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Career

Career map

Where to go next, and what to learn for it. A career in development is not one ladder: higher up it branches, and people walk it in every direction, backwards included.

Step 1 of 2

Where to go next

Catalogue tracks in the order of the stages: the ones the rest lean on come first. This is not a curriculum, it is a way not to start in the middle.

The wizard measures nothing and hands out no level: the portal does not know what you can already do. It shows a slice of the same data as the map below.

Two steps: the role and the level inside it. In return — the catalogue tracks worth starting from and the moves this role opens.

Already know what you want? Open the whole map: 10 roles and 39 moves

What do you do now — or what would you like to do?

Who writes the product

Who owns quality and production

Who works with meaning and data

Who owns scale

Step 2 of 2 · Backend developer

Which level inside the role?

The server side: data, APIs, integrations, reliability under load.

Where people go from here: SRE and platform engineering, Data and machine learning, Architect, Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager, Frontend developer

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · Frontend developer

Which level inside the role?

The interface in the browser: markup, state, performance, accessibility.

Where people go from here: Mobile developer, Backend developer, Product manager, Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · Mobile developer

Which level inside the role?

Apps for iOS and Android: the platform, offline, background work, releases through the stores.

Where people go from here: Frontend developer, Backend developer, Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · QA engineer

Which level inside the role?

Quality as a job of its own: test design, automation, feedback into the process.

Where people go from here: Backend developer, SRE and platform engineering, Systems and business analyst, Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · SRE and platform engineering

Which level inside the role?

Reliability and tooling for other teams: infrastructure as code, observability, on-call.

Where people go from here: Backend developer, Architect, Data and machine learning, Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · Data and machine learning

Which level inside the role?

Data pipelines, models, getting models into production and an honest assessment of their quality.

Where people go from here: Backend developer, Systems and business analyst, Product manager, SRE and platform engineering

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · Systems and business analyst

Which level inside the role?

Turns a vague 'we need this done' into requirements you can build a system from and check it against.

Where people go from here: Product manager, Backend developer, Data and machine learning, QA engineer, Architect

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · Product manager

Which level inside the role?

Decides what to build and why, and answers for the outcome rather than for the volume shipped.

Where people go from here: Systems and business analyst, Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager, Data and machine learning

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager

Which level inside the role?

Work about people and the flow of tasks. Not a developer's next level but a different profession.

Where people go from here: Backend developer, Product manager, Architect, Frontend developer

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

Step 2 of 2 · Architect

Which level inside the role?

Owns the decisions where the price of a mistake is years, not a sprint.

Where people go from here: Backend developer, Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager, SRE and platform engineering

Not sure — open the whole role card Pick another role

The roles and the moves between them

10 roles in 4 groups and 39 moves. Pick a role — its card with moves and levels opens up.

There is more than one ladder here: some moves go sideways — from analytics into product, from backend into SRE — and some go back, and the portal counts a move back as a normal move rather than a failure.

  • sideways — a different profession, not a promotion
  • deeper — the same engineering track at a larger scale
  • back — the portal does not count this as a failure

Backend developer

The server side: data, APIs, integrations, reliability under load.

What people call it: Job ads call it 'backend', 'server-side development', 'fullstack leaning towards the back'. Look at the list of tasks, not at the word in the heading.

Where people go from here
  • SRE and platform engineeringsidewaysYour own developers become the customers. The subject changes: not a feature but reliability and tooling.
  • Data and machine learningsidewaysThe shortest way in is through data and queues. You will have to pick up statistics, not just engineering.
  • ArchitectdeeperNot a promotion: the horizon grows to several systems, and you will write less code.
  • Team lead, tech lead, engineering managersidewaysA different profession with different measures of success. Roughly one in three comes back, and that is normal.
  • Frontend developersidewaysThe neighbouring surface: the tools are different, the conversation about contracts is the same. You will have to take the browser seriously, not only the API.

Reference skills: 4 levels, 19 items

Open the path from this step:JuniorMiddleSeniorFurther on: a branching, not a rung

Frontend developer

The interface in the browser: markup, state, performance, accessibility.

What people call it: 'Frontend' in one company means building pages from mockups, in another a whole client architecture with its own backend for frontend. Ask about it at the interview.

Where people go from here

Reference skills: 4 levels, 19 items

Open the path from this step:JuniorMiddleSeniorFurther on: a branching, not a rung

Mobile developer

Apps for iOS and Android: the platform, offline, background work, releases through the stores.

What people call it: 'Mobile developer' covers both native development for a single platform and cross-platform work in Flutter or React Native. These are very different sets of skills.

Where people go from here

Reference skills: 4 levels, 16 items

Open the path from this step:JuniorMiddleSeniorFurther on: a branching, not a rung

QA engineer

Quality as a job of its own: test design, automation, feedback into the process.

What people call it: The portal separates a manual QA, an automation engineer and an SDET. Job ads mix these three words up constantly — ask what exactly the subject of your work will be.

Where people go from here
  • Backend developersidewaysThe usual trajectory, through SDET. You will have to pick up design in earnest, not just automation.
  • SRE and platform engineeringsidewaysThrough tests in CI and observability: the subject is the same — trust in the system.
  • Systems and business analystsidewaysQA is often the first to spot contradictions in the requirements — and that is half of an analyst's work.
  • Team lead, tech lead, engineering managersidewaysRunning quality is management: the subject becomes people and the flow of work rather than the checks. People come back into testing from it the same way they come back from any other management job.

Reference skills: 4 levels, 16 items

Open the path from this step:JuniorMiddleSeniorFurther on: a branching, not a rung

SRE and platform engineering

Reliability and tooling for other teams: infrastructure as code, observability, on-call.

What people call it: DevOps engineer, SRE and platform engineer are three different sets of duties under three names that keep getting swapped. Sometimes all these words hide is a general dogsbody with some YAML.

Where people go from here
  • Backend developerbackThe move back is common and is not counted as a failure: operations experience makes an engineer worth more.
  • ArchitectdeeperWhoever has held production sees non-functional requirements better — and that is half of an architect's work.
  • Data and machine learningsidewaysThrough pipelines and storage. The infrastructure part is familiar, the statistics is not.
  • Team lead, tech lead, engineering managersidewaysA different profession. A risk of its own: in an on-call team the manager quickly turns into an incident dispatcher.

Reference skills: 3 levels, 15 items

Open the path from this step:EntryCore levelSenior and beyond

Data and machine learning

Data pipelines, models, getting models into production and an honest assessment of their quality.

What people call it: Data engineer, data scientist, ML engineer and 'AI engineer' are different professions. Some of the vacancies with AI in the title are a renamed backend job — read the contents.

Where people go from here
  • Backend developersidewaysThe engineering part carries over almost entirely; the statistics goes away, the load arrives.
  • Systems and business analystsidewaysData is the shared subject, but the analyst's customer sits inside the business rather than being a model.
  • Product managersidewaysThe usual move for those who are tired of proving the value of a model and want to decide what gets built at all.
  • SRE and platform engineeringsidewaysThrough MLOps: the same pipelines and observability, only the subject is a model rather than a service.

Reference skills: 3 levels, 15 items

Open the path from this step:EntryCore levelSenior and beyond

Systems and business analyst

Turns a vague 'we need this done' into requirements you can build a system from and check it against.

What people call it: A business analyst and a systems analyst are different roles, and in small companies they are one person who is the product manager and the technical writer as well.

Where people go from here
  • Product managersidewaysOne of the most common trajectories. The question changes: not 'how do we write this down correctly' but 'is this worth doing at all'.
  • Backend developersidewaysPossible if you pick up engineering in earnest. Knowing the domain stays an advantage while you do.
  • Data and machine learningsidewaysThrough data analytics. You will have to pick up statistics and the engineering of pipelines.
  • QA engineersidewaysAdjacent work: acceptance criteria are the shared subject of both roles.
  • ArchitectdeeperThe shortest way in is through integrations and non-functional requirements. You will have to answer for the solution, not only for the description of it.

Reference skills: 3 levels, 12 items

Open the path from this step:JuniorMiddleSenior and beyond

Product manager

Decides what to build and why, and answers for the outcome rather than for the volume shipped.

What people call it: Product manager and product owner mean the same thing in some companies and something fundamentally different in others. In a startup the product manager is often the analyst and the marketer too.

Where people go from here

Reference skills: 3 levels, 12 items

Open the path from this step:EntryCore levelSenior and beyond

Team lead, tech lead, engineering manager

Work about people and the flow of tasks. Not a developer's next level but a different profession.

What people call it: The word 'team lead' covers three different sets of responsibility: a tech lead owns the technical direction, a team lead owns the flow of work, an engineering manager owns people and their growth. Ask which of them is meant in this particular place.

Where people go from here
  • Backend developerbackRoughly one in three goes back into engineering, and that is good news. After a year in management a person is worth more than before.
  • Product managersidewaysAdjacent work. The subject of responsibility changes: not the team but the outcome for the user.
  • ArchitectsidewaysBack into the technical branch, but keeping the scale: several systems instead of one team.
  • Frontend developerbackA way back into engineering for those who did not come from the backend. Your hands do not reset, but the frameworks will have moved on while you were managing.

Reference skills: 5 levels, 22 items

Open the path from this step:Tech leadTeam lead and engineering managerGroup engineering managerHead of engineeringDirector of engineering and CTO

Architect

Owns the decisions where the price of a mistake is years, not a sprint.

What people call it: The most confusing word in the industry: software architect, solution architect and enterprise architect are three different jobs. At the interview always ask which one is meant.

Where people go from here

Reference skills: 3 levels, 12 items

Open the path from this step:Software architectSolution architectEnterprise architect

Self-assessment: mark yourself up and see the gaps

What you get is a map of gaps in words: what you have put off, and which tracks to come back through. The portal will not name your level: it does not measure it.

The three states per item — “I do this”, “I do this with support”, “I do not” — come from “How to grow: a development plan and feedback”. The result of the self-assessment is a map of gaps, not a level. The portal will not call you a junior, a middle or a senior: it has no data for that, and the words have no shared meaning across companies.

The marks are kept in this browser only (localStorage, keys digitable:career:*). No sign-up, nothing is sent anywhere, and the reset button deletes them all.

The list of skills is this portal's guide, not an industry standard and not your employer's matrix. External matrices worth comparing against are listed in the piece on seniority; read them two adjacent levels at a time — the value is in the delta between them.

The self-assessment needs JavaScript: it computes the map of gaps in the browser and keeps the marks locally. Without it the page is still useful — the whole lattice of roles and the full list of skills with links to the tracks are above.

The map of gaps answers «what I cannot do». The other half of the question — «what am I good at» — has a survey of its own: 96 statements about yourself, a result in bands, no scores and no comparison with other people. Open the character strengths survey

Career forks What seniority levels are Task bank (in Russian)
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