#PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER VS SENIOR HOW TO#

For example James Gosling and David Patterson both joined the company as L9 Distinguished Engineers.ДЄlso notable is that the external hiring process and the internal promotion process are entirely separate, and at this point have diverged substantially in their calibration.

Hiring externally directly to L8 and L9 does happen, but is quite rare and demands the direct sponsorship of a high-level executive like a Senior Vice President of a Google Product Area or CEO of an Alphabet company. Most external hiring for software engineers is for L4 through L6, with L7 also possible though less common.

Google Senior Fellow (Level 11) is for people like Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat.

Google Fellow (Level 10) is the same level as a Vice President, expected to drive technical strategy and investment in crucial areas.

Distinguished Software Engineer (Level 9) drives technical strategy in efforts spanning a large technical area.

By this level of seniority, most people are focussed on management and leadership. SWEs at level 8 or above are relatively rare: the equivalent level on the manager ladder will routinely have five or more times as many people as on the SWE ladder. Principal Software Engineers drive technical strategy in relatively large product areas.

Principal Software Engineer (Level 8) is the first level which is considered an executive of the Alphabet corporation for the purposes of remuneration and corporate governance.

Involvement of the hiring manager or strong pushback by the candidate can sometimes push the offer to Level 7. Guidance for years of experience begins to break down at this level, as most candidates with ten or more years experience will be hired at Level 6 unless there is a strong reason to offer a higher level.

Senior Staff Software Engineer (Level 7) is essentially L6 with larger expectations.

When hiring externally, ten or more years of experience are generally expected. Many, though by no means all, SWEs begin managing a team of engineers by this point in their career.

Staff Software Engineer (Level 6) is the level where leadership increasingly becomes the primary criteria by which performance is judged.

When hiring externally, six to ten years of experience is generally expected. A software engineer advances to L5 primarily by demonstrating impact on tasks of sufficient difficulty.

Senior Software Engineer (Level 5) is the level where a software engineer is expected to be primarily autonomous: capable of being given tasks without excessive detail, and being able to figure out what to do and then do it.

SWE-III (Level 4) is someone with several years of experience after graduation, or for someone who just finished a PhD in a technical field.

An е…ѓ SWE is generally someone who recently graduated with an undergraduate or Master's degree, or equivalent education.

SWE-II (Level 3) is an entry level full-time software engineer.

SWE-I (Level 2) is a software engineering intern, expected to be in the junior or senior year of a four year degree program.

People on one ladder veering too far out of the guidance for that ladder will be encouraged to switch to the other, as performance evaluations will begin to suffer. For those on the Manager ladder the expectation is more like 80% of the time to be spent on management. For those on the SWE ladder the expectation is that at least 50% of their time will be spent on individual contributing engineering work, leaving no more than 50% on management. The difference is in how performance is evaluated. Google does allow people on the SWE ladder to manage reports, and allows people on the Manager ladder to make technical contributions. This takes the form of two ladders, Software Engineer (universally abbreviated as 'SWE') and Software Engineering Manager. Like many Tech companies, Google has parallel tracks for people who wish to primarily be individual contributors and for people who wish to primarily be managers. The ladder defines the role you are expected to do, like manager or engineer or salesperson, while the level is how senior you are in that role. There are two concepts: ladder and level.

This post will attempt to explain what Google's engineering career progression looks like. The financial aspects will presumably be clear enough, but the career aspects of the offer may not be.

#PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER VS SENIOR HOW TO#

This post focuses on a different area: how to evaluate an engineering job offer from Alphabet. You'll do better if you mentally refresh topics in computer science which you have not recently worked with. Google interviews for software engineers mostly do not focus on the candidate's resume or prior experience, instead asking technical questions on various topics and coding.

There are articles out there about the interview process and how to prepare, and I do definitely recommend spending time in preparation. Google (now Alphabet) hires a lot of engineers every year.

Principal software engineer vs senior