<aside> 👥 Our career development framework is here to help you understand the expectations of your role, and to provide a common language for you and your manager to discuss and plan your career growth. It is also an important part of our larger goal of ensuring everyone is equitably recognized for the impact they have at work, and to reduce bias in promotions and hiring.
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The CE team is a single globally distributed team. A level is composed of four categories (or core competencies), each with a summary statement and several example behaviors. These core competencies are:
| Impact | Scope | Execution | Teamwork |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your work directly contributes to achieving the company’s strategic goals and long term success. | You have high productivity and output. You deliver on your direct responsibilities while also looking for opportunities for improvement - individually, as a team, our product, and company. | • You seek out opportunities, rather than waiting for them to come to you. | |
| • You put our customers and prospects first, orienting yourself to their success. | |||
| • You ask for help directly, when needed. | • You do not gate-keep, but rather aim to accelerate and unblock your colleagues. | ||
| • You communicate thoughtfully, clearly, and proactively to keep stakeholders informed and identify risks. | |||
| • You seek to help your teammates around you succeed; you win together. You reflect thoughtfully on your own performance and the performance of those around you, sharing helpful feedback for continued growth. |
We think of these three core competencies that every CE must demonstrate in order to serve our customers and our business: leadership, business, and technology. Within each pillared competency are defined core behaviors that CEs perform.
In most cases, a level builds on the expectations from the preceding levels, eg someone at level 2 must also meet the level 1 expectations. In addition to what is listed in our ladders (stored in Lattice, as well as shown below), we expect every customer engineer, at all levels, to exhibit our values. Also, rather than precede each bullet point with "consistently", we leave it as implicit. These are the expectations for ICs after they have completed their onboarding.
Team Leads are specially designated senior ICs that are elevated within the team to take on additional responsibilities in support of the overall success of the team and individuals. These individuals are not full-time managers but are intentionally given less IC scope than their peers so that they can contribute to higher level initiatives within the team and organization.
As a Team Lead, their scope and responsibility, in addition to the expectations of their defined IC level, includes:
| Ownership | Coordination | Support | Adjusts |
|---|---|---|---|
| responsible for team member adherence to team processes; facilitates and leads inspection of such processes for their team. Participates in intra- and inter-team projects as a leader. Represents the organization in select cross-functional initiatives. Represents technical needs and risks of teams’ book of business in forecast calls. | coordinates with team members and leadership on ad-hoc requests, process changes, and needs. Coordinates with adjacent teams and leaders on behalf of team needs. | directly supports team members day-to-day providing active coaching and mentorship on technical delivery. | listens to feedback from team members and adjacent teams getting to root cause of issues and identifies solutions and go-forward plans; guides the team through change. |
CE Manager Interview Process for Internal CE Candidates
We want to support the career progession of CEs on the Customer Engineering team based on their individual career goals and aspirations. For those that desire to move from an individual contributor (IC) role to a management role, the CE Manager Interview Process for Internal CE Candidates outlines how teammates would go about assessing their readiness for and applying for new CE Manager roles that open up. The goal of this process is provide clear visibility into what expectations should be for career advancement into management within the CE team.
Learn more about CEs transitioning to CE management CE Manager Interview Process for Internal CE Candidates.
| Level | Impact | Scope | Execution | Teamwork |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IC2 | Technical win rate achievement: 75% +-/ 5% | • Supports MM deals only. | ||
| • Gains in-depth knowledge of Sourcegraph features and capabilities. Knowledgeable about competitors relative to Sourcegraph, adept in articulating Sourcegraph's pros and cons, and able to align Sourcegraph's offerings with customer requirements. | ||||
| • Gains working knowledge of scripting and / or coding languages (eg GraphQL, python, Go, etc). | • Performing initial discovery to quality opportunities. | |||
| • Creating and presenting standard product demos. | ||||
| • Developing standard trial plans, understanding technical requirements and design using existing templates; may require oversight. | ||||
| • Guiding customer technical evaluation with minimal oversight. | ||||
| • When a problem is identified raises awareness of each to leadership while identifying potential delays and risks ensuring no loss of momentum to deal or relationship. | • Establishes mentee relationships with more tenured teammates; learning and incorporating their best practices. | |||
| • Builds rapport with sales and other Technical Success counterparts that leads to successful customer interactions. | ||||
| • Shares customer feedback with product and engineering. | ||||
| IC3 | Technical win rate achievement: 80% +-/ 5%. | • Supports MM and Ent deals. | ||
| • Possesses a firm understanding of competitors’ high-level capabilities (including a 'do nothing' mentality) and applies knowledge of these capabilities into objection-handling and solution positioning through differentiation. | ||||
| • Possesses comprehensive knowledge of the Sourcegraph platform and associated domain knowledge, educates prospective customers of all sizes on the value proposition of Sourcegraph. | ||||
| • Can develop code samples and snippets to inspire or unblock prospective or internal needs. | • Leading discovery processes, demonstrating an ability to understand customer needs, use cases, and their tech stack. | |||
| • Can design and deliver compelling, customized product demos. | ||||
| • Identifies opportunities to modify scope / use cases to ensure forward progress. | ||||
| • Able to build a clear and comprehensive trial plan (with complete success criteria) and technical design document. Leads the customer technical evaluations entirely self-directed. | ||||
| • Evaluates business opportunity in the scope of a technical evaluation and identifies the most expedient course to follow that aligns with the schedule and needs. | • Has a voice in forecast and pipeline reviews with Sales. | |||
| • Actively shares learnings within the CE team and across Technical Success and Sales. | ||||
| • Leveraging relationships with sales counterparts; continues to iterate approaches together that lead to improved outcomes. | ||||
| • Collaborates across Engineering and Product to inform product decisions based on experience. | ||||
| IC4 | Technical win rate achievement: 80%+. | • Supports Ent and Strategic deals. | ||
| • Advanced expertise in analyzing competitors' offerings compared to Sourcegraph, excels in strategically positioning Sourcegraph's unique benefits, and tailors solutions to address complex customer needs effectively. | ||||
| • Thorough knowledge of the developer ecosystem and DevOps; understands Developer tools companies use, how they use them, limitations of them, and how Sourcegraph fits in. | ||||
| • Ability to write and read code to automate workflows and/or prototype needs for customers. | • Demonstrating mastery around deal qualification. Able to influence scope/use cases to ensure forward progress. | |||
| • Leads complex multi-layered discovery processes, demonstrating an ability to identify and anticipate intricacies to customer needs. | ||||
| • Possesses ability to craft and deliver customized product demos for new and emerging use cases or applications of Sourcegraph products and features. | ||||
| • Proposes solutions or workarounds to issues/blockers/risks to positively impact the outcome. | ||||
| • Prioritizes quick lands and shortened evaluation periods where possible. Able to make distinction of when a full trial is required with priority towards quicker conversions/closure. If a trial is required, be able to design and guide a phased trial plan against complex customer needs. | ◦ Mentors and trains junior technical teammates. | |||
| â—¦ Leads internal initiatives. Anticipates need or disconnects, devises and proposes solutions that can solve the need; can point to positive outcomes and impact a result. | ||||
| â—¦ Possesses the ability to move groups to consensus within both sales and partnership development opportunities. â—¦ Actively collaborates with Engineering and Product on customer needs, challenges, and gaps; leading to positive outcomes. | ||||
| â—¦ Where issues arise, showcases initiative to troubleshoots and leverage skill sets within the team to help get unblocked first; leveraging other teams secondarily. | ||||
| IC5 | Technical win rate achievement: 85%+. | • Support Strategic deals, leading complex, large-scale, high-value sales opportunities. | ||
| • Expert in the developer ecosystem and advanced DevOps, with a deep understanding of developer tools and their integration with Sourcegraph. Able to articulate trends including use cases and challenges, and how they relate to Sourcegraph. | • Turns gaps into opportunities by formulating a plan for success and technical design, collaborating with internal teams as necessary. | |||
| • Identifies patterns of needs and subsequently delivers high-value, reusable content (both enablement and customer-facing) that measurably improves the team's effectiveness and execution. | ||||
| • Successfully guides complex, phased trial plans; pulls in internal teammates as required appropriately to lead to a successful trial outcome. | • Acts as role model for more junior/new team members; is the shining example for all others to emulate, particularly in complex and high-stakes situations. | |||
| • Influences process improvements and directly iterates on existing deliverables. Champions change directly and lead team enablement. Can point to positive outcomes in other opportunities as a result of efforts and direct mentorship. | ||||
| • Contributes actively to product roadmap discussions based on insights. | ||||
| • Represents Sourcegraph as a subject matter expert within the greater industry. |