Engineering
Software Engineer
Five levels from Junior to Principal, across six competencies from shipping code to growing the team.
- 5 levels
- 6 competencies
Career ladders
Career ladder software for every department
Describe how people grow in each department — the tracks, the levels and the roles on them — and publish it when it is ready for everyone to read.
Free plan · No credit card required
How it works
From a blank page to a published career ladder
Lay out tracks, levels and roles
Add tracks side by side — an individual-contributor track next to a management track — and put a role on each level. Drag roles between levels as the picture changes.
Say what each role requires
Attach skills to the framework and set the level every role expects. That grid is the skills matrix, and it is what check-ins and promotion cases are measured against.
Put people on their roles
Admins and the department's editors assign each person the role they hold today. Their profile shows the role, how long they have held it, and the roles before it.
Publish it to the team
When the framework is ready, publish it. Everyone in the organisation can then read it and open any role to see what it asks for.
Permissions
Who does what
- Admins
- Creates departments, chooses their editors, and can edit or publish any framework. How many departments an organisation can have depends on its plan.
- Department editors
- Renames and publishes their department's framework, builds its tracks, roles and skills matrix, and assigns people to roles. Cannot create departments or choose editors.
- Employees
- Reads every published framework and sees which role they hold and what the next level asks for.
Good to know
The details
- Draft until it is ready
- A draft framework is visible only to admins and the department's editors. Publishing makes it visible to the whole organisation; unpublishing hides it again.
- One role per person
- Each person holds one role at a time. Assigning a new role closes the previous assignment, and the change stays in the person's role history.
- Departments per plan
- Every department that has not been deleted counts towards the plan, draft or published: 1 career framework on Free, up to 5 career frameworks on Starter, up to 10 career frameworks on Growth and unlimited career frameworks on Scale.
- A smaller plan never deletes work
- Moving to a plan with a lower limit keeps every existing department. You simply cannot create another one until you are under the limit again.
Keep exploring
Related
Templates to start from
Engineering
Engineering Manager
Four levels from Engineering Manager to VP of Engineering, across six management competencies.
- 4 levels
- 6 competencies
Product
Product Manager
Five levels from Associate PM to Head of Product, across six competencies from discovery to product strategy.
- 5 levels
- 6 competencies
Who it is for
For tech companies
Tech companies
For CTOs and department heads at 50–200-person tech and SaaS companies who need levels that mean the same thing in every team.
For startups
Startups
For founders of 10–60-person startups setting up levels, their first managers and fair promotions.
Further reading
- Career ladders
How to build a career ladder: a step-by-step guide
A practical, seven-step method for companies of 20 to 200 people: tracks, levels, competencies, expectations, calibration and rollout — with a worked example and the mistakes to avoid.
Updated 1 October 2026
- Career ladders
Career ladder vs career framework vs competency matrix: what is the difference?
Five terms that get used interchangeably — career ladder, career framework, competency matrix, job level and grade — untangled, with one department worked through end to end.
Updated 1 October 2026
FAQ
Common questions
What is the difference between a career framework and a career ladder?
In LadderKit a career framework is everything one department describes — its tracks, levels, roles and the skills each role needs. A career ladder is one track inside it: the sequence of roles someone can climb.
Who can see a framework while it is still a draft?
Only admins and the department's editors. Everyone else in the organisation sees it once it is published.
How do we move someone to a different role?
An admin or one of the department's editors assigns the new role, and the previous assignment closes automatically. For a step up, the promotions workflow adds a proposal and a decision before the change.
Can we keep changing a framework after it is published?
Yes — editors keep working on it and changes show straight away. Check-ins already started are unaffected: each one keeps a snapshot, taken when it started, of the skills and levels it is assessed against.
Does a draft department count towards the plan limit?
Yes. Drafts count exactly like published departments, so the limit cannot be sidestepped by keeping frameworks unpublished. Deleting a department frees its place.
Write your first career ladder down
Start free with one department and publish it once the levels feel right.
Free plan · No credit card required