Roles · Release Engineer · Lead
13 core skills, 51 in total. Expectations per skill, and what changes at the next level.
This page lists what a Lead } 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: Cloud & Infrastructure, DevOps & CI/CD, Observability & Monitoring.
Grouped by area. The label on the right is the expected depth: Awareness, Working, Advanced or Expert.
Establishes Docker standards for the release engineering team and makes architectural decisions. Defines the technical roadmap considering this skill. Mentors senior engineers and influences practices of adjacent teams.
Establishes Helm chart standards for the release engineering team and makes architectural decisions. Defines the technical roadmap considering this skill. Mentors senior engineers and influences practices of adjacent teams.
Establishes Kubernetes core standards for the release engineering team and makes architectural decisions. Defines the technical roadmap considering this skill. Mentors senior engineers and influences practices of adjacent teams.
Establishes Terraform standards for the release engineering team and makes architectural decisions. Defines the technical roadmap considering this skill. Mentors senior engineers and influences practices of adjacent teams.
Defines ArgoCD-driven release management standards for the organization's delivery pipeline. Establishes governance for release promotion workflows, change management policies, and cross-team release coordination through ArgoCD project structures. Conducts architecture reviews of release pipelines and drives adoption of GitOps-based release automation across engineering teams.
Defines deployment strategy for the entire platform. Makes decisions on blue-green vs canary vs feature flags for different services. Manages deployment risk and SLA.
Defines canary deployment standards and success metrics for the platform. Makes decisions on automation vs manual approval gates. Manages rollout risk.
Defines CI/CD workflow standards for the entire organization in GitHub Actions. Manages runner fleet and secrets management. Makes decisions on tools and platforms.
Establishes GitLab CI standards for the release engineering team and makes architectural decisions. Defines the technical roadmap considering this skill. Mentors senior engineers and influences practices of adjacent teams.
Establishes Jenkins standards for the release engineering team and makes architectural decisions. Defines the technical roadmap considering this skill. Mentors senior engineers and influences practices of adjacent teams.
Defines progressive delivery standards for the platform. Makes decisions on toolchain (Flagger, Argo Rollouts, LaunchDarkly). Manages adoption across teams.
Establishes SLI/SLO/SLA standards for the release engineering team and makes architectural decisions. Defines the technical roadmap considering this skill. Mentors senior engineers and influences practices of adjacent teams.
Defines Git workflow standards for the entire organization. Makes decisions on monorepo vs polyrepo usage. Manages migration strategies and new team onboarding.
Not assessed by the team, but part of the self-assessment and the development plan.
0 skills get a higher expectation or become core when moving from Lead to Principal. The biggest jumps first.
} in the open competency matrix: 51 skills across 5 levels. The matrix is free for individuals and stays free.