SFIA levels explained: the 7 levels of developer responsibility
Fennec team · 12 Jan 2026 · 4 min read
Ask five engineers what "senior" means and you'll get five different answers, because the word alone doesn't mean much. SFIA, the Skills Framework for the Information Age, is the industry's attempt at a straight answer: seven levels of responsibility, from Follow to Set Strategy, defined by autonomy and impact rather than whatever a company decided to print on your offer letter.
None of it is tied to a job title. A "senior engineer" at one company might be a SFIA 3, and a SFIA 4 somewhere else, same title, different level of actual ownership. What places you is the evidence: the calls you made without being told to, the messes you cleaned up nobody assigned you, and how much of the outcome came down to you specifically rather than the team around you. That's what each level below is really describing.
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Level 1: Follow
“Entry level, learning under close supervision.”
Junior Developer, Graduate Engineer, Trainee, whatever it says on your offer letter, level 1 has one tell: someone is checking your work at every step, not just glancing at the finished thing. That's not a knock, everyone starts here.
Your evidence is exactly that guided work: a bug fix reviewed line by line, a feature built by copying an existing pattern with someone watching, a course you actually finished. Level 2 looks almost the same from the outside, just with less hand-holding, so the tell you're ready is the moment a reviewer stops needing to check every step.
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Level 2: Assist
“Building independence, working under routine supervision.”
Developer, Software Engineer I, this is the "trusted with the easy stuff" level. Guidance stops being constant and becomes occasional, mostly reserved for whatever's actually hard.
Look at what you did with only occasional guidance: a component or endpoint you built solo from an existing pattern, tests you wrote because you thought to, a bug you diagnosed without being pointed at it. Level 3 means shipping with zero supervision, so the honest move is picking something slightly outside your comfort zone and seeing if you land it alone.
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Level 3: Apply
“Solid practitioner, delivering complex work independently.”
Software Engineer, Mid-level Engineer, somewhere in here you cross a real line: you ship without supervision, start to finish, on your own steam.
The evidence writes itself once you're here: features taken from idea to production solo, review comments that actually changed how something shipped, problems you fixed that nobody assigned you. Level 4 isn't really about skill anymore, it's about scope, you start being responsible for how other people's work turns out too, so start looking for chances to take that on.
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Level 4: Enable
“Senior practitioner, owning outcomes and enabling others.”
Senior Engineer, Staff Engineer, Tech Lead, the title matters less than the tell: people start coming to you by default when they're stuck, not just when a senior happens to be busy.
Your evidence is standards other people follow because you set them, technical calls that stuck, the engineers who came to you first. Level 5 stretches your scope past your own team entirely, so start looking for a decision that reaches work you don't personally touch.
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Level 5: Ensure & Advise
“Technical authority, impact measured across teams.”
Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or an Engineering Manager running more than one team, whichever fits, the shift is that your decisions start shaping how other teams work, not just yours.
Look for decisions that shaped multiple teams, other teams asking for your input before they'd decided anything, standards you wrote that outlived the project that prompted them. Level 6 is organisation-wide and usually comes with a title change too, Director, Distinguished Engineer, VP, as much as a change in what you're actually doing.
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Level 6: Initiate & Influence
“Organisational leader, defining direction at scale.”
Director of Engineering, Distinguished Engineer, VP, this level shows up as direction the organisation follows without you having to push it.
Look for direction you set at that scale: a strategy document, a culture shift, a technology bet that paid off, recognition from outside your own company. Level 7 is board and C-suite territory, setting direction for the business itself, not just for engineering.
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Level 7: Set Strategy
“C-suite and board-level, setting organisational direction.”
CTO, enterprise VP of Engineering, Chief Architect, decisions here are made at board level and shape the business, not only how engineering runs inside it.
Look for organisation-wide or board-level calls you drove, technology strategy that moved the business rather than just the codebase. There's no level 8, at this point the company's results are your evidence.