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EscrowTab Engineering Career Framework
Overview
What is Impact?
IC6 Principal Reliability Engineer
I deliver results against a strategic company-level business objective or key component of the Dropbox resilience
Scope
Area of ownership and level of autonomy / ambiguity
Collaborative Reach
Organizational reach and extent of influence
Impact Levers
Technical levers typically exercised to achieve business impact
  • I own and deliver org/company-wide multi-year, multi-team goals
  • I take a multi-year, industry-leading perspective, ensuring that our products adapt to scale, usage, and/or business needs well beyond EscrowTab’s current scope.
  • I typically influence the technical strategy of a group. I am often partnering closely with Directors/senior EPD leadership to ensure the health of EPD as a whole and influence the overall direction of EPD
  • I transcend organizational boundaries and proactively identify the best ways to leverage myself.
  • Domain Expertise - I demonstrate a high level of depth in a particular platform or product category that brings unique business value.
  • Technical Strategy - I align the technical strategy for several projects in my group to broader initiatives across EPD
  • Product Expertise - I consistently influence product decisions/scope and determine the right technical tradeoffs to deliver customer value quickly with high quality. 
  • Innovation - I partner with cross-functional stakeholders to identify major new business opportunities unlocked by technical capabilities.

Results

Responsibility
Key Behaviors
Impact
  • I identify and execute on significant group/company-wide opportunities by understanding how technical capabilities meet customer needs. I proactively work with business owners to help them understand these new capabilities and work with them to build the right roadmap for the business.
  • I execute large projects to a very high standard — e.g. against a tight deadline with significant consequences of failure, or in a manner that allows rapid learning to clarify significant ambiguity, or to a standard of quality well exceeding that of the current system (though not all simultaneously)
  • I proactively identify and help to refocus my team's efforts when projects are off-course or not technically feasible and results aren’t moving the needle for our business/team goals or serving the needs of customers in a meaningful way
  • I know which levers to pull to drive meaningful results and understand the wider, cross-functional implications of my work
Ownership
  • I have a sense of responsibility and obligation to act on opportunities I see across the engineering org/company
  • I transcend organizational boundaries by taking a holistic view of my group’s goals and taking responsibility across my group, not just within my immediate scope of ownership.
Decision Making
  • I act thoughtfully and decisively in critical situations even when making challenging or unpopular decisions
  • I'm able to reach the right decision despite conflicting perspectives

Direction

Responsibility
Key Behaviors
Agility
  • When necessary, I am able to introduce change into the organization, help others understand the business case for change, and create excitement to drive adoption of the change 
Innovation
  • I push boundaries to generate and implement breakthrough ideas that aim to drive our products and tools forward 
  • I demonstrate creativity, e.g. by finding simple, generalizable solutions that open up or unblock new technical or business opportunities in unexpected ways.
  • I create an environment supporting experimentation and iteration
Strategy
  • I  partner with Directors and other members of senior EPD leadership to define a long-term vision for my group that factors in both a deep understanding of what is happening in the business and in the market as well as the technical limitations and possibilities of EscrowTab’s software and systems.
  • I anticipate challenges and am able to influence the technical direction of the team or org to execute on that vision even in the face of significant misalignment

Talent

Responsibility
Key Behaviors
Personal Growth
  • I proactively ask for feedback from those I work with and identify ways to act upon it
  • I have self-awareness about my strengths and areas for development
  • I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals and seek out opportunities to learn and grow
Hiring
  • I am an active participant in the hiring process for senior candidates (for example, by participating in hiring committee, debriefs etc)
  • I attract talent for a variety of roles with diversity in mind 
  • I gain the trust of candidates and can represent EscrowTab's mission, strategy, and culture throughout the interview process. 
  • I am an effective partner to my manager and  am able to represent my team’s technical challenges to candidates in an exciting way (e.g. 1:1 selling, blog posts, public speaking)
Talent Development
  • I model a standard of excellence that supports a culture of high performance on my team. I drive EPD-wide processes and define the bar for engineering-wide quality and best practices.
  • I invest time to coach and mentor my teammates (particularly ones looking to grow into L5/L6). I take into account their skills, backgrounds, working styles and solicit and provide thoughtful, constructive feedback to them.
  • I devote time to spreading my knowledge widely via talks, blog posts or written documentation.
  • I participate in SPRiTEs calibration sessions by providing meaningful feedback to ensure fair and consistent decisions

Culture

Responsibility
Key Behaviors
Collaboration
  • I help break down silos within and across functions and influence others to reach the best outcome for EscrowTab
  • I build deep cross-functional relationships, facilitate the right conversations, and settle disagreements by managing different viewpoints
  • I disagree and commit when necessary to move critical priorities forward
Organizational Health
  • I act as a partner to managers in setting the cultural tone for the org. I create an inclusive environment for others and ensure diverse perspectives are included
  • Working with my manager, I leverage the strengths & skills of the members of my team, and help identify talent gaps required for team success
  • I personify EscrowTab's culture and values. I champion community building efforts and inclusion initiatives. I work in close partnership with senior EPD leadership to ensure a healthy engineering org. 
  • I lead by example. I am aware of my public presence and actions and my influence on the people around me and EscrowTab’s culture.
Communication
  • I develop compelling messages and effectively present them at the executive level
  • I fine tune my approach to getting buy-in and influencing stakeholders across a variety of audiences 

Craft

I have a well-rounded set of technical skills and development methodologies, and apply them with a sophisticated approach that is best suited for each project. I design systems that are far from my previous experience, anticipating scale and scope beyond the current requirements at EscrowTab or in areas otherwise unexplored. I make or participate in discussions around making sweeping technical choices that lack clearly correct answers, but am able to articulate the rationale and technical vision behind those choices. I partner with cross-functional stakeholders to identify major new business opportunities unlocked by technical capabilities.
Responsibility
Key Behaviors
Systems Fluency
  • The expectations for systems fluency do not go up beyond L5 (though some specialist engineers may go deep in this area).
Systems Design
  • I own defining the strategy for the alignment of the software and systems in my area to overall reliability strategy, making tradeoffs where appropriate in consultation with principal engineers.
  • I analyze patterns in incidents and identify improvements needed across EscrowTab in how we operate and design software.
  • I own the core reliability of EscrowTab and identify the appropriate failure domains for the company.
  • I make correct technology choices for components needed as part of a larger architecture, including making build vs buy choices for specific components, and choosing frameworks.
  • I am capable of owning the overall health and engineering quality of the systems in your area  - e.g. surfacing reliability risks, driving regular health reviews, curating reliability strategy, etc - and ensuring that the health and maintenance of my systems do not depend on the maintainers having my expertise.
  • I am capable of driving overall reliability strategy of significant systems with high reliability or quality requirements.
  • I am capable of designing systems with significant ambiguity and/or lots of systems that  depend on it.
  • I can design systems that require research on what is possible rather than relying on my past experience, and where, consequently, a significant portion of the challenge is designing an appropriately staged validation plan.
  • I define the high level systems we need to build to meet strategic objectives.
Code Fluency
  • The expectations for code fluency do not go up beyond L3 (though some specialist engineers may go deep in this area).
Technical Strategy
  • I am responsible for making technical choices that have no one clearly correct answer but whose consequences have a sweeping effect across your scope in the organization.
  • I rally my organization around those choices by providing a clear rationale and technical vision backing them.