GitLab and Dropbox: Engineering Career Frameworks, plus collection of tools!

GitLab

These are the expected behaviours of Engineers at GitLab. Most engineers at GitLab are Intermediate or Senior, so the priority is to address these levels first.

Moving between levels, you should see that as engineers advance in their careers, their duties should encompass a higher degree of complexity, the scope of their influence should expand, and their contributions should become more impactful.

These behaviors should not be considered as a checklist for promotion. Excellent Engineers may struggle with one or two aspects of their job and their strengths in certain areas should make up for deficits in others. However, it is important to show a significant number of strengths to be considered for promotion.

Each of these behaviors should be achievable inside of normal working hours. If you feel that you need to work additional hours to be successful in your role you should talk to your manager.

Junior engineers are still included on this framework even though we are not actively hiring at this level. Further discussion about junior engineers can be found on the career development page.

Value Alignments

• Collaboration
• Results
• Efficiency
• Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
• Iteration
• Transparency

Technical Competencies

• Quality
• Complexity
• Security
• Technical Stewardship
• Performance
• Open Source

Leadership Competencies

• Growing Others
• Communication
• Ambiguity
• Business Acumen
• Process

GitLab

Dropbox

What’s a Career Framework?

The Engineering Career Framework is your source for how to achieve impact for your role and team and how to grow in your engineering career. For managers, it can help you set expectations with your teams and hold them accountable for their work.

What the Career Framework is not

This framework is not a promotion checklist for your role; rather, it’s designed to help you figure out what your impact could look like at the next level.

 This framework is not an exhaustive list of examples and behaviors; each responsibility includes three to four key behaviors that serve as guide for how to think about your work. Consequently, you’ll need to meet with your manager to define your impact goals and align on the expectations for your role. 

What’s in a Career Framework?

This framework is broken down into two components:

Level Expectations define the scope, collaborative reach, and levers for impact at every level; these expectations are the what that determines the difference between an IC3 and IC4, for example

Core and Craft Responsibilities define the key behaviors specific to your role and team; these behaviors help you identify how you work to deliver impact based on your level expectations.

Dropbox

Collection of tools

Collection of progression frameworks and career ladders