Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

What is the Career Framework?

The Engineering Career Framework is your resource for how to achieve impact in your role and team and how to grow your engineering career. For managers, it helps you set expectations for your teams and hold them accountable for their work.

What the Career Framework is not

This framework is not a promotion checklist for your role; rather, it’s designed to help you figure out what your impact looks like at the next level.

This framework is not an exhaustive list of examples and criteria; Each responsibility includes three to four key characteristics that serve as a guide for how to think about your work. Because of this, you should meet with your manager to determine your impact goals and align expectations for your role.

What’s in a Career Framework?

This framework is divided into two components:

• Level Expectations define scope, collaborative reach, and levers for impact at each level; these expectations are WHAT which determines the difference between an IC3 and IC4, for example
• Core and Craft Responsibilities define key behaviors specific to your role and team; these characteristics will help you identify how you work to deliver the impact based on your expected level

How to navigate this framework

Dropbox measures the success of its engineers primarily by business impact. Anchor your work first and foremost in making a long-term impact. Because the effect may be unclear, read on What is the Effect?

Next, set yourself expectations for your level and team. For each level, you will find a one-line summary description and the scope of the role, collaborative achievement, and levers for impact.

Review the expected behavior for that level in the Results, Direction, Talent, Culture pillars from the Key Responsibilities. Read your Craft expectations, which are each discipline’s technical capabilities you need to master at that level. Finally, meet with your manager to set your goals for the quarter.

Guide Version: v2.9.1