The Endowus Engineering Career Ladder

At Endowus, we believe that “growth” is multidimensional.

At its core, growth is defined by increased levels of ownership and impact.

It isn’t just about changing your job title. Real growth happens when you take on end-to-end ownership of a product feature, when you master a new functional domain (like pension schemes or private markets), or when you learn to architect systems that can handle millions of dollars in transactions without flinching. It happens through mentoring peers and collaborating across teams.

Of course, clear career progression is a vital part of that picture. We want every engineer to know where they stand and what the next step looks like.

One of the most common questions we get is: “Do I have to become a manager to grow?”

The answer is No.

The Dual-Track Philosophy

We operate on a Dual-Track Career Ladder. This is standard practice in modern tech companies, but we implement it with a specific mindset: Leadership happens on both tracks.

1. The Individual Contributor (IC) Track: This path is for engineers who want to focus on technical excellence, system design, and architectural impact. Crucially, ICs are leaders too! They exhibit leadership by setting technical standards, mentoring others, and driving architectural decisions that impact the entire organization.
2. The Management Track: This path is for those who want to focus on team building, delivery, and business alignment. However, our managers are makers too! We don’t believe in “clipboard management.” Our Engineering Managers are technical, hands-on, and often contribute to code reviews and architecture discussions.

While the management path is vital, in this post, we want to deep-dive specifically into the IC track at Endowus.

Calibrating Expectations: The IC Levels

Titles can mean different things at different companies. A “Senior Engineer” at an early-stage startup might have a completely different scope than one at a large MNC.

To help you understand where you might fit, here is a look at our ladder and the typical experience levels we see at each stage. Note: These years are guidelines, not strict rules. We value competency and impact above all else.

1. The Foundation: Engineer I & II

The early stages of the career ladder are focused on execution, learning our stack, and mastering the fintech domain.

• Engineer I (~0–2 Years Experience)
  • Scope: Task-level.
  • Role: Learning and executing.
  • Expectation: You are building your foundation. You work on defined tasks with guidance. The focus is on writing clean, bug-free code and understanding the development lifecycle.
• Engineer II (~2–5 Years Experience)
  • Scope: Feature-level.
  • Role: Independent execution.
  • Expectation: You can take a feature request and run with it. You require minimal technical guidance for standard tasks and own your code from design to deployment.

2. The Bedrock: Senior Engineer

This is an important milestone at Endowus. In the broader industry, “Senior” is sometimes treated as a title granted purely based on tenure—often as early as 3 years. At Endowus, “Senior” implies a higher degree of maturity and autonomy.

• Senior Engineer I & II (~5-8+ Years Experience)
  • Scope: System/Service level.
  • Role: Technical Owner and Mentor.
  • Expectation: You don’t just solve the problem; you design the right solution. You think about how a service scales, fails, and recovers. You proactively mentor junior engineers. You are comfortable navigating ambiguity and often help define the “how” when Product defines the “what.”
  • Progression: We split this role into two levels to recognize continuous growth. Level I is about establishing autonomy; Level II is about consistency, handling higher ambiguity, and deeper mentorship.

3. The Technical Leaders: Staff & Principal

These roles are for engineers who want to remain hands-on but have an impact that acts as a force multiplier for the entire organization.

• Staff Engineer I & II (~8-12+ Years Experience)
  • Scope: Cross-team / Domain level.
  • Role: Force Multiplier.
  • Expectation: You solve problems that involve multiple teams or services. You set technical standards (e.g., API guidelines, testing patterns). You are the glue that keeps complex distributed systems consistent. You look around corners to anticipate technical debt and scalability risks before they become issues.
  • Progression: Similar to Senior, this role has two levels. Moving from Level I to Level II signifies a shift from solving specific cross-team problems to driving broader technical strategies that shape our future.
• Principal Engineer (~12+ Years Experience)
  • Scope: Organizational level.
  • Role: Strategic Technical Leader.
  • Expectation: You align our technical strategy with our long-term business strategy. You tackle the hardest, highest-risk architectural challenges. You are a standard-bearer for engineering culture, influencing how the entire company builds software.

Why share this?

We share this framework because we believe transparency is key to a healthy engineering culture.

If you join us, you won’t have to guess what “success” looks like. Whether you are a craftsman who wants to go deep into distributed systems or a builder who wants to eventually lead teams, there is a path for you here.

We are building a generational wealth platform for Asia. To do that, we need a team that is constantly growing—in skills, in ownership, in impact, and in their careers.