About our engineering progression frameworks
The engineering progression framework is a tool that helps engineers and managers:
- make development and career plans
- talk about what weâre looking for from engineers in a consistent way
- set a fair level of compensation.
The framework is a compass, not a GPS.
It's meant to be helpful. It's not meant to be a rating system for humans, free from edge cases.
How does it work?
The framework covers all the things weâre looking for from engineers at Bright. Weâre interested in these five elements:
- Mastery - Your Bright knowledge and technical capability
- Impact - The size, scope and value of what you deliver
- Influence - How you change the world around you for the better
- Comms & Feedback - How you interact with others
- Leadership - How people around you become better and more impactful
We sort them into four levels, and we try to give specific examples of behaviours we expect for each. Each of those levels has a fairly wide salary range associated with it, and within each level you can progress in sub-levels. So even if youâre at level 2 for a couple of years, youâll still be able to see that youâre moving forward. Basically, the more behaviours you show from your level, the more youâll progress.
Your manager will work with you on this. None of it will happen mysteriously behind closed doors. Youâll agree what level of progression youâre going for and what you need to improve on with your manager. It should be clear how youâre doing relative to that at all times.
Things to keep in mind
- There are many different ways to progress and be valuable to Bright as you grow, including deep technical knowledge and ability, technical leadership and people management. All are equally valuable paths in Bright's engineering team.
- The framework represents a careerâs worth of progression, people shouldnât expect to fly up it in 18 months!
- Engineering progression isnât an exact science and there will always be some ambiguity.
- This isnât a checklist â itâs possible to progress up a level without showing all the behaviours in that level.
- There will be levels on top (eg âInventor of Androidâ or âAuthor of Goâ), but we wonât add them until we need them.
- You can find some more information in these links. If that doesn't answer most of your questions, please ask your manager.
Give us your feedback!
This is only the first version of our framework and we really want your feedback.
We're particularly keen to add as many examples to the behaviours as possible, to further clarify them.