Part 12 · 1 chapters · ~8 min

Staff Engineer

Will Larson's Staff Engineer: the Tech Lead, Architect, Solver and Right Hand archetypes, working on what matters instead of snacking, preening and chasing ghosts, strategy synthesised from design documents, an escalating approach to technical quality, alignment with authority, and getting into the room.

Staff Engineer

archetype	day to day	evidence for a promotion case
Tech Lead	guides a team's approach and execution; partners with the manager	projects delivered across a team; engineers grown
Architect	owns direction and quality in a critical area	a written direction adopted by others; decisions that held
Solver	takes the hardest problem, solves it, moves on	a list of hard problems closed and their effect
Right Hand	extends a senior leader's reach across teams	organisational problems resolved on the leader's behalf

code

"Five design docs → a strategy" applied to frontend money flows
docs        FSM for loan flows · idempotent submit · price staleness · WebView bridge · eval gate for M
patterns    every money action is a state machine with idempotency keys and designed failure states;
            every AI output is validated and gated by an eval before it reaches users
strategy    "Money flows in the app are explicit state machines with server-confirmed transitions;
             the client never assumes success. AI features ship behind schemas, mocks and eval gates."

pick your archetype honestly

A frontend engineer close to money flows most often fits Tech Lead or Architect. Say which one you are aiming for, and build the evidence that archetype needs.

STAFF ENGINEER

Will Larson, 2021: archetypes, the work that matters, strategy and getting in the room

swipe the figure sideways, or tap expand for full screen

1/6

Four archetypes

Archetypes: the Tech Lead guides one or a few teams' execution; the Architect owns the direction of a critical area; the Solver goes deep on hard problems one after another; the Right Hand extends an executive's reach across the organisation. All are staff; they need different skills and look different in a promotion case.