A curated list of awesome Staff-plus & leadership engineering resources.
What is a Staff Engineer?
A Staff Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for guiding complex projects, mentoring engineers, and influencing the technical direction of a company, often bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and strategic decision-making.
See Contributing. Contributions are welcome!
Main is the list of the most important resources of the discipline, written by pioneers and important public figures.
- Staff Engineer - 📚 Likely the first and one of the most important synthesis of the Staff Engineering discipline
- The Staff Engineer's path - 📚 A guide for staff-plus engineers (how to understand your role, manage your time, master strategic thinking, and set the standard for technical work)
- Understanding the role of a Staff engineer - 🎬 How can you best define your own personal progression when your org doesn’t have a clear career ladder?
- The Secret of finding Impactful Projects to Land as Staff-plus Engineer role - 🎬 How to sharp your soft skills & find impactful projects as an engineer?
- Three Things Blocking Your Promotion to Staff/Principal Engineer (from an Amazon Principal Engineer) - 🎬 Get promoted faster to Staff/Principal Engineer thanks to some excellent advices
- The Staff Engineer Mindset with Tanya Reilly - 🎬 In less than 2 minutes, Understand the mindset shift needed to become a Staff Engineer.
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications - 📚 A deep dive into building scalable, maintainable, and robust systems, a key skill for staff engineers.
- Software Architecture Patterns - 📰 Articles and resources by Martin Fowler on software architecture and design.
- What does a Staff Software Engineer at FAANG Do? - 🎬 Interview of a Staff Software Engineer at Facebook
- Technical Leadership and glue work - 🎬 A masterclass on Glue work as a Staff plus engineer
- How the top 1% Of Engineers Are Judged - 🎬 A Staff Engineers interviews Ethan Evans on his expectations on Staff-plus engineers (retired SVP of Eng. at Amazon)
- Common traits of top engineers - 🎬 What common traits can we observe when looking at Staff Engineers?
- Principal Engineer Roles Framework - 📰 Blog post describing the framework used at Amazon to optimize the impact of their Principal Engineers (by Amazon's VP Technology)
- The mythical 10X programmer - 📰 Blog post sharing opinion on programmer productivity & excellent ways of working
- How to lead without authority - 📰 (long) Blog post guiding though influencing patterns with practical examples
- Why are your ideas being rejected? - 📰 Opinionated blog post helping to reflect on the frustration of having your ideas rejected
- Say the hard thing - 📰 Feedback is hard, but it's a key part of the job
- Master the art of influence and persuasion - 📚 Successful influence is persuasion, a full guide to get there
- The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well - 📚 A book on leadership practices that align with the responsibilities of staff engineers.
- The Glue Work Guide - 📰 A blog post on the often-overlooked "glue work" that staff engineers excel at.
- The Engineer/Manager Pendulum - 🎬 The most powerful senior engineering leaders tend to be people who have done both, swinging back and forth between management and engineering
- Amazon Leadership Principles - 📚 Core Amazon principles for discussing and deciding the best way to solve a problem in everyday life.
- Operating as a Staff Engineer in a leaderless scope - 🎬 As a Staff Engineer, you may find yourself in a large scope where a manager, Director or VP of Engineering, is missing, needing to fill the gaps.
- The Manager's Path - 📚 A guide to navigating the transition from individual contributor to leadership roles, with insights relevant to staff engineers.
- An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management - 📚 A book that explores the systems and processes behind effective engineering leadership.
- Radical Candor - 📚 A framework for giving and receiving feedback effectively, a critical skill for staff engineers.
- Turn the Ship Around! - 📚 A book on creating leadership at every level, relevant for staff engineers leading without authority.
- How To Prep For Tech Interviews While Working Full-Time - 🎬 Staff-plus schedule can be overwhelming, preparing for interview too, tips on how to survive both combined
- awesome-behavioral-interviews - 👩💻Awesome tips and resources to prepare for Behavioral interviews
- Tech Interview Handbook - 👩💻 A curated technical interview preparation materials for busy engineers
- LeetCode - 💻 Can we really omit to list it?
- Levels.fyi - 💻 A resource for understanding compensation and leveling across companies, useful for staff engineers preparing for interviews.
- Interviewing.io - 💻 A platform for practicing technical interviews anonymously.
- 🇫🇷 C'est une bonne situation ça, Staff Engineer? - 🎬 Introduction to Staff engineering in French
- 🇫🇷Salaire à 6 chiffres dans la tech: les rôles que vous ne connaissez pas - 🎬 In-depth zoom on the role, the matter of generating impact, examples, salaries, career advices
- 🇫🇷Quand les fondateurs CTO partent et que les Principals Engineers arrivent - 🎬 Get answers to the following questions: What's the life of a principal engineer? How to get there? How are they collaborating with CTOs?
- 🇫🇷Devenir Staff Engineer : comment et pourquoi ? - 📰 Article relating the transition to staff engineer from a Principal Engineer @Back Market perspective
- 🇫🇷Démystifier la complexité des organisations tech pour mieux les faire évoluer - 🎧 A podcast mentioning multiple aspect of IC role and impact on the organization
- 🇫🇷Staff Engineer : Les défis, les galères, et comment les surmonter - 🎬 A practical talk where experienced staff-plus share real stories and concrete tips to empower fellow Staffs
- 🇫🇷 Staff42 - The French Staff Engineer community
- Engineering Leadership Slack - 🌍 A Slack community for engineering leaders, including staff engineers.
- 🇩🇪Berlin Software Engineering Leadership Meetup Group - A meetup to network with other engineering leaders: Tech leads, Engineering managers, Staff engineers, etc
- 🇪🇸LeadDev Barcelona - The Barcelona LeadDev community
- 🇵🇱Engineering Leadership Warsaw - A dynamic Engineering Leadership community in Warsaw
- 🇺🇸LeadDev Meetup - New York - The NYC LeadDev community
- 🇺🇸LeadDev San Francisco - The SF LeadDev community
- 🇺🇸LeadDev Seattle - The Seattle LeadDev community
- 🌍 Rands leadership Slack - The famous Rands leadership Slack, created several years ago !
- 🌍 Reddit - The Staff Engineer subreddit
- 🇬🇧 LDX3 - 👩 Staff Plus London became LDX3
- 🇺🇸 LeadDev New York - 👩 2 days event for staff, principal and distinguished engineers in NYC
- 🇩🇪 LeadDev Berlin - 👩 2 days event for staff, principal and distinguished engineers in Berlin
- Awesome CTO - Everything you need to be an awesome CTO !
Contributing guidelines can be found here.
This list is under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Terms of the license are summarized here.