At the beginning of 2022 we wrapped up the first version of our Engineering Progression Framework. Now we’ve been using it internally for a little while, we also wanted to share it more widely, to help others learn more about Engineering here.

A progression framework is a communication tool that supports fairness

Before we jump into the details, here’s a quick overview of what we mean when we talk about a "progression framework".

Quite simply, it’s a set of shared expectations that we use to explain what we expect of engineers at different levels of seniority. Each level is described in the framework with a description, plus an illustration of the type of behaviours, impact, and skills we think are reflective of someone at that level.

However, importantly, it’s not an exhaustive checklist. We’ve intentionally focused on a core set of examples that we think can fairly apply to any engineer here, but they’re not intended as a finite list of everything a great engineer could do or be. People will almost certainly be doing important things that aren’t in the framework. There are many 'shapes' of engineers, and we’ll aim to celebrate people’s different strengths whilst also aiming for fairness and clarity through our core expectations.

We’re pretty pleased with the result, but we’re not finished!

We’re planning to keep making improvements as we change and grow, but for now you can take a peek at what we’re using below:

Engineers
Engineering Managers

Historically in the engineering space the only way for engineers to progress was through stopping coding and moving into management. We believe these are fundamentally different sets of skills, and we want to make sure all our engineers have the opportunity to progress without changing career. That said, for many folks, moving into management and creating systems to help engineers do their best is where they find their future lies, so you can see we support a switch of framework once engineers reach a certain level. We’re also planning to support folks who want to "swing on the engineer/manager pendulum", and switch back to engineering after a couple of years.

What’s next?

This framework will naturally evolve as we apply it – it will never be finished or perfect, and it is to be considered a living document, so our teams and our managers will help steer this.

Important 😸

I regularly post useful content related to Azure, DevOps and Engineering on Twitter. You should consider following me on Twitter