Engineering Progression Framework

Promotions

When can I apply?

Inviqa Engineering designates periods of time called promotion windows when you can apply for a promotion. These last for two weeks and occur roughly every six months. You must submit your application by the end of this two week period and assessment will be carried out once the window has closed.

Promotion windows help give you and your line manager a focal point for your progression. It also helps our engineering management team as it is more economical and consistent to handle 'batches' of applications. It also helps with departmental budgeting.

Most promotion opportunities occur within these windows. However, we may publish opportunities outside of a window for limited availability roles.

What roles can I apply for?

The following engineering roles have limited availability based on what the business can support:

• Technical Team Lead
• Principal Software Engineer
• Software Engineering Manager
• Head of Engineering

You can only apply for these roles if we explicitly mention that they are open for application. All other roles within the hierarchy can be applied for during any promotion window.

Am I ready for promotion?

We want everyone who applies for a promotion to succeed - missing out on a promotion is disappointing for all involved. It is important to gauge your readiness as accurately as you can.

Therefore, we strongly advise you to regularly reflect on your own capabilities and match them to our skills framework. If you can find a way to naturally embed this into your working routine, this will help the process of applying for promotion. For example: make your progression goals a key aspect of your catch-ups with your line manager, or a frequent topic to discuss with your project team lead.

Considerations before applying

Please only apply for a promotion if you are familiar with our framework and feel you are truly ready to take on the role you are applying for.

As a rough guide, you should feel confident that you satisfy at least 75% of the requirements across all of the skills that are relevant to your application before you apply for promotion. You may not feel confident of 75% in each and every skill, but consider this as a whole, where stronger skills can balance out any weaker ones. You will also need to be able to show an independent assessment group your abilities through evidence. It is strongly recommended that you seek feedback from your line manager and peers to confirm your belief of your readiness for promotion.

In short, you must have the skills and you must be able to prove it to a group selected from the engineering leadership team.

Micro-credential prerequisite

In all cases, you are required to apply for and earn at least one micro-credential before applying for promotion. This is to ensure you are familiar with the process and the quality of evidence required. Applying for micro-credentials helps engineers get practice with the process and – more importantly – get feedback.

How to interpret the framework for promotion

See the How to Use guide for more details, but here are some highlights:

• All skills apply to all engineers with the exception of the Focused Technical category, from which you must choose any 3 of the 8 skills.
• The framework is written by example. You are not expected to satisfy every bullet point of every skill - we all have different strengths and weaknesses. You might have your own, different example that demonstrates a similar level of seniority within a skill. Don't be put off if your abilities do not perfectly match the skill level bullet points - if you feel they demonstrate a level of capability that falls within the scope of a particular skill then include those in your application.
• The scoring is not binary pass or fail per skill (see scoring below) so you can achieve promotion by partially satisfying some of the skill definitions.

How do I prepare the promotion application document?

As stated earlier, we recommend using the framework as guidance for your progression regardless of your actual aspiration for a seniority bump. Also, consider shortening the feedback loop significantly by covering single skills as micro-credential applications.

Being familiar with the framework and its expectations will make the actual promotion application a far smoother experience for both you and your assessing colleagues.

For the actual promotion application:

• Create a copy of the Engineering promotion application template. Make sure to do this way before the next promotion window and start collecting valuable content early on.
• You should review the skills described in the Engineering Progression Framework while populating your application with content. Make sure to back up your skill level aspiration with decent evidence.
• You must specify your aspired level and provide evidence for each skill you wish to be assessed on.
• You need to complete all sections in the application, except the Focused Technical skills which are not your chosen electives.
• If you gained a micro-credential (via application or endorsement), you may simply reference that to cover that skills evidence. If you made a huge progression within that skill though since then, you may add some more evidence on top of that.
• There is no limit to the amount of evidence you can provide for any given skill set. However, too much evidence risks losing good content in the details. As a rough guide, one page per skill is about right. Also make sure to consider its relevance to allow the assessors to focus.
• Make sure to add references to colleagues that could be approached by the assessment panel for some feedback collection. Do this overall, but also specific to skills, to ease up that part of the assessment process.
• It is strongly recommended that at least one other person reviews your application before it's submitted.

As some more guidance, you may follow the structure provided in the example application document.

What evidence should I use?

We have created a dedicated page for evidence to provide direction.

How are assessments scored?

The final result of your assessment will be a percentage, but there are several stages and factors in producing this.

What is being scored?

The foundation to scoring is your written application, based on the evidence provided.

After scoring the written application, the assessment panel might have identified a few areas that need some more backing. For that, they will reach out to peers of yours for feedback collection. Make sure to point out colleagues to approach for feedback collection in your written application therefore. Panelists might also take their own experiences working with you into account and share some insight with their panel peers. All this feedback collected and provided by panelists will be appended to the assessment material and taken into consideration.

These two parts will form an initial score per skill, that will be reviewed and depending on the result will lead into an interview scheduled, depending on your average score. That interview will again focus on a few skills where the panel feels their scoring and your application could benefit from gaining some deeper insight.

Skill scoring

The evidence and feedback for each skill are scored individually on a scale from 0 to 10 against the expectations described in the Skills Framework:

• 0: no relevant evidence or feedback
• 2: required seniority is only partially demonstrated in a few areas, while not at all in others
• 5: required seniority is partially demonstrated in most areas
• 8: significantly matches most skill expectations
• 10: perfectly matches all skill expectations

Overscoring

To acknowledge those who can demonstrate capabilities way beyond their target level in a skill, you can earn an additional 2 bonus points, for a maximum of 12 for that given skill.

Scores from micro-credentials

Any achieved micro-credentials (through either an assessment or endorsement) can be used directly in your promotion assessment. The micro-credentials will come with a score out of 10 so can easily be included as part of your final averaged score.

Weighting and totaling

The results from each individual skill will be totaled and converted into a percentage. This is achieved through a weighting system:

• For most roles, technical skills (core and focused) will be weighted by 60%, professional skills by 40% to reflect the technical focus within your (aspired) role.
• For roles on the management track (TTL and SEM), the weighting is reversed: 40% weighting of the scores on technical skills, and 60% on professional skills.

Moderation

Each assessment will be provided by a panel of two to three assessors, with your final score being an average of all the assessors’ scores.

Our assessors are also human beings! They have different interpretations and will produce different scores. We therefore moderate as a group at the end of the assessment period to discuss what the final pass mark will be and if there are any anomalies. In previous attempts 75% has been the passing mark, but this is not guaranteed and could easily differ by assessment group.

Promotion timeline

This timeline is by example. Every window will have different starting dates and potentially shorter or longer periods of time for each stage. You will be informed about adjustments prior and within an application window.

What happens during each stage?

• Register intent
  notify the SEM team about the role that you will apply for. This helps planning and results in a faster overall process. You must register your intent to apply no later than one week after the promotion window starts.
• Submit application
  finalise your application, then share that Google Doc with the SEM team. You should receive confirmation that it has been received within 24 hours. The document will be copied, any changes on your document will not have an impact on the document used by assessors.
• Application assessment
  • You will be allocated an assessment panel of two to three senior members of the engineering team, one of which will be the lead assessor for your application. The lead assessor will be responsible for managing your application, will handle communicating with you during the process, will lead the interview on the day, and will inform you of the outcome at the end.
  • The assessment panel will review your written application and score it against your desired seniority level on a per skill basis.
  • For the skills we feel we need some more backing, we will reach out to peers of the applicant to get some more in depth view from their side. This extended information will be added to the material for scoring. We have introduced this step as it feels fairer to the individuals to not ask them to come up with all the evidence depth and cover feedback collection across all sorts of skills themselves. This does add time to the assessment process, but pays into our values of “human” and “together”.
  • Note: We aim to complete this stage within three weeks. Depending on the amount of applications, this may be delayed. We hope to have your understanding. We will certainly keep you updated if that would be the case.
• Interview
  the assessment panel compiles a list of questions and sends them to you by email one week in advance so that you can prepare your answers. The one hour interview is designed to boost scoring on areas for which insufficient seniority was demonstrated in the application.
  • For role applications below TTL and Senior II, if the aggregate score before the interview is above 80%, and the panel are agreed, then you will be offered a promotion without an interview.
  • Prior to the interview, if the assessment team feels that your application is not strong enough, then the lead assessor will contact you to discuss whether to proceed, and to help manage your expectations.
• Promotion decision
  the final decision will be communicated via an online call with you and your line manager within two weeks after the interview. A successful promotion will include a salary increase, but this may take a little longer to confirm.

How to get help

If you need help with your application please reach out to your line manager, the #engineering-progression slack channel, the lead assessor for your application, or members of engineering management. Consider doing this far before the next promotion window, to give yourself plenty of time to build up a good application that has the best chance of succeeding. We want you to succeed!