How many levels do engineering ladders have?

Key findings

• Ladders run from 3 to 9 levels. The median is 6, and 10 of the 39 ladders use exactly 5.
• 26 of the 32 ladders that use job titles have a Senior level. Its median position is step 3 from the bottom.
• 20 ladders publish a separate track for managers. The 14 that say where it starts put it at step 3 or higher, and the median is step 4.
• In all 10 ladders that have both a Senior level and a placed manager track, management starts at the Senior level or later.

How many levels engineering ladders have

Each bar is the number of ladders with that many levels for engineers who do not manage people.

• 3 levels2 ladders
• 4 levels3 ladders
• 5 levels10 ladders
• 6 levels9 ladders
• 7 levels6 ladders
• 8 levels6 ladders
• 9 levels3 ladders

Which titles the ladders use

Out of the 32 ladders whose levels are job titles. The other 7 use numbers or scope names only, such as “Level 2” or “Squad step”. One ladder can use several of these words.

• Senior26 of 32
• Staff19 of 32
• Principal23 of 32
• Distinguished or Fellow6 of 32

Senior counts a level titled Senior or Sr., not Senior Staff or Senior Principal.

Where the manager track starts

The step, counted from the bottom of each ladder, where the first people-manager role sits. Out of the 14 ladders that say where it starts. 6 more have a manager track but do not place it, 4 say they have none (or not yet), and 15 do not say.

• Step 35 ladders
• Step 44 ladders
• Step 53 ladders
• Step 61 ladder
• Step 71 ladder

Download the data

One row per ladder: its name, the source link, the number of levels, the level names, the manager track and the step it starts at, and which collections list it.

All 39 ladders

Ladders we could not use

We tried 15 more ladders from the same collections and left them out, because we could not read their levels as text. Ladders that live only in Notion, Trello or a sign-in app, such as Sourcegraph’s, Attest’s and accuRx’s, were not read.

• Fog Creek: The levels are in an image, not in the page text.
• Honeycomb: The ladder is a diagram; the text names only one level.
• Construx: The page lists career paths, not levels.
• Envato: The link no longer shows the ladder.
• Glossier: The post describes the ladder but does not name its levels.
• Thumbtack: Only the overview of the linked spreadsheet was readable.
• Square: The post links out to the levels, on a page we did not read.
• Pleo: The levels are in a diagram.
• Songkick: The PDF refused the download, and the blog post shows the levels as an image.
• Patreon: The link now redirects to a news home page.
• Inviqa: The site it moved to no longer loads.
• InfraCloud: The site did not respond.
• Brad Fults: The page returns “not found”.
• Redgate: The progression between roles is a diagram.
• 8th Light: A grid of skill levels, not job levels.

How we did it

The three collections: progression.fyi, bmoeskau/engineering-ladders, swyx’s career ladders list.

We read every engineering ladder listed in three open collections and kept the 39 whose levels we could read as text: 36 from companies and 3 that authors published as templates. Ladders only for design, product or data teams were left out.

Levels are the steps an engineer can climb without managing people, lowest first. Interns are left out. When a ladder splits one title into numbered steps, each with its own expectations (like “Senior Engineer I” and “II”), each step counts. Pay bands inside one level do not. A level above both tracks that the ladder does not open to individual contributors is not counted.

The manager track starts where the ladder puts its first people-manager role: the same band or level number, the same row of its table, or the step where it says the tracks split. When a ladder has a manager track but does not place it, we do not guess.

Title shares only count ladders whose levels are job titles. A level counts as Senior when its title says Senior or Sr., but not Senior Staff or Senior Principal.

This is a sample of the ladders people chose to publish, mostly from tech companies, and some are several years old. It shows what public ladders look like, not what every company does. Where a live page blocked automated reading, we read the Internet Archive copy, and the table says so.

We store only public facts: how many levels a ladder has, what the levels are called and where the manager track starts. Each ladder belongs to its publisher, so follow the links for the full text. None of them has reviewed or endorsed this study, and Competrace is not affiliated with them.

Spotted a mistake, or a public ladder we missed? Email support@competrace.com with the link, and we will update the data.

See levels with their skills

The study counts levels. To see what each level needs, browse our software engineering career path with the skills each level expects, or read what a career ladder is.