Roles · Release Engineer · Principal
13 core skills, 51 in total. Expectations per skill, and what changes at the next level.
This page lists what a Principal } 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.
Shapes Docker strategy for release engineering at the organizational level. Defines best practices and influences technology choices beyond their own team. Is a recognized expert in this area.
Shapes Helm chart strategy for release engineering at the organizational level. Defines best practices and influences technology choices beyond their own team. Is a recognized expert in this area.
Shapes Kubernetes core strategy for release engineering at the organizational level. Defines best practices and influences technology choices beyond their own team. Is a recognized expert in this area.
Shapes Terraform strategy for release engineering at the organizational level. Defines best practices and influences technology choices beyond their own team. Is a recognized expert in this area.
Shapes enterprise release engineering strategy with ArgoCD as the declarative release orchestration platform. Drives architectural innovation in multi-cluster release patterns, progressive delivery at scale, and integration with compliance and audit frameworks for regulated releases. Influences industry standards for GitOps-based release management and contributes to Argo project ecosystem evolution.
Shapes deployment philosophy and progressive delivery standards for the organization. Researches advanced deployment patterns and rollback automation. Influences platform engineering roadmap.
Shapes progressive delivery strategy for the organization. Researches automated deployment analysis with ML. Influences deployment risk management approaches.
Shapes CI/CD platform based on GitHub Actions as an internal developer platform. Evaluates alternatives and makes strategic technology choices for the organization.
Shapes GitLab CI strategy for release engineering at the organizational level. Defines best practices and influences technology choices beyond their own team. Is a recognized expert in this area.
Shapes Jenkins strategy for release engineering at the organizational level. Defines best practices and influences technology choices beyond their own team. Is a recognized expert in this area.
Shapes delivery engineering philosophy for the organization. Researches GitOps and progressive delivery best practices. Publishes case studies and influences industry practices.
Shapes SLI/SLO/SLA strategy for release engineering at the organizational level. Defines best practices and influences technology choices beyond their own team. Is a recognized expert in this area.
Shapes SCM standards and tooling for the platform. Researches new approaches to code review automation and merge queues. Influences the release engineering ecosystem.
Not assessed by the team, but part of the self-assessment and the development plan.
} in the open competency matrix: 51 skills across 5 levels. The matrix is free for individuals and stays free.