Introducing a new level in your existing leveling framework and organization is not trivial, but can be an effective way of scaling your engineering demands in a growing org. I outlined a cheat sheet of steps on how a new role can be introduced without creating havoc. The title of this article mentions the staff level since that is quite the hype nowadays to have, but the underlying principle works for almost all kinds of individual contributor and manager levels, especially after the senior stage.

Let’s discuss how Engineering Managers can support their people on the journey toward the Staff Engineer Role. Why should we as EMs care about that? Of course, their success is your success and having staff engineers in your group lifts you up as well. But more important is that having one or more staff engineers in your group will allow you to kick in a few metaphorical technical doors toward a larger organizational impact.