Scaling engineering teams: Building career ladders

One of the most common challenges engineering leaders face as their organization grows is creating a clear, fair, and scalable career ladder. When your team is small, career progression often happens organically. Engineers take on more responsibility, and their impact naturally grows over time. But as your team scales, the absence of a formal structure can lead to confusion, misaligned expectations, and even attrition.

An effective career ladder not only provides clarity for your engineers but also serves as a powerful tool for retaining top talent, fostering growth, and aligning individual contributions with business objectives. To build a career ladder that truly works, it must align with the culture you are trying to create or maintain.

Aligning Career Principles with Culture

Let’s start by discussing why alignment with culture is so essential. Imagine your culture places a strong emphasis on empowering decision-making at both the individual and team level. To uphold that, your career ladder must reward behaviors that reflect autonomy, ownership and initiative. Engineers who proactively lead projects or experiment with new ideas should see those efforts recognized and rewarded. Similarly, if collaboration is a core value, then your ladder must elevate those who contribute to team success, mentor others, and create environments where everyone thrives. The more clearly your career development framework reflects your cultural values, the easier it becomes to scale that culture as your team grows.

Crowdsourcing levels and titles

Designing a career ladder can feel particularly challenging if your organization doesn’t have established levels or titles. Here’s where a collaborative approach can make all the difference. I’ve found that crowdsourcing levels and titles is a method that not only aligns with a culture of empowerment but also generates invaluable insights. Begin by gathering your team to brainstorm the distinctions between roles. What separates a “Senior Engineer” from a “Staff Engineer”? What outcomes and behaviors define success at different stages? Encourage broad participation through workshops or surveys, ensuring diverse perspectives are included. This input not only makes the framework more comprehensive but also fosters a sense of ownership among your team.

Once you’ve identified the levels and their accompanying competencies, the next step is to incorporate peer input into the process. Self-leveling, where engineers and their peers evaluate one another against the defined criteria, often yields more accurate and equitable results than decisions made solely by managers. Peers who work closely together can provide nuanced feedback that managers may not see from their vantage point. This approach also reinforces transparency and trust, as it’s clear how evaluations are conducted and decisions are made.

As your framework takes shape, you’ll need to define separate tracks for individual contributors and managers. This distinction allows engineers to pursue growth paths aligned with their interests and strengths. Individual contributors can advance by deepening their technical expertise, driving large-scale initiatives, and mentoring others. Meanwhile, managers grow by developing their teams, fostering alignment with company goals, and ensuring their engineers are supported in their work. These tracks are equally valuable, and your career ladder should make that clear.

Clarity is key when defining levels. Each level should articulate its scope of impact, technical expectations, and leadership requirements. For instance, a “Senior Engineer” might focus on delivering high-quality code and mentoring junior team members, while a “Staff Engineer” leads the technical design for cross-functional projects and drives strategic initiatives. Observable behaviors—such as “mentors peers” or “leads incident post-mortems”—help ground these descriptions in reality, making them more actionable for everyone involved.

Equally important is making your career ladder accessible. Engineers should know exactly what is expected of them at their current level and what they need to do to advance. Publish the framework in a central location, and make it part of ongoing conversations. Regular workshops or one-on-one discussions can demystify the process further, ensuring everyone feels empowered to take ownership of their growth.

Avoiding common pitfalls

When designing a career ladder, it’s important to avoid common pitfalls that can undermine its effectiveness:

• Overemphasizing tenure instead of impact, leading to promotions based on time served rather than contributions.

• Leaving criteria too vague, which creates confusion and frustration among engineers.

• Neglecting growth paths for individual contributors, making it seem like management is the only route to advancement.

• Providing inequitable access to opportunities, which can leave some engineers feeling excluded based on team or project assignments.

• Divergent compensation between individual contributors and managers, which can devalue one track over the other. Both tracks should offer equitable compensation for equivalent levels of responsibility and impact.

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Creating a career ladder isn’t a one-and-done task. It requires regular calibration to ensure fairness and consistency across teams. Managers need to be trained not only in using the framework but also in providing actionable feedback that aligns with it. Calibration meetings, where leaders review and discuss promotion decisions together, help ensure standards are applied evenly. Revisiting the framework annually allows you to adapt it as your organization evolves.

Supporting your engineers goes beyond defining a ladder. Mentorship programs, stretch assignments, and access to training resources all play a crucial role in helping individuals succeed at their current level while preparing for the next. Career growth isn’t just about promotions; it’s about providing opportunities to build skills, expand influence, and deepen impact.

A well-designed career ladder is more than a tool—it’s a reflection of your commitment to your team’s growth and success. By aligning it with your culture, crowdsourcing input, and fostering transparency, you’ll create a framework that not only helps your engineers thrive but also strengthens your organization as a whole. As your company grows, so will your career ladder. Iteration and feedback will ensure it remains a living document, one that evolves alongside your team.