Roadmap to Staff Engineer Roundtable: From Senior to Staff & beyond

At our latest roundtable, we brought together Senior Engineers who are aiming for Staff and Principal roles — a career step that’s less about writing better code and more about influence, breadth, and enabling others to have greater impact. The session focused on the real challenges, lessons, and mindset shifts involved in moving into IC leadership.

Engineering careers have changed a lot over the last decade. Progression no longer depends on moving into people management. Staff and Principal roles now offer a strong path for individual contributors who want to grow their technical depth and leadership skills without managing teams. We’re seeing more of these roles appear across our clients, with a clear trend toward promoting internally and showing visible routes for growth.

Many of our candidates have told us they want to take this path, so we brought them together to hear from two engineers who’ve successfully made the leap. Abby and Jo led a thoughtful and honest conversation, grounding the discussion in their own experiences and encouraging the group to share theirs.

Abby Bangser, Principal Engineer at Syntasso. Abby is an international keynote speaker (KubeCon / LeadDev), a Team Topologies advocate, and co-host of the #CoffeeOps London meetup.
Joachim Draeger, Principal Engineer at Signal AI. Joachim has progressed from Senior to Staff to Principal within the same scaling AI organisation.

💡 Download the key takeaways sheet here 💡

Takeaways:

Growing into Staff+

• Be clear about why you want the next step: learning / influence / compensation / recognition. Your motivation will shape your next move.
• Shadow or reverse-shadow senior leaders to fill knowledge gaps & learn how they make decisions.
• Build cross-functional influence by showing technical leadership, even on smaller projects.
• Every company defines “Staff” & “Principal” differently, pick an environment that aligns with your goals & scale of impact

Creating growth opportunities in flat or small organisations

• Separate title from behaviour. Act like a Staff IC before you have the title by spotting problems, driving initiatives & demonstrating ownership. Recognition tends to follow demonstrated behaviour.
• Seek impact beyond your immediate team. e.g. driving engineering standards or mentoring peers.
• Shift from independence (doing the work well) to entrepreneurship (finding the work that needs doing).

Infuencing decisions

• Senior ICs evolve from “problem solvers” to “influencers". Progression depends on your ability to align, communicate & persuade, rather than control.
• Disagree & commit: Voice your opinion early, align on decisions, then deliver with full ownership.
• Focus on alignment over consensus. Clarity and follow-through matter more than everyone agreeing.
• Build relationships outside your team: PMs, design, leadership. Influence begins with trust & informal conversations can build lasting alignment.
• Be an accelerant rather than a barrier by building on other people’s ideas.
• Learn to listen to business priorities and connect engineering goals to commercial & business impact.
• Persistence pays off - influence grows over time through consistent input, curiosity & collaboration.

Dealing with conflicting opinions

1. Understand your team’s views & potential detractors.
2. Define measurable outcomes: how will you know if the direction chosen is working?
3. Shorten the feedback loop: propose quick, low-risk trials (e.g. a 30-day closed test) to validate ideas faster.

Leadership mindset

• Zoom out to outcomes. Focus on solving the right problems, not just the most technically interesting ones.
• Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. Show curiosity and confidence in how you’ll figure things out — it builds trust and sets the tone for learning.
• Be the bridge between technical design and company strategy.

Interview tips

• Show depth (clear reasoning) & introspection (what you learned from mistakes).
• Go beyond what you built - explain why you made certain choices, what alternatives you explored & how your decisions drove business outcomes.
• Understand and own your risk profile - what your career story says about you & how you’ve balanced stability & adaptability. Maybe you’ve spent a long time at one company, or maybe you’ve moved through several roles and environments. Be ready to explain what you’ve learnt from your choices, the strengths they give you, and the gaps they may create.
• Show you’ve done some research on the fundamental shift from IC to ‘Change agent’ Interviews are two-way.
• Don’t be afraid to push back or explore how the company handles things like decision making & learning from failure.
• You’ll get the most value from others when you’re clear on what you need from them:
  Sponsor: Advocates for you & opens doors.
  Coach: Builds your skills with feedback & guidance.
  Mentor: Offers perspective & a sounding board.

If you're keen to learn more or get involved, reach out to our event organiser and Principal Software Engineering consultant, Tom Pearson.

At Burns Sheehan, we believe in doing more than recruitment, we build communities across the tech sector.

Our roundtables are designed to bring together like-minded engineering leaders to share challenges, opportunities, and the skills that define the next generation of tech leadership.

We’ve seen the real impact these conversations can have. From shared learnings to new collaborations, our previous sessions have sparked lasting connections and actionable insights across the tech community. Check out the take aways from a previous session here: