The purpose of a career ladder is to standardize the criteria by which employees are evaluated for performance and career progression (promotion).

Each type of role in the company has its own ladder, but the structures of the ladders are the same. The steps of the ladder are called levels. Levels go from least to greatest amount of experience and expertise. Each level has a scope, which is the area of influence you are expected to have within and beyond your team. As you progress your scope should become increasingly broad as you develop objectives, guide strategy, and impact the overall success across a wider area of the company, as well as contribute positively to the reputation of the company within the broader community. Each level is further defined across several different domains, where each domain is a different aspect of the job. At each intersection of level and domain is defined what is expected of you if you are performing at that level. These expectations are stated in relationship to the core principles that we believe team members should bring to all aspects of their work. Expectations are cumulative, meaning they implicitly include the expectations from all lower levels.

The ladder also provides typical background and qualifications for each level. This is primarily to help determine the level for a new employee. It is not required that you meet these qualifications to be hired or to advance to the next level.

During a review process, your performance will be evaluated based on whether you are meeting (and hopefully exceeding) what is expected of you at your level. To be promoted from one level to the next, you should be performing closer to the expectations of the next level than to those of your current level within most or all the domains.

Each type of role has different titles associated with each level. Certain types of roles may also have more standardized levels that are used across the industry. It is important for a career ladder to map the specific titles within the company to these standard levels for reasons of career mobility and compensation equity. One example is Software Engineering – large companies like Google and Meta have created well-defined leveling frameworks. Another example is the Radford Global Leveling Structure, which defines levels for executives, management, professional, and technical roles.

• People: How you engage with others within and beyond the company. At the entry level, we expect that, primarily, you will be learning and taking direction from others. As you progress, you should become increasingly independent and engage proactively with the members of your and other teams – and the broader community – to coordinate progressively more complex work. You should also demonstrate leadership and provide support and mentorship to your teammates regardless of whether you take on a management role.
• Process: How you engage with the company structure, practices, goals, and initiatives. At the entry level, we expect that, primarily, you will be following existing processes and learning best practices from your peers. As you progress, you should increasingly re-evaluate existing processes and propose new initiatives to help the company operate more effectively.
• Product: How you engage with the systems that are the basis for the company’s products – both commercial and internally facing. At the entry level, we expect that, primarily, you will spend a lot of your time learning how the existing systems work and will contribute small enhancements to product components. As you progress, you should increasingly take ownership of larger and more complex components, contribute to the design of new components, and help to guide the overall evolution of the company’s product portfolio.
• Technology: How you engage with the tools and concepts that enable and inform your work. At the entry level, we expect that, primarily, you will spend a lot of your time learning and applying the technologies in current use. As you progress, you should increasingly re-evaluate technological choices and propose enhancements or replacements that will enable your team and the rest of the company to work more efficiently. You should also be aware of broader trends and new advances in the industry that may impact our capabilities and competitiveness in the future.

• Maximize impact: Your impact is the value you add with each contribution you make. Value takes many forms – from novel ideas and stellar executions, to supporting your team members, to acknowledging and fixing your mistakes. You are always working to find the ways in which you are best able to contribute to the success of the project, team, and company. You exercise good judgement, and you actively elicit feedback to help you hone your instincts.
• Take ownership: To own something means to take leadership of – and accountability for – seeing it through to a positive outcome. Ownership can apply at any scale – from an interpersonal engagement to a system feature to an entire project or product. As an owner, you move forward in the face of uncertainty, you find solutions to short-term setbacks, and you remain focused on the company’s long-term success.
• Cultivate alignment: For a group to align on an initiative, each member must contribute to achieving a common understanding of the problem or opportunity, the challenges involved, and the strengths and weaknesses of each possible solution. You engage actively to increase the wisdom of the group, identify and correct misunderstandings, build trust, challenge decisions when you disagree, achieve consensus, and drive towards action. You fully commit to the group’s decision once it has been reached.
• Deliver results: There is constant tension between timeliness and completeness – a good solution today is better than a perfect solution a month from today. Being results-oriented, you quickly define and deliver the minimum viable product, solicit feedback, and iterate rapidly towards the optimal result that maximizes the value to the company. You get the details right, but you also distinguish when it is sufficient to deliver results that are correct but rough-around-the edges from when there is need for a more enduring solution that is maintainable, thoroughly tested, and well-documented.
• Build strength: In a strong team, all members support and are accountable to each other. Support takes many forms: providing mentorship, giving encouragement and constructive feedback, facilitating communication, evangelizing the team’s work to the rest of the organization and the broader community, and recruiting new members. As a team builder, you promote an open, honest, and safe environment where your teammates feel comfortable approaching you with their needs and helping you with yours. You act as a force multiplier by transferring your knowledge and skills. You help to strengthen the team by ensuring that every member is operating at their highest level.

• https://h3h.github.io/leveling-matrix/
• http://www.engineeringladders.com/Developer.html
• https://github.com/anitameh/data-science-career-ladders