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

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

To ensure that our employees can grow and develop alongside Infinum, 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., Software Engineer), and the level specifies your expertise at doing it (e.g., Level 2 out of 3). 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 the one that 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 realized 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 that we are an agency, 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, QA, Project Management, etc.

Individual Contributor

They do not directly manage other people but invest most of their time in projects and strive to become experts in their fields.

Example: 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 Architect).

Technical Lead

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

Example: 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 Level 1).

Manager

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

Example: 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.