How to Grow From Senior Engineer to a Lead Role

Growing from a senior to a lead role requires a mindset shift. You become a multiplier for the team and helping others around you becomes one of the main priorities. If you don't know me yet, my name is Gregor Ojstersek. I am the founder of Engineering Leadership Newsletter, and in my career I grew from engineer to senior software engineer and later to lead roles: team lead, engineering manager, head of engineering, VP of engineering, and then also CTO. In this video, I'll be sharing the steps to take on how you can grow from senior engineer to a lead role. All right, let's start with the first one. So my recommendation here is before starting to think about growing to lead roles, first grow to senior engineer first. And, uh, the reason is that you want to develop both breadth and also depth of knowledge. And my recommendation is to become an expert in one particular thing. If you're a frontend developer, that may be frontend development, and then develop a good breadth of knowledge of various different topics like quality assurance, backend development, product, business. For me personally, I became the go-to person for both Angular and, and React. And you know, you can do the same, or you can do in any kind of backend technologies as well, like maybe in Python that can be Flask, that can be FastAPI, that can be C#, that can be ASP.NET Core, whatever works for you. But focus, become great at one thing, and then also develop good understanding at many other topics. That's how you can solve various of different problems, various of different challenges because you have good deep, deep knowledge of one particular thing and you understand a lot of others. And you can also jump in, in, in a different technology and understand that pretty quickly because you have developed that, that depth and you can quickly understand that particular part a lot faster. So that is, that is 50% of the, of the work. And that is your skills. But technical skills alone are not going to make you a great candidate for, for a lead role. You need to also focus on how people perceive you. And those— I believe fully that, you know, your skills is equally important than how people see you. You want to make sure that, you know, I like to say that you can be the best engineer in the world technically. But if people don't know that, it unfortunately, it won't be perceived that way. So you want to make sure that you are reliable, you focus on predictability, stability, and consistency. That's very important for me as a manager. I like to work with people who do good work long-term. And, you know, just doing great work short-term is not something that I value that much. Also important is to take ownership and responsibility. Also being, being proactive is very, very crucial. I like to work with people who are proactively suggesting improvements and also solving problems proactively. Obviously good communication is very, very important because, you know, software development is a team sport and great teams build great software. And obviously helping others is very crucial because, you know, the more you grow in your career, the more you become a multiplier for others and helping others is one of your main responsibilities. So all of these skills are, are very, very important for you to develop and that are going to be able to— they're going to be able that you showcase the skills that are needed to grow to a lead role and then also be successful in a lead role as well. Now let's go to the second thing is After becoming a senior software engineer, it's important that you at least know in which path you wish to, to grow after. So there are 3 main paths in software development. Obviously, there are many more niche, niche type paths, and there are also like a product management option as well, but we will focus on these 3 in particular. So the first one is obviously individual contributor. That is the, that is the path that we all start with as engineers. And the first kind of elite lead role in an individual contributor path is a staff software engineer, and that is similar equivalent to tech lead. And then also you can grow to a principal software engineer, and you know, some companies also have a distinguished software engineer as well. The second option is management path, and team lead is kind of the first step in a management path. Then is also engineering manager, director of engineering, and and VPM engineering. And then in the architecture side, you have a software architect, senior software architect, principal staff software architect. You know, important thing to know here is that every company has different titles for architects. It really depends on that specific company. But yeah, and also there are many different niche, niches when it comes to architects. You know, there may be distributed architect, that there may be microservice architect, There may be architects, mobile architect, and so on. There are many different kinds of architects that companies need. So my recommendation here is to at least know a little bit in which particular path you wish to grow. The best case scenario would be that you know exactly in which path you want to grow, and the reason is that The problem I had personally is as soon as, you know, when I was a senior software engineer for some time, I was— I didn't know exactly in which path I wanted to grow. I didn't know if I wanted to become an architect or wanted to become a manager or a staff software engineer. And my manager didn't know exactly where they should put me in order to showcase the particular skills needed into to grow into the next, next, next role. So that was— I was, I was feeling kind of stuck in a senior software engineer position, but luckily after, after some time I was offered a team lead position and I took it, and that was one of the greatest decisions I have made. But I think that was more of a luck. I didn't actually intentionally focus on achieving that. But if you put intentional effort into, into getting into that goal, it's going to be much bigger chance for you to grow to that particular role. And yeah, if you know and when you know, it's going to make it so much easier then to go to the next step, which is make sure to let your manager know about your goals and aspirations. And the reasons for that is, you know, what I mentioned before is if your manager knows in which direction you want to grow, the more likely they are going to put you in a position where you can showcase the skills needed to be successful. And yeah, if you know already in which path you want to grow, then it's going to be much easier for your manager to do that. There's also an option for you to ask your manager as well. What, what would be their recommendation, and they can help you with that as well. I think, you know, my recommendation here is to ask as many people as possible to get more insights on what, what you may, you know, expect growing into a certain, certain position, and then try to make a decision and then try to make a goal. Don't be like me and, you know, don't, don't know exactly in which path you wish to grow, but at least have an idea and direction on you on your next step. Also, important thing to note is that many people, you know, it's not, it's not like you're making a lifelong decision. It's something that many people change after a certain period of time. Like, for example, some, some person grows to Staff Software Engineer and then changes direction to become an architect or become a manager. And similar, like, for, for managers A lot of managers go back to being ICs, to staff software engineer roles, or becoming an architect. So you can change paths, you know, quite easily because a lot of the skills that you develop in any of the paths is going to be useful in another path as well. So yeah, the goal here for you would be that you get some sort of a plan, kind of like a checklist. That is going to be dependent on specific, specific set of things to do. And also that would be commitment of time as well. So for example, in the next 6 months or the next 12 months, you will, you will do this, this, this, this and that. And after that, you can expect to, to be able to get promoted to, to the next position. That will be the best case scenario if you can get that. Obviously, some companies have that more structured and have that already prepared. But in especially more smaller companies, that is not that structured, and you need to do a little bit of more proactivity and suggestions on what particular things to showcase, and then work together with, with your manager to showcase those skills and then get promoted that way. Okay, now that we know exactly, you know, in which path we want to grow, and then also we, we tell our manager about our goals and aspirations. Then the next thing is very important is to keep a brag list of all the wins that you have achieved. And the reason is exactly what, what we mentioned before, and that is, you know, you want that your manager knows, knows exactly how well are you doing in your role. And your manager doesn't see everything. Your manager sees just, let's say, 40%, 30% of everything that you do. And you want to remind them regularly of all the great things that you're doing. And keeping a brag list of all the wins is a really great way to showcase that. And there are two reasons why keeping a brag list is such a very important thing to do. And obviously the first one we mentioned is you are able to present your results and achievements much better. And the second thing is that obviously, you know, imposter syndrome is very, very common in our industry. And we all feel like sometimes that we are not good enough, or maybe that next position, that next role is, is something that we are not capable enough. But if we are keeping the list of wins that we achieve regularly, then we have all the evidence that we can do that in that list. So yeah, extremely powerful thing to do. Personally, I have a Notion template which have helped me a lot, immensely throughout my career., and it's available to the paid subscribers of my Engineering Leadership newsletter. The link is in the description if you want to, if you want to use that. But also, you know, for me personally, what's important, what is, what is important for me is that you are noting down your wins regularly. So you can also use like Google Docs, you can also use a text pad, you can use notes application, whatever, whatever works for you. So Yeah, that, that is, that is, that is important. Let's go to the next one. And this is a very crucial, important thing. And the reason for that is that the more you grow in your career, the more ambiguous the challenges are going to be, and the more is going to be expected that you proactively provide the the, um, you, you proactively provide solutions to the challenges, and then you, you actually take ownership and also resolve these challenges as well. So that, that is, that is my recommendation here, is try to find impactful, uh, improvements inside the code base, and then also propose them, and then also own, own the implementation. And You want to do this as frequent as possible. You don't want to be just waiting for, for tasks to be, to be given to you, but you want to proactively look for what is going to provide the biggest impact. And this is a great illustration of the impact of different challenges. And the more you go down, the more impactful the challenges are going to be. So obviously already team challenges are already very, very impactful. But if you go into the engineering org challenges or if you go into the business challenges, those are going to be very, very, uh, note those are going to be very, very impactful and those are going to be, um, you know, something that are going to increase your reputation a lot throughout the company. And, you know, the biggest, the more impactful challenge you can solve, the better the case you're going to have to get promoted to to your next position. So yeah, try to find, you know, the most impactful challenges. And then also, you know, you showcase that you can successfully also deliver the solution of that project. And you don't need to do that alone. You can also, you know, the better thing is also to, you know, you propose a project and then you also, you also work together with your team to finish that project. That is also going to showcase that, You can already take a project and you can lead it successfully from start to finish and also bring, bring other team members along with it. Those are the signs that you are able to do a tech lead or a team lead position successfully. Okay, now let's go to the sixth step, which is the last one but not the least one. So you want to become product and business-minded engineer. That is very important, especially in current times, you know, where tools are getting better and better and, you know, engineers are getting closer to product and business. And the more is going to be expected for you to know already what kind of challenges, you know, you should be solving and not be just given the tasks to be solving those challenges, right? So, um, I like to say that good engineers are thinking like product managers. And obviously you're probably pretty good in technical side already. You want to develop, you know, understanding better your— the customers and also understanding better the business. That is, that is the two things that I highly recommend for you to focus on. And I'll be giving out some of the tips that I recommend on how you can get better. On this. And the first one is, you know, pairing with non-technical people. Go, you know, speaking with, you know, marketing managers, product managers, sales representatives, compliance managers, designers, and so on. All of these people are going to give you insights on their challenges, their problems, and so on. And you will much more understand the product their problems, their challenges, and you will much easier then map technical solutions to try to potentially solve this, these problems. The next tip is, you know, explaining technical solutions to non-technical people. And the reason for this is that if you are able to clearly explain a technical solution to a marketing manager, to a sales, sales manager, the compliance manager, you understand the technical solution pretty well and also you're able to speak so simple that they're able to understand it. And that already means that you understand their specific side and you understand the technical side as well. You are not able to speak so simply and so clearly if you don't understand the way they are thinking. So always keep that in mind. If you can explain a complex thing simply to any non-technical people, you know that technical solution pretty well, and you can also put yourself in their shoes and say things in a way that resonates with them. And the next one is ask as many, you know, product and business-oriented questions and also customer-oriented questions before making any kind of technical decision. Decisions, I recommend, you know, going to your product manager, to any kind of business-oriented people and ask them as many questions as possible. That is going to get you so much better understanding of, you know, the product and also the business. Where are the business challenges? What kind of things do we want to build and where do we want to be as a business? Maybe in 1 month, in 3 months, in 6 months, in 1 year. As soon as you understand that, it's going to be so much easier for you to map technical solutions to solve this particular challenges and so on. The next thing is, you know, talking directly with the customers. If you can do that, it's— you are going to understand the pain points, the problems, the challenges of your users and customers a lot faster, a lot better. And again, you're going to be able to make much better technical decisions. Because of it. The next one is something that is very dear to me because freelance work has been crucial for me progressing in my career. And the reason is, especially if you're working with non-technical clients, you, you need to understand business and you need to understand their challenges that they're facing in order to find the— in order to propose the right technical solution. Normally they will come to you already with the technical solution in mind, but in 99%, that is going to be a wrong solution. You need to find what is actually their pain point, what is actually their challenge, and then you need to propose the right solution. And at the same time, you need to do good planning, you need to do good communication, and you need to deliver the right solution for them. Because the, the— what you don't want to do is just, just deliver some sort of like a technical solution that they ask for, but then it's, it's actually totally something that, that they don't need. That is what you don't want. And the next one is, you know, build a product and try to monetize it. And the reason for this is because, you know, building a product is fine, is fun. But, you know, trying to get users and trying to monetize it is, is the hard part. It's really tough to do that. And if you're trying to do that, you will understand the business side, you will understand marketing a lot better, you will understand the product side a lot better. And yeah, I highly recommend doing that and you're going to be surprised how many things are you going to be learning, learning if you do that. I hope this video has been helpful to you. If, if you want to dive deeper into growing from senior engineer to a lead role, I teach a course. It's called Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and Thrive in the Role. We are starting the cohort in September and the next one is going to be next year. So I will put the link in the description if you might be interested. And also, you know, check out my newsletter Engineering Leadership. I publish 2 new articles every week. And yeah, thanks, thanks a lot for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.