Experience: 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.

Value: Learning technologies and processes. Taking routine workload off senior developers. Bringing a fresh perspective to existing solutions.

Experience: 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.

Value: Reliable feature delivery. Improving code quality through review. Sharing knowledge with junior developers. Suggesting process improvements.

Experience: 5-8 years

Responsibility: Designing the architecture of components and services. Solving complex technical problems. Managing technical debt. Code review as a quality gatekeeper. Mentoring middle developers. Choosing technologies for new tasks.

Value: Architectural decisions that reduce cost of change. Raising the team's engineering culture. Eliminating bottlenecks in the system. Making technical decisions independently.

Experience: 7-12 years

Responsibility: Technical leadership of a team or area. Designing system architecture. Coordinating with other teams. Establishing standards and best practices. Participating in hiring. Planning the technical roadmap.

Value: System architecture that enables scalability. Cross-team coordination. Shaping technical culture. Strategic technology choices.

Experience: 10+ years

Responsibility: Technical strategy at the company or domain level. Cross-organizational influence. Solving systemic business problems through technology. Mentoring lead engineers. Publicly representing the company.

Value: Setting the company's strategic technology direction. Attracting and retaining engineering talent. Influencing the industry through publications, talks, and open source.