- You author or sponsor design documents that achieve stakeholder alignment without escalation. You run design reviews that surface real tradeoffs, not rubber stamps. Your input on the technical roadmap is
visible, justified, and acted on. - You raise team engineering standards through direct contribution and peer influence. You earn technical authority through reasoning quality and output.
- You use AI tools as a serious engineering accelerator and you build the same capability in others.
- You apply distributed systems patterns (event-driven, CQRS, API gateway, event sourcing) with demonstrated judgment about fit.
- Written and verbal communication. You produce written artifacts (design docs, proposals, postmortems) that are clear, structured, and lead to alignment without repeated clarification rounds.
- Technical pattern judgment. You know when not to use a pattern. The Staff level requires the confidence to advocate for simplicity against organisational momentum toward complexity.
- Database and data model judgment. You apply sound judgment to data modelling, query performance, and schema migrations under load. You identify performance and migration risks before they reach production.
- Code and review quality. Your code contributions are production-ready: correct, observable, operable, maintainable. Your code reviews are substantive. You identify real risks and design issues, not style preferences.