Senior Engineer

Senior engineers are the backbone of our engineering efforts, holding ultimate responsibility for critical parts of our infrastructure and application.

Typical timeframe: 1-3 years

1. Leadership

• Able to identify problems with the product team and process, investigate potential causes, implement solutions/next steps, and proactively inform the right people of the change. They go outside their immediate remit when they spot an issue.

• Able to make a case why something should be fixed and have higher priority compared to what was originally planned.

• When seeing a teammate struggling, they will help them.

• Is capable of taking a more junior engineer under their wing and help them succeed.

2. Technical Skills

• A large amount of experience in multiple areas (e.g. background pull, load balancer, alerts, wearables, lab tests).

• Able to identify and communicate problems with technology, investigate potential causes, and propose solutions/next steps.

• Able to identify tech areas that require ownership/ improvement.

• Keeps up with industry best practices.

• Understand that there are no silver bullets and are able to balance the pros and cons of multiple approaches.

3. Communication

• Communicates effectively with non-technical audiences. Able to explain their work to the wider company, including to a non-technical audience. Able to explain complex technical concepts to peers.

• Can explain the impact of their work to non-technical stakeholders.

• Prefer async over sync communication. Is able to express themselves effectively in writing.

• Tweaks their communication style depending on the audience.

• Is capable of guiding the flow of a meeting to a productive outcome.

• Is able to negotiate features and convince their peers.

4. Delivery

• Able to deliver medium to large features individually or with support from peers.

• Is able to balance cutting scope with value being delivered.

• Understands that we are in the same boat and sometimes helping a colleague will bring more value to the company.

• Proactively communicates when there are delays in the feature.

• Shows initiative to pick up problems in and out of their domain and doesn’t hesitate to find a solution to the problem

5. Business Knowledge

• Understand the mission and objectives of the company and can use this over a 1 month horizon to prioritise tasks appropriately.

• Has a good sense of how lab testing and wearables products work and how they will combine in the future.