Career Ladder Inspiration · Engineering
Monzo's engineering career framework
Engineering progression framework from Monzo covering 5 competency areas across 5 levels. Uses a compass-not-GPS philosophy with Technical Skills, Impact, Influence, Communication, and Leadership pillars.
Company Monzo|Year 2026|Discipline Engineering|Tracks TBD|License
Scroll horizontally to explore all 5 levels
Clone this templateLevel 1 - Engineer I | Level 2 - Engineer II | Level 3 - Senior Engineer | Level 4 - Staff Engineer | Level 5 - Senior Staff / Director | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skills Technical Skills | Your code and technical contribution is regarded as acceptable quality by your peers. You proactively test your work. You are learning the tools and technologies used at Monzo. | Your code and technical contribution is regarded as high quality by your peers. You can efficiently design systems to solve business problems. You write well-tested code and consider edge cases. | You can design systems to solve complex business problems and can resolve ambiguity at both technical and product levels. You proactively improve modules, services and codebases you encounter. | You make significant technical contributions across multiple teams. Your designs are exemplary and influence how others build systems. You identify and resolve systemic technical challenges. | You can significantly and directly impact both the company's success and the success of Engineering as a discipline. Your work sets the business up well for the future and leaves a lasting legacy. |
Skills Impact | Delivers assigned tasks with guidance. Starting to understand how their work contributes to team goals. | Delivers well-scoped features end-to-end. Breaks down large tasks into sensible discrete chunks that compound to achieve larger goals. | Leads delivery of significant projects. Helps prioritise and balance short-term and long-term investments, focusing on high impact, high value work. Delivers large business-impacting projects. | Breaks down large long-lasting projects into sensible chunks. Identifies high-leverage opportunities across teams. Impact extends well beyond their immediate team. | Able to significantly impact the company's success. Impact is lasting and sets up both near and long-term success for the organization. |
Skills Influence | Participates in team discussions. Learning to share ideas and ask questions. | Makes improvements to modules and libraries and goes out of their way to help others learn from it. Starting to influence within their team. | Proactively improves systems and codebases they encounter. Contributes to scaling engineering hiring. Influences technical decisions across their area. | Recognized as a technical leader across the organization. Influences technical direction beyond their immediate team. Drives cross-team alignment. | Shapes engineering direction at the organizational level. Influences company-wide technical strategy and decisions. |
Skills Communication & Feedback | Communicates clearly and asks for help when needed. Open to receiving feedback. | Gives and receives constructive feedback. Communicates proactively about progress and blockers. Provides thoughtful code review feedback. | Communicates complex technical concepts clearly. Facilitates productive technical discussions. Gives direct, actionable feedback that drives improvement. | Communicates technical vision and strategy effectively. Bridges communication between engineering and business stakeholders. Models excellent communication practices. | Communicates at the executive level. Represents engineering perspective in company-wide strategic discussions. |
Skills Leadership | Seeks mentorship and learning opportunities. Supports teammates. | Mentors newer engineers. Makes improvements and helps others learn from them. Contributes to hiring and interviewing processes. | Acts as a role model within the team. Grows and develops other engineers. Leads by example, cultivating qualities that make an excellent engineer. | Different shapes of engineer at this level: tech lead excelling at leading engineering, or deep specialist driving technical excellence. Develops senior engineers. | Sets example for the entire engineering organization. May take on formal leadership roles (e.g. VP Architecture). Develops Staff engineers and Engineering Managers. |
Framework by Monzo · Licensed
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