If you are wondering, what does a staff engineer do? OR what exactly are different areas of work that staff engineers can contribute to? OR what are the top characteristics of a good staff engineer? Then you are at the right place.

In this post, I cover the 7 key characteristics of a good staff engineer. If you are a senior engineer and wondering how you can get promoted to a staff engineer, I share some details that can help you in your next promotion plan.

What is a Staff Engineer?

Different companies have different ladders for software engineers. In my experience, I have seen

• software engineer => senior software engineer => principal software engineer => architect
• software engineer => senior software engineer => staff software engineer => principal software engineer

Staff Engineer is an individual contribution ladder role. On the management path, it can resemble to Engineering Manager. However, the duties of a staff engineer and that of an engineering manager are different.

Irrespective of what the ladder is, a staff engineer is a senior role where an engineer helps a team and other engineers to lead on various projects.

The difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer lies in the impact they create on the team and projects. A senior engineer can lead a single project while a staff engineer can be part of multiple projects.

Let’s dive into the 7 key characteristics of a good staff engineer.

7 Characteristics of Staff Engineer

1. Stay Curious

Irrespective of your impact or role, you should always stay curious. With evolving technology and stacks, it helps to stay curious and find different solutions to either the existing problems or to the new problems.

2. Always Be Learning

Stay humble. Irrespective of how much experience you have, you should always be learning. Learn from your seniors, from your juniors, from peers, and other engineers. Learn from every source of information you read.

The quickest way to grow is to keep learning. And the quickest way to stop learning is to think that you have all the answers.

Not knowing something is a strength and that keeps the door open to learn that thing. The smartest staff engineers are always learning. They are aware that technology will keep changing and they have to keep learning.

3. Company First, Team First

Staff Engineers can have a huge impact on a company’s growth. In early-stage startups, staff engineers form the engineering culture, create and build processes, and build the knowledge base.

It would be selfish of engineers to think for only their careers. Nevertheless, this is especially important for Staff Engineers. They have to set up the team for success. They have to set up the company for success.

4. Know the system

A good staff engineer will know the big picture of the system they are operating in. They will have end-to-end knowledge of the services they are working or managing. System design should be one of the strengths of a staff engineer. You can argue that staff engineers need to know the entire architecture of the platform that the company runs. But, it is not necessary. Having a big picture of the platform is good enough to figure out risks.

A good staff engineer can also foresee the possible risks as the system goes through various stages of scale and growth.

5. Provide honest feedback

Working with different skillset engineers will help staff engineers figure out the strengths of those engineers. In return, staff engineers have to provide honest feedback to those engineers to help them accelerate their careers.

The staff engineer is an ally for the manager and the rest of the team. Staff engineer fosters a bond between them and sets both parties up for success.

6. Make your team 10x

Delegation is one of the hardest skills to learn for an engineer when they know they can build something. But it is also equally important to help other engineers grow. A good staff engineer not only helps in various project activities but also helps the rest of the team to 10x their output.

Providing knowledge, training, skills, and feedback, a good staff engineer helps the team to do better and better.

7. Action First

In every project, there will be a time when there is not enough clarity about requirements. And even if there is, engineers who are coordinating on the project are stuck at making a decision. Everybody is still figuring out the trade-offs. In such cases, a good staff engineer leads the team for action.

A good staff engineer prioritizes the action for the project so the team can keep moving and not get stuck around various decisions to be made. A good staff engineer needs to make some bold calls to keep moving the needle and in the process lead the team for further progress.

Conclusion

In this post, I showed the 7 key characteristics a staff engineer can have. Not every staff engineer will have all these characteristics.

Figuring out your strengths as a staff engineer is what you need to do as a staff engineer. Most staff engineers I know have a combination of these characteristics and skills.