How many levels do platform engineering ladders have?

Key findings

• Ladders run from 4 to 7 levels. The median is 4, and 4 of the 7 ladders use exactly 4.
• 5 of the 6 ladders that use job titles have a Senior level. Its median position is step 3 from the bottom.
• 6 ladders publish a separate track for managers. The 4 that say where it starts put it between step 3 and step 5, and the median is between steps 3 and 4.
• In all 3 ladders that have both a Senior level and a placed manager track, management starts at the Senior level or later.

How many levels platform engineering ladders have

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

• 4 levels4 ladders
• 5 levels2 ladders
• 6 levels0 ladders
• 7 levels1 ladder

Which titles the ladders use

The bars cover the 6 ladders whose levels are job titles. The other one uses grades or scope names instead of job titles, such as “Entry” or “Journey”. One ladder can use several of these words.

• Senior5 of 6
• Lead2 of 6
• Staff2 of 6
• Principal4 of 6

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

Where the manager track starts

This chart shows the step, counted from the bottom of each ladder, where the first people-manager role sits. It covers the 4 ladders that say where it starts. Of the rest, 2 have a manager track but do not say where it starts and 1 does not say whether it has one.

• Step 32 ladders
• Step 41 ladder
• Step 51 ladder

Download the data

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

All 7 ladders

How we did it

We read 7 platform engineering ladders that their publishers use for their own staff: 5 from companies and 2 from public employers, on their own sites or in documents they publish. We kept only those whose levels we could read as text. We left out templates written by individuals, professional bodies’ standards and ladders only for software, security or network teams.

Few employers publish a ladder titled platform engineering, so we used their site reliability, DevOps, cloud, operations or systems ladders as the closest fit.

Levels are the steps a platform engineer or SRE can climb without managing people, lowest first. Interns and trainees are left out. When a ladder splits one title into numbered steps, each with its own expectations (like “Senior Engineer 1” and “2”), 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 that role sits above the top level, it counts as the next step up. 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 Principal, which counts as Principal.

This is a sample of the ladders people chose to publish, mostly from companies, plus one US state and one UK government profession, and some are several years old. It shows what public ladders look like, not what every employer does.

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 platform engineering career path with the skills each level expects, or read what a career ladder is.

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