Select your current position
Pick a role and level — we'll show the growth path, skills and gap analysis.
Development path
Junior
0-2 years
Responsibility: Completing tasks under the guidance of senior colleagues. Learning the codebase, standards, and team processes. Writing code to spec, fixing simple bugs, writing tests.
Key skills:
Middle
2-5 years
Responsibility: Independently developing features from decomposition to deployment. Participating in code review. Optimizing performance. Mentoring junior developers. Taking part in architecture discussions.
Key skills:
Senior
5-8 years
Responsibility: Technical leadership of a team of 3-6 people. Architectural decisions. Code review gatekeeper. Mentoring. Technology selection. 30% coding.
Key skills:
Lead / Staff
7-12 years
Responsibility: Technical leadership of multiple teams. Domain architecture. Standards. Coordination. Hiring. 10-20% coding.
Key skills:
Principal
10+ years
Responsibility: Technology strategy. Cross-team architecture. Company standards. Public expertise. 5-10% coding.
Key skills:
Gap analysis: skills to develop
To reach the next level you'll need to develop:
Designs Kafka solutions: topic design, partitioning strategy, consumer group management. Implements exactly-once semantics and Dead Letter Topics.
Independently configures API gateway patterns for team services: sets up routing rules, request/response transformations, basic rate limiting and authentication policies. Understands trade-offs between gateway-level and service-level cross-cutting concerns.
Applies ADR practices in technical leadership: writes well-structured Architecture Decision Records with context, options analysis, and consequences. Reviews team ADRs for technical accuracy and maintains ADR repository with consistent numbering and status tracking.
Implements architecture fitness functions for team projects: writes automated tests for architectural constraints (dependency direction, layer isolation), configures ArchUnit/NetArchTest checks in CI. Understands how fitness functions support evolutionary architecture and prevent architectural drift.
Applies DDD Strategic Patterns when designing components. Understands trade-offs. Participates in architectural discussions.
Designs E2E tests: page object patterns, test data management, CI integration. Ensures reliable execution and manages flaky tests.
Applies InnerSource practices in technical leadership: establishes code contribution standards, reviews cross-team pull requests, and maintains shared library documentation. Facilitates technical knowledge sharing through InnerSource project governance.
Implements authentication: OAuth2 flows (authorization code, client credentials), JWT best practices, refresh tokens. Configures SSO integration.
Designs PostgreSQL schemas: normalization, indexing, constraints. Optimizes queries via EXPLAIN. Manages migrations and data integrity.
Creates structured prompts: templates for code review, architecture proposals, technical writing. Uses few-shot examples and chain-of-thought.
Designs caching strategy: cache-aside, write-through, cache invalidation patterns. Uses Redis data structures for sessions, rate limiting, pub/sub.
Applies Technology Radar practices in technical leadership: evaluates new technologies through structured PoCs, contributes technology assessments to team radar, and makes informed adoption/hold/retire decisions. Tracks technology lifecycle and plans migration paths for deprecated tools.
Applies Hexagonal Architecture when designing components. Understands trade-offs. Participates in architectural discussions.
Designs API documentation: auto-generation from code, versioned docs, developer guides. Creates getting started tutorials and migration guides.
Designs indexing strategy: covering indexes, partial indexes, GIN for JSONB. Monitors index usage and bloat. Optimizes write vs read trade-offs.
Independently applies Monorepo Tools in practice. Understands trade-offs of different approaches. Solves typical tasks independently.
Optimizes queries: CTEs, window functions, materialized views. Profiles via pg_stat_statements. Chooses between ORM and raw SQL based on context.
Applies network knowledge: load balancing, reverse proxy, CDN, SSL/TLS certificates. Designs network topology for applications and microservices.
Implements comprehensive security: authentication/authorization, encryption, secure headers. Conducts security code reviews and uses SAST tools.
Ensures type safety: strict mode configurations, custom types for domain model, type guards. Uses type-safe ORM and API clients.
Career transitions
Possible career trajectories for the Technical Lead role
📈 Growth 1
Where you can grow from this role
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↔️ Lateral 1
Adjacent roles for a lateral move
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🔙 Comes from 2
Roles people often move here from
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