Levels for Engineering Managers

# Levels for Engineering Managers ## By Level ### Manager, Software Engineering * **GitHub Grade**: 8 * **Radford level**: M3 * **Microsoft Level**: n/a #### Scope and Complexity First line manager leading a small team focused on a single problem space - Closely aligned with Senior Manager or Director - Provides direct supervision to ICs - Accountable for level of access they and their teams have to GitHub Systems #### Leadership and Communication - Models behaviors and attitudes, exemplifying GitHub's standards of conduct and leadership principles - Supports tactical delivery by providing directs with context and connection to problem space - Communicates clearly and transparently (this may include follow up as needed); invites others into the conversation and ensure all voices are heard - Creates inclusive space for team's perspectives; affects change based on feedback #### Management Contributions - Leads effective project kick-offs, syncs, retrospectives - Timeboxes decision making, raises blockers for resolution - Manages risk, radiates project status appropriately to stakeholders and reporting hierarchy - Aligns team with standard GitHub delivery processes and artifacts - Builds candid and trusted relationships with directs. - Has consistent, ongoing conversations about near-term goals, performance, and career aspirations to support growth and development - Delivers routine tactical and meta feedback on communications, relationships, and code. Takes necessary steps to address issues as they come up. ### Senior Manager, Software Engineering * **GitHub Grade**: 9 * **Radford level**: M4 * **Microsoft Level**: 63-64 #### Scope and Complexity Manager with significant experience in industry, leading one or a small number of teams in a specific domain - Senior level career experience is expected at this level - Managers at this Grade may be new to management or may have many years experience, but the defining factor is that they have significant experience in industry such that they serve as a model for others - Responsible for all aspects of security, privacy, confidentiality, integrity, availability, and compliance for the services and and systems their teams own and operate - Leverages domain expertise, customer relationships, etc. to make independent decisions in the scope of their domain - Failure to deliver could result in missed/lost customer opportunities #### Leadership and Communication - Promotes a positive environment across the organization (beyond the immediate team) by modeling behavior that promotes inclusion and good morale - Evidence of recurring leadership. Pushes staff and peers to find creative solutions when roadblocks arise - Navigates dependencies on other projects and teams - Keeps team connected to larger org-wide narrative; understands what the teams needs to know and finds channels to get questions heard/resolved - Actively coaches, corrects, inspires, tailoring messaging and engagement level as appropriate for individuals - Effectively "manages up" tailoring communication appropriately to the audience - Focuses the team on results and impact over activity - Recognizes strategic opportunities with larger company impact and offers prospective solutions and justification for investment - In many cases will lead a prototype/pilot and hold up success as a pattern for others to consider and adopt - Takes ownership of problems and sees them through until resolved; will often compel folks to join in the cause #### Management Contributions - Owns decision making/resolution, anticipates and resolves potential execution problems, negotiates with peers/partners for successful outcomes - Breaks down work into the process steps - Can work effectively with incomplete information, moving pieces, and maintains a positive attitude - Identifies opportunities to tune and streamline practices - Works directly with reports on assessing impact of a change (Org, Technology, OKR) and communicating accordingly - Understands current team composition and gaps; tunes hiring accordingly - Runs a healthy team by dealing with onboarding, career discussions, performance issues and prevents regrettable attrition with intentional, targeted intervention - Holds hiring as a top level priority for directs and leads on reducing time to hire ### Staff Manager or Director, Software Engineering * **GitHub Grade**: 10 * **Radford level**: M5 * **Microsoft Level**: 65-66 #### Scope and Complexity Manager responsible for multiple product or functional areas, and/or a complex technical surface area - Managers at this level have significant cross-team influence - Manages complex and/or 'grey' area projects through a large team, multiple teams, or with a significant number of stakeholders - Manages key initiatives that spans multiple teams across the org - These are decision makers with a large degree of agency within their domain - Accountable for operational excellence, systems maturity, and maintainability of systems under their purview - Failure to deliver could result in major initiatives not being met - Managers with the Director title typically manage managers and have greater organizational responsibilities, but are equivalent impact-wise to Staff Eng Managers. - Staff Eng Managers may be more directly responsible for a cohesive technical problem space and/or delivery of cross-team projects by leading with influence. #### Leadership and Communication - Holds a high and consistent performance standard through org; intentionally works to create a culture of both high performance and psychological safety - Can confidently represent domain internally and externally - Comms are frequently 'out', often times in collaboration with peer organizations throughout GitHub (Sales, PR), may represent org/teams to LT or to all of GitHub through all-hands, regular updates, etc - Responsible for an organization's behaviors, practices, culture, and connection through GitHub - Experienced with coaching and performance management; serves as a model for others - Engages as appropriate based on a direct's maturity with a given type of task - Recognizes and develops leadership talent; finds opportunities for exceptional talent to achieve - Propagates domain expertise back through team to build a customer-centric culture - Maintains candid connections throughout team (managers, individual) to inspire and energize #### Management Contributions - Accurately scopes out high level length and difficulty of tasks and projects of a department - Forces prioritization conversations to find the right staff to support an at-risk project, anticipates and adjust for problems and roadblocks - Responsible for meeting organizational expectations around SLOs, DevOps practices, and creating an environment of continuous improvement - Talent plans and manages across directs regularly; connects with managers throughout org to validate, refine, and support shared performance expectations - Calibrates reports, conducts team assessments, and built tactical plans to amplify team strengths and address deficiencies - Intervenes when a manager is unable to recognize an opportunity or deficiency within their teams - Navigates changes in Engineering policy with peers and Tech Leadership to boost team performance - Skilled at talent planning and building bench strength; works with managers to justify and support a narrative for headcount requests - Models customer obsession; develops a rich understanding of the landscape (customer, market) for which our products are built; regularly consults with customers - Thinks deeply about organizational issues and identifies hidden dynamics that contribute to them; works with peer group and directs to resolve