What a Junior } should know

0 core skills, 54 in total. Expectations per skill, and what changes at the next level.

This page lists what a Junior } is expected to know and do, skill by skill. Core skills are the ones a manager and peers assess in a review cycle; the rest count only in self-assessment. Main areas: .

0core skills

54additional skills

0skill areas

0%at Advanced or Expert

Assess myself as Junior Full role matrix

Core skills for a Junior

Grouped by area. The label on the right is the expected depth: Awareness, Working, Advanced or Expert.

Additional skills

Not assessed by the team, but part of the self-assessment and the development plan.

Algorithms & Complexity Apache Kafka API Documentation Async Programming AWS Caching Strategies ChatGPT / Claude Code Quality & Refactoring Code Review Cursor IDE Data Structures Database Indexing Database Performance Tuning Design Patterns Docker Game Analytics Game Backend: PlayFab, Nakama Game Economy & Balancing Game Networking: Netcode, Photon Game Performance Optimization Game Testing & QA Git Advanced GitHub Actions / GitLab CI GitHub Copilot GraphQL Design gRPC & Protocol Buffers High Load Architecture Integration Testing Kubernetes Core Latency Optimization LiveOps & Game-as-a-Service Load Balancing Load Testing Memory Management MongoDB Multithreading Network Fundamentals On-Call Management OOP & SOLID Principles OpenTelemetry OWASP & Application Security PostgreSQL Prometheus & Grafana Prompt Engineering for Code Redis REST API Design Secure Coding Practices SLI / SLO / SLA Structured Logging System Design Fundamentals Throughput Optimization Type Safety & Type Systems Unit Testing WebSocket API Design

What changes at Mid-level

54 skills get a higher expectation or become core when moving from Junior to Mid-level. The biggest jumps first.

Algorithms & Complexity: Awareness → Working
Apache Kafka: Awareness → Working
API Documentation: Awareness → Working
Async Programming: Awareness → Working
AWS: Awareness → Working
Caching Strategies: Awareness → Working
ChatGPT / Claude: Awareness → Working
Code Quality & Refactoring: Awareness → Working
Code Review: Awareness → Working
Cursor IDE: Awareness → Working

See the Mid-level page →

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Self-assessment plus manager and peer reviews against the same matrix, gap analysis and next-level readiness for every engineer. Team Pro is free for 14 days; individual tools stay free forever.

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} in the open competency matrix: 54 skills across 5 levels. The matrix is free for individuals and stays free.