Engineering Career Framework: Staff

Engineering Function Competencies: Staff

Staff at GitLab are expected to exhibit the following competencies:

A staff engineer generally operates at a team level scope, serving as the technical leader for one or more of their team’s domains of responsibility.

Helps others across the organization understand their team’s domain and technology.
Communicates clearly and effectively with team members and stable counterparts.
Makes responsible decisions and evaluates tradeoffs impacting their team’s domain.
Exhibits a deep understanding of their team’s features, how customers use them, and how they fit into the larger business.
Improves team processes.
Recognizes good solutions and clearly explains their merits to relevant stakeholders.
Unblocks and enables team members and counterparts.
Participates in processes which address complex technical challenges, such as the Architecture Design Process, as a DRI.

Has a broad skill-set with in-depth expertise in their team’s technical domain.
Blends technical, product and design strategy, helping the team to be more productive.
Represents their team as a domain expert when interfacing with other teams.
Reaches beyond immediate needs, independently considering the longer-term, and is always looking beyond for ways to have a broad impact.
Addresses challenges related to customers, quality, and security.
Able to take on complex requirements and decompose them into a proposal of small deliverables.
Engages in processes, such as the Architecture Design Process, to contribute to their team’s most challenging technical initiatives.