SWE 5 - Senior Staff Software Engineer

I define, drive, and land ambiguous strategic initiatives. They span multiple quarters and multiple teams across departments. I consistently execute key departmental goals and drive multiple technical areas for the department.

Scope

You deliver and land initiatives spanning multiple quarters and sometimes years, ensuring business impact. You collaborate with multiple departments to drive the success of company-wide initiatives. You ensure the longevity of the initiatives you deliver, adapting to WHOOP’s growth, and communicate to upper management the importance and impact of your initiatives. You invest in multiple strategic areas for your department and neighboring departments.

Craft

You set the technical direction for your department. Your solutions are scalable interfaces that facilitate the interop between neighboring departments. You lead groups of cross-functional skill sets in technical design, execution, and delivery. You consistently deliver successful cross-departmental initiatives and raise the quality bar for the teams involved. You are a steward of responsible innovation, knowing when a new technology is at the intersection of high impact for the business and high ease of adoption. Conversely, you gracefully refocus efforts at the intersection of low impact and low ease of adoption to push higher-priority initiatives.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Technical	I lead technical decisions across my own and neighboring departments(Hardware, Firmware, Product, Design, Business Systems, etc.), knowing where to invest and where not to. I am an expert in making architecture decisions, knowing what tradeoffs to make depending on the targeted impact and market conditions, such as having a first-to-market advantage or requiring quick market feedback before large investments are made. I deliver a meaningful impact on OKRs.
Scoping & Estimation	I define clear scope and boundaries of solutions and make them clear to stakeholders, ensuring success of delivery. I guide estimations cross-functionally on large initiatives.
Quality	I actively promote my own and others’ solutions that exemplify quality and maintainability. I push cross-functional groups to consider all angles of quality from design to delivery. I guide and drive quality metrics for my department and push improvements based on those metrics.
Operational Excellence	I raise the bar on the operational performance of WHOOP products across stacks. I enable others to perform operationally complex tasks by introducing tooling or other high-leverage solutions.
Design	I design for future scale and reliability, reducing the need for toil over the long term. I ensure teams’ designs are set to deliver reusable design components.
Process Improvement	I identify when a process needs to be eliminated due to change or inefficiency and aim to replace and/or automate it away. I ensure alignment for cross-functional initiatives and aim to streamline processes within those initiatives.

Communication and Collaboration

You expand your force multiplier effect by driving solutions in problem areas that require cross-functional and cross-departmental teams to accomplish. You shape plans for these cross-functional groups to ensure smooth collaboration in pursuit of efficiency.

You advise Directors and VPs on direction, scoping, planning, and prioritization of departmental initiatives. You are comfortable driving consensus through C-suite and ICs alike. Your verbal communication and written communication are acutely tuned to their audiences. In particular, your communication is more often proactive than reactive to influence thinking and direction for others.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Autonomy	I inform stakeholders of initiatives I drive and expertly keep them apprised of impact, progress, and issues alike. I proactively drive initiative proposals and communication to Directors and VPs, influencing thinking and direction across the board. I continuously beat the drum of technical quality improvement through broad communication forums, not just 1:1 communication.
Accountability	I hold myself accountable for the progress of WHOOP’s technical capabilities and am always seeking to advance them. I ensure risks are communicated, and mitigation plans are followed through on. I ensure stakeholders and executives are apprised of critical issues in progress or potential for issues to arise, always bringing forth potential mitigation plans or alternative solutions.
Data Driven	I ensure cross-departmental priorities are backed by impact and data, giving WHOOP the best chance at success. After delivery, I always follow up with measurement of impact and analysis of performance towards the goals set out to reach.
Clarity	I keep cross-departmental teams and stakeholders aligned with strategic initiatives. I can expertly maintain concise communication to push the needle forward while maintaining time efficiency.
Drives Consensus	I know how to drive consensus expertly and which stakeholders must be involved. I know how to gain data to drive a high degree of confidence in my proposals to help in convincing others of said proposal. I expertly consider other people’s roles and perspectives across departments when driving consensus.

Coaching

You actively coach engineers across departments through broad education methods, maximizing your audience. You continuously level up those around you on standards and best practices and broaden their perspective to consider the business implications of their efforts. You do so to prepare them for the future rather than reactive to a given situation, keeping them ahead of the curve.

When teams take on large challenges, you first look to coach someone on championing the team through the challenge. If it requires your expertise, you can just jump in and champion the initiative over the finish line. You embed on the team and take the time to coach them, leading by example and educating them as you go. When you extract back from the team, you leave them confident and up-leveled.

Like Staff, you continue to sponsor individuals, advocating for opportunities for them.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Mentorship	I review and provide feedback on technology decisions or changes for my department. I up-level larger audiences through presentations, tutorials, learnings, pre and post-mortems, and more. I look for skill gaps in my department to educate about the area or raise it upward actively.
Inter-Departmental Influence	I am sought out as a go-to expert by people across departments. I help drive the stability of departments through periods of change. I advocate for and influence hiring roadmaps to ensure WHOOP has the technical skill sets needed to advance.

Strategy & Execution

You are in tune with the future vision of the business and the strategies the business will take to deliver impact. You translate ambiguous business needs into interdepartmental strategy, leading to cross-functional execution and landing the pursued impact successfully.

You expertly know when to deploy your energy executing vs. coaching others through execution. You employ strategies and frameworks that help you guide the execution of others through up-leveling your department and neighboring departments.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Define Problems	I explore and guide others’ explorations in technology decisions and educate them on responsible innovation.
Directionality	I help translate business strategy into action my department and neighboring departments can take or collaborate on. I direct discussion of the future of technology at WHOOP in pursuit of advancement.
Staying Nimble	I expertly weigh priorities in both existing work and future planned work to help executives and other stakeholders make informed tradeoff decisions.
Vision	I advocate for the direction of multiple departments and their cross-functional projects. I produce and execute on a consistent and focused vision to provide stable, continuous advancement for WHOOP.

Moving to the SWE 6 level

Performing at or above the Senior Staff level times may vary widely and are more focused on your impact than time in the role.

Here are some areas you might focus on to bridge your experience at the next level:

• You begin to lead coordinated efforts for the company utilizing your cross-departmental skill set.
• You begin to contribute to company-wide strategy and initiatives, turning strategy into action.