Career framework

This is how growing your career here works. It is deliberately light while we are small: a simple shape everyone can hold in their head, rather than a thick competency matrix that would outgrow us in a year. Expect it to get more detailed as we do.

The shape

We describe every level through the same three lenses, so a step up means the same kind of change wherever you sit:

• What you work on — the complexity of the problems you take on, and the impact of getting them right.
• How you work with others — how far your influence reaches, from your own tasks to a team, an engagement, or the whole company.
• Craft — the depth and breadth of your skills, and how much others rely on your judgement.

The levels

There are four broad levels. They are a single track, whatever your discipline: an engineer, a delivery lead and a data specialist at the same level are doing recognisably the same size of job, not the same tasks.

Level	What you work on	How you work with others	Craft
Associate	Well-defined tasks, with support close by.	You own your own work and ask early when stuck.	Building strong fundamentals in your discipline.
Consultant	Whole features and problems, start to finish.	A dependable member of a delivery team; you help those around you.	Solid and independent in your craft.
Senior	Ambiguous, higher-risk problems across a stream of work.	You set the standard on an engagement and grow the people on it.	A go-to for your specialism; others check their thinking with you.
Principal	The hardest problems, and the ones nobody has framed yet.	You shape how we work across engagements and win trust with clients.	Deep expertise that raises the bar for the whole company.

Team and practice leadership build on the Principal level rather than replacing it, and we will write those up as we need them.

Roles are not levels or titles either. On a small engagement one person is often the account lead, the delivery lead and the tech lead at once, whatever their level. Holding several roles is normal here, not a sign that something is unclear.

How you move up

Progression is about consistently working at the next level, not time served. In practice you are promoted once you are already operating there, so a promotion recognises a change that has already happened rather than betting on one that might.

A few things follow from that:

• Sideways counts. Broadening into a new discipline, or going deeper in one, is real progression even when the level does not change.
• Your lead owns the conversation. They should be able to tell you where you are and what the next level looks like for you, with no surprises at a review.
• Focus beats breadth. Pick two or three areas to grow at a time rather than trying to move on everything at once.

Reviews and pay

We check in on progression regularly and lightly, as part of how people operations works, not as a once-a-year event. Pay tracks the level you are working at and is set fairly against it. If you want to understand where you sit or what the next step needs, your lead is the place to start.