Having a clear career progression framework in place is critical for employee engagement and performance. Over time and with growth, we upgraded the old and introduced new processes to facilitate the career development of Infinum employees in our agency setup.

At Infinum, we believe that you should plan now for where you want to be a couple of years from now.

To ensure our people can grow and develop as Infinum does, we needed a framework that could scale accordingly.

Progression framework by Infinum

We’ve developed a detailed guide for our employees’ career advancement, unique to each team. When expectations are communicated clearly, goals are more easily reachable and motivation increases.

A simple and practical approach to career development

When introducing this framework, we wanted to be transparent about the opportunities available to our employees, the competencies required to take advantage of them, and their responsibilities in general. Following the steps outlined in the framework, employees can progress and plan ahead. Finally, it supports the company structure as it grows and scales.

Progression framework breakdown

Titles and Levels

A job title defines what you do (e.g., Designer), and the level specifies your expertise at doing it (e.g., Level 2 out of 4). Together these concepts define the scope of your work (tasks, features, projects, team, company) and the impact that goes along with that (execution, tactical, strategic). The idea is to match employee competencies with their responsibilities.

Tracks

A track is that which defines the direction of your development. An industry standard is to have Individual Contributor (IC) and Management tracks. In developing the Technical Lead title over the years in our organization, we found that it falls somewhere in between. We found that this can be a great transitional role to the management track, but also a role where individuals find their stride and excel in the best of both worlds.

It is also important to highlight here that we are an agency and not a product company. As such, this three-track approach makes more sense. Production teams are organized around a function or technology, e.g., Android development team, QA team, Project Management team, etc.

Individual Contributor

Does not directly manage other people. They invest most of their time in projects and work towards becoming experts in their fields.

Most teams have 4 levels for this title.

A student who kicks off their career as an iOS Engineer (Software Engineer Level 1) progresses to become one of the top engineers in the company (Software Engineer Level 4).

Technical Lead

Does not directly manage other people but is heavily involved in mentoring, strategic projects, and team processes. A Technical Lead is an expert in their field and focuses on improving the team’s technical seniority.

Most teams have 2 levels for this title.

An experienced Designer (Designer Level 3) decides to utilize their expertise in improving the team and educating other team members to fully develop their potential (Design Lead).

Manager

Manages other people. They invest most of their time in developing and executing strategies to support individuals and build efficient teams.

Most teams have 2 levels for the Team Lead title and a 1 level Team Director title. Further development implies managing more teams (Head of Department, VP or C-level titles).

An experienced Java Engineer (Software Engineer Level 3) focuses their attention on helping with career development and managing people but also has a wider business perspective (Team Lead Level 1).

COMPETENCIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

Each team has a unique progression framework, but we use the same concepts and approaches at the company level.