30+ Engineering Career Ladders Before jumping into the list, let's quickly discuss software engineering career ladders. We can extract common traits from those career ladders; understanding those characteristics allows us to connect the dots more easily and compare different career ladders efficiently. What Is a Career Ladder? A career ladder, or career path, is a progression framework. It allows an organization to describe the different job levels and the expectations for a given position. It enables the assessment of a software engineer's skills and to work on her career progression. It provides a shared framework to identify the different aspects to improve to reach the next job level. The ladder can also be mapped with employee's compensation, increasing salaries transparency, and fairness. Expertise Path and Manager Path (Dual-Track) Most of the software engineering career ladders are dual tracks ladders. They have a joint base for the first positions, and at some point, two paths are possible the expertise path and the people management path. The expertise path is often named the individual contributor track, the people management path is often called the manager track. The career path depends on the stage of the company and the size of the team. New positions will usually appear while the engineering group is growing. Example for a tiny team (up to 10 engineers) You'll r…