Expectations by Level

Role cards say what your role owns. This page says what good looks like at your level inside that role. It exists so “am I doing enough?” has an answer you can check yourself, instead of one you infer from tone in a review.

The thing that changes across levels is how much ambiguity you absorb — not hours worked or lines written.

flowchart LR
  J["Junior"] --> I["Intermediate"] --> S["Senior"] --> L["Lead"]
  J -.- JA["Handed a ready story<br/>Absorbs no ambiguity"]
  I -.- IA["Handed a feature<br/>Absorbs it inside the feature"]
  S -.- SA["Handed a problem<br/>Absorbs it across the domain"]
  L -.- LA["Handed an outcome<br/>Absorbs it across the team"]

The ladder

	Junior	Intermediate	Senior	Lead
You’re handed	A story that already meets DoR	A feature, some detail missing	A problem, solution not yet chosen	An outcome and a team
You ask for help	After ~30 minutes genuinely stuck	After trying two approaches	Rarely — you bring options, not questions	You escalate with a recommendation attached
Estimation	Your own task, with your lead	Your own feature	The feature and the risk inside it	The team’s commitment
Code review	Receives it, applies it	Reviews peers	Reviews juniors, sets the patterns	Owns the standard and its exceptions
Tests	Unit tests for your own code	Unit + integration for your feature	Decides what is worth testing	Owns the coverage gate
When prod breaks	Assists whoever is fixing it	Fixes your own code	Fixes anything in your domain	Owns the response and the postmortem
Client contact	None	Through the PM only	Technical calls, PM present	Represents the team’s position
You multiply others by	Asking questions that improve the story	Reviewing well and on time	Mentoring and unblocking	Hiring, growing, removing obstacles

How to use it

• In your 1-on-1. Pick one row you want to move up. One — not eight.
• When you can’t decide whether to escalate. Read the “you ask for help” cell for your level.
• It is not a performance score. These are behaviours, not a ranking. Almost nobody sits in one column across every row, and that’s normal.
• Changing level is a hiring decision. Team Lead drives, CEO approves — see Decision Rights.

Note

Mobile doesn’t use levels. The team is a lead and two developers, so expectations are set directly by the Mobile Lead rather than by a label. The daily loop applies unchanged, and so do the “you ask for help” and “when prod breaks” rows — only the Junior/Intermediate/Senior titles don’t apply.

Tip

The hardest jump is Intermediate → Senior, and it isn’t technical. It’s the shift from “I finished my part” to “I noticed the part nobody owned.” If you want that jump, that’s the row to work on.