Introduction to Principal and Staff Engineering

As a principal engineer (PE), you’ll find out that your whispers become roars. Casual comments you make in meetings will magically transform into roadmap items. Suddenly, you have a megaphone that you’re speaking out of at all times. Many PEs are stunned at how much people believe in their ideas and how much faith they have in them.

In the last year, I saw a story from a newly minted PE. He filed a ticket to a sub-team in his organization with the intent to brainstorm a solution to a problem in the future. He woke up the next day, and to his surprise, he saw comments on the ticket that a design was made, and a code review was sent out for the issue. I found this fascinating and hysterical because of the impact PEs can have with such minor comments. And what was even funnier was we all started to ask him to file tickets to our teams so that hopefully work we needed would get done just as quickly.

In order to get promoted to PE, it generally takes about 1-2 years once you have a clearly defined principal-scoped project. And the responsibilities are completely different than a typical senior SDE. Most of the skills here have nothing to do directly with a specific technology. It’s almost like a brand new role. And because the promotion process is so difficult, switching teams, jobs, or positions usually means you will reset or delay this process.

The below role overview lists some of the key responsibilities and differences between a senior SDE, but I want to call special attention to some of the words in bold. Take time to read these differences and compare them to your responsibilities as a senior engineer.

Role Overview

1. Completely independent, requires close to zero supervision. Capable of taking entire products without definition, providing clarity, and delivering them.
2. Leads multiple teams. Typically a site lead/complete expert in an area.
3. Works closely with customers. Is an advocate for the product and business.
4. Strategical and sometimes tactical. Thinks about the broader product, not just projects and tasks.
5. Defines culture and standards for an entire organization.
6. Owns organization-level architecture/product solutions. Influences technology direction for organization.
7. Grows seniors into principal/staff engineers.
8. Advocates and represents the broader tech population
9. Is an escalation path
10. Balances business and technical constraints
11. Often report to Directors, GMs, VPs
12. Usually 10+ years of SDE experience

Amazon Principal Engineering Tenets

Amazon principal engineers have a unique set of tenets which go beyond the standard leadership principles. You can find these by searching for Amazon’s PE tenets or clicking here. These tenets are great to apply to any job. PEs go above and beyond core leadership principles.

Exemplary Practitioner

• Hands-on, and lead by example.
• Deliver artifacts that set the standard for engineering excellence (be it designs, algorithms, etc).
• Be close to the details; it’s required to earn the respect needed to be effective technical leaders.

Technically Fearless

• Tackle intrinsically hard problems.
• Venture beyond comfortable approaches if necessary.
• Acquire expertise as needed.
• Pioneer new spaces, and inspire others as to what’s possible.

Lead With Empathy

• You’re why others feel heard, respected, and empowered.
• Be responsible for you words & tone.
• Build diverse and inclusive relationships.
• Defend the technical community.
• Don’t be a jerk
• While you might be right, because you’re often right all the time, it won’t matter if nobody listens to you.

Illuminate and Clarify

• Bring clarity to complex problems.
• Demonstrate smart ways to simplify.
• Frame problems in terms of customer and business context.
• Probe assumptions, illuminate pitfalls, and foster shared understanding.

Balanced and Pragmatic

• Apply judgment and experience to problems.
• Balance trade-offs between competing interests (e.g., product, technical, and business).
• Simplify processes and technologies while advocating for a long-term vision.

Respect What Came Before

• Be grateful to your predecessors.
• Recognize old code has many lessons.
• Understand most problems aren’t new.
• Work with partner teams and reduce duplication.

Learn, Educate, and Advocate

• Learn new technology (read papers, participate in conferences, write papers, etc)
• Understand trends (and fads) across the industry
• Balance vision and results

Flexible in Appproach

• Accept there are many paths to success.
• Balance business with technology.
• Adapt approach to meet the needs of a team, project, and product.
• Offer differing views and be willing to change your mind.
• Recognize many problems have many viable solutions.
• Sometimes, the solution is to solve a different problem or to not solve the problem at all.

Have Resounding Impact

• Go beyond “delivers results.”
• Accept it’s about outcomes, not fame.
• Align teams and leaders.
• Amplify impact by aligning teams.

Posts in this Series

This post is the first post in the series, be sure to check out the full series:

1. Introduction to Principal and Staff Engineering
2. Self Discovery and Career Growth to Principal Engineering
3. Optimizing Impact and the Realities of Principal Engineering

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