Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer: L5 To L6
The Staff Engineer promotion can feel impossible: it requires a level of initiative and ownership that engineers rarely demonstrate. However, the reward is immense: Staff Engineers are clear leaders in their org, often commanding $500K+ in total compensation (TC).
This course is about breaking beyond the senior level as an individual contributor. We'll cover frameworks and tactics to optimize your promotion to Staff Engineer.
The most common reasons for a failed Staff Engineer promotion are:
- "You don't have enough scope"
- "You're not working strategically enough"
- "You need to drive problems with more technical complexity"
It's easy to hear this and feel stuck. How can I translate this into action?
The promotion beyond Senior Engineer (generally called Staff or Principal Engineer) is not about working faster or longer -- it's about behavior change that enables you to tackle more difficult problems.
By the end of the course, you will:
- 💡 Truly understand the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer (more than a career matrix)
- 🧠 Create clear mental models to develop L6 behavior
- 📃 Identify your fundamental gaps to staff
- 🗺️ Chart a path to Staff Engineer
- 🧐 Go through Staff Engineer archetypes to find your fit
Who is this course for?
- You're a senior engineer in Big Tech looking to get promoted, but struggling to find scope and influence. e.g. Google L5, Amazon SDE 3
- You're an engineering manager or director and want to provide concrete guidance for your engineers to achieve career growth.
- You're an engineer who wants to validate your career direction by learning how very senior engineers are evaluated at larger companies.
Across my 4.5 years working at Meta, I experienced the frustration of failing and then finally achieving the Staff Eng (E6) promotion. This course distills years of my own career experience as an IC, transitioning to management, and talking to 500+ engineers directly to observe patterns that hold engineers back at this critical inflection point.
I documented his entire journey at Meta, including every performance rating and compensation change, in this viral video: What It Took To Become An $800,000 Engineer
Distilling patterns from 100s of engineers
Before the creation of this on-demand course, I taught a live, cohort-based version of this course. This course was taken by 100+ engineers across several sessions, and I was able to receive amazing feedback on what works (and what doesn't) when it comes to the promotion beyond Senior.
I was able to incorporate nuances and ideas from many more engineers at managers, going far beyond my experience at Meta. This on-demand course is the distillation of hundreds of 1:1 conversations and students from live cohort multiple times.
Connect with Rahul:
Top-tier panel. Actionable feedback. Worth every penny.
This program has proven to be an exceptionally valuable experience. The content was not only comprehensive but also presented in a manner that made even complex concepts applicable.
I particularly commend the practical approach to addressing real-world challenges, which added immense value to the learning experience. Rahul did an excellent job of distilling years of industry knowledge into a concise and digestible online format.
The content not only caters to those fortunate enough to have such resources but also serves as a vital lifeline for individuals lacking a robust support system. The insights provided were not merely theoretical but grounded in practical application.
This is a more polished version of Rahul's Maven "Senior to Staff" course. It was a nice refresher on the material.
This demystifies what staff engineer role involves and the steps to get promoted to one in a big tech company. It is packed full of insights and practical actions to get there. The instructor obviously cares about the students and their career aspirations. This feels more like a labor of love than not a money grab.
The course is curated methodically. Rahul's communication style is impeccable and worth learning from. With lots of informative pieces, it is concise yet constructive, providing definite value for the money!
Rahul’s course is a game-changer for engineers aspiring to climb the ladder to staff engineer and beyond. Rahul’s clear communication style keeps you hooked, making it a must for those eyeing staff engineer and beyond roles. Highly recommended for anyone serious about their career growth.
Rahul's ability to distill years of experience down into clear, digestible, and actionable information for his specific audience of engineers is unlike anything I've ever experienced.
Rahul provides a framework for senior engineers to grow to the staff level. He shares examples that can be followed to chart the growth journey — how to approach your growth plan, working with your manager and peers, influencing others, how to be proactive about your promotion, etc. He also shares his own career growth journey and there is a lot to learn from it too. I am looking forward to sharing the learnings with my team!
Rahul did a great summary and decomposition of the Staff roles, and provided specific roadmaps and examples. It was super helpful for me to find gaps in my understanding of the staff requirements and adjust some nuances. Huge value!
I learned a lot from Rahul in this course. Definitely prepared me for what lies ahead in the software engineer career ladder. It was useful to understand the archetypes of staff engineers so I can use that in my future promotion case. And the taro community slack is great for connecting with other engineers.
Great course, clear, concise and actionable steps and teachings.
Amazing course! At the current state of my team/org, there wasn't enough mentorship to help me get to E6, or distill the gaps. This course gives me some much needed clarity.
