-call support for team features.
Functional Skills
Technical Capabilities: Writes clear, tested, and concise code. Tracks and responds to GitHub issues, improves team tools or test coverage, and participates in small-scale code reviews.
Knowledge: Masters one key feature or architectural section, with a high-level understanding of others. Understands Ockam’s engineering standards.
Behavior
Reliability: Prioritizes tasks, delivers on time, learns from mistakes, and provides basic guidance to open-source contributors.
Collaboration & Communication: Seeks help to unblock progress, shares project updates using RACI, and maintains proactive communication with managers.
Living Values: Builds trust within their scope, proactively assists teammates, and accelerates skill development.
L4/L5: Senior Engineer I/II
Impact & Scope
Makes reasoned design decisions for large or complex features, prioritizing tasks that enable team efficiency.
Responsibilities
Owns the lifecycle of medium-sized projects, solving loosely defined, highly technical problems.
Functional Skills
Technical Capabilities: Designs modular, well-tested libraries and refactors code for maintainability. Actively identifies and files issues for junior engineers or contributors. Applies a security lens in coding and reviews.
Knowledge: Masters multiple product components, understands industry trends, and debugs issues in CI/CD pipelines.
Behavior
Reliability: Delivers projects within a 2–3 week forecast with minimal oversight. Proactively addresses unclear tasks or technical limitations.
Collaboration & Communication: Works across teams, escalates issues early, and communicates tradeoffs effectively.
Influence: Defers misaligned tasks to the backlog and clarifies RACI for their work.
Living Values: Persists through challenges, fosters developer empathy, maintains high standards, and suggests future work.
L6/L7: Staff Engineer I/II
Impact & Scope
Guides architectural decisions and provides technical input to executives. Estimates and manages project timelines.
Responsibilities
Leads large-scale projects, defining technical issues for assignment to L1–L5 engineers.
Functional Skills
- Technical Capabilities: Drives design reviews, ensures feedback is clear, and builds tools when existing ones are insufficient. Excels in complex, large-scale technical challenges.
- Knowledge: Experts in large sections of the codebase, serving as a resource for adjacent teams.
- Team Building & Coaching: Advises on team improvements, helps define job requirements, and mentors multiple teammates.
Behavior
Influence: Resolves tactical issues quickly, shares knowledge to avoid single points of failure, and aligns team OKRs organization-wide.
Living Values: Proactively assists across levels, builds trust, and elevates team expertise.
L8: Principal Engineer
Impact & Scope
Leads strategic projects with significant company-wide impact, building systems or policies to boost productivity.
Responsibilities
Collaborates with customers and partners to define new use cases, guiding L6/L7 engineers to frame problems and L1–L5 engineers to solve them.
Functional Skills
- Technical Capabilities: Approves major feature updates, shapes coding practices, and debugs complex issues across products.
- Engineering Strategy: Breaks down complex OKRs into actionable projects and fosters a culture of observability.
- Team Building & Coaching: Recruits top talent and supports hiring processes.
Behavior
Influence: Shapes company-wide OKRs and product roadmaps, resolves cross-team technical debates, and converts relationships into users or customers.
Living Values: Mentors the entire team, models excellence, and champions Ockam’s values externally.
Conclusion
This framework reflects Ockam’s commitment to transparent career progression. Junior engineers can use it to chart their growth, while leaders can adapt it to build robust team structures. We hope sharing this fosters clarity and inspires effective engineering cultures.
