Outcomes

• Produces a work output by taking a complex user story, breaking it down into sub-tasks, and completing the sub-tasks with relative ease - own design, coding, testing all the way through deployment of each of those sub-tasks.
• Identifies and proactively tackles technical debt before it grows into something that requires significant up-front work to resolve. A rule of thumb is to start looking into root cause of issues whenever there is noise. There is no smoke without fire.
• Strike the right balance between fixing the problem at hand and focusing on finding the root cause of problem. For example, if it’s a production issue the priority is to fix the immediate problem and collect all the data necessary for root cause analysis. In a non-production environment, the focus should be on finding the root cause and fixing it the right way to make sure the problem doesn’t occur again.
• Active involvement and mentorship of junior engineers doing code reviews resulting in up leveling the skill sets for the entire team

How to achieve the Outcome

Functional Acumen Required:

• A rock solid engineer who is master of at least one domain. This could be a functional domain like Securities or Precious Metals or a technical domain like Distributed Systems, Cryptography, Databases, AWS, etc.
• Demonstrates a solid understanding of core engineering concepts. Strong understanding of Data Structures and Algorithms
• Able to understand and articulate the design and architecture of the entire system.

Search for the truth:

• Focus on the “why”. Proactively asks questions to understand the problem we are trying to solve
• Understands the tradeoffs needed in creating good software in their area, which is often times an entire product or platform feature
• Proactively identifies problems with requirements (lack of clarity, inconsistencies, technical limitations) for their own work and adjacent work, and communicate these issues early to help course-correct.

Shared Commitment to Excellence:

• Able to work independently with very little oversight beyond high-level direction
• Participates extensively in code reviews, mentors others via code reviews and pairing, document thoroughly as well as frequently presenting at team meetings

Be An Owner:

• Takes the initiative to identify and solve important problems even if they are in their domain or work area because of the ability to spot problems downstream and work with others to fix them before they become fires.
• Shows initiative beyond merely knocking tasks off a list. Identifies and suggests areas of future work for themselves and their teams.

Realtime Candor:

• Communicates effectively, consistently and in a timely fashion, across functions and is able to work well with the Product, UX and business teams. The ability to get work done across teams goes beyond mere proactive status updates (although that is expected as well).
• Play a leadership role in making the right trade-offs with other teams even when doing so might mean more work for themselves, as long as that is the right thing to do.