What is a Senior Software Engineer at Scaleups?

How the role is typically defined at medium and large-sized venture-funded companies. Details from Honeycomb, Wise, Miro, Travelperk, Sentry, Sourcegraph, Remote.com and Urban Sports Club

What is a senior engineer, and what are typical expectations at the senior level?

In a previous issue, we covered what senior engineer expectations are at Big Tech companies. Today, we delve into how these expectations line up at scaleups, by which I mean venture-funded startups in the latter stages of funding, typically beyond Series C. Such companies usually employ more than 100 staff and often over 50 engineers.

In today’s issue, we cover:

1. Honeycomb’s seniority framework. Visualizing the increasing time between promotions, and the increasing ownership and scope of each level.

2. Larger scaleups. Companies with more than 1,000 employees, like Wise, Miro, and TravelPerk.

3. Mid-size scaleups. Scaleups with 200-1,000 employees, including Urban Sports Club, Sentry, Sourcegraph and Remote.com.

4. Comparison to Big Tech. Similarities exist, but the definition of “senior” differs. For example, scaleups often expect seniors to own business-critical projects, while Big Tech focuses more on maintainability.

1. Honeycomb’s seniority framework