Engineering
Engineering Manager
Four levels from Engineering Manager to VP of Engineering, across six management competencies.
- 4 levels
- 6 competencies
Promotions
A promotion process with a written case and a clear decision trail
Put promotion cases in writing, route them up the reporting line, and let the new role take effect on the date everyone agreed — no spreadsheet in between.
Free plan · No credit card required
How it works
How a promotion moves
The manager writes the case
The person's direct manager picks the new role and the effective date and explains why. Their profile — ratings over time, movement per skill, time in role — is there to draw on. A draft stays private to its author.
Someone above them decides
Submitting sends the case up the reporting line. Anyone above the proposing manager can approve it, reject it, or hand it back asking for more.
The new role applies on the date
Once approved, the person moves to the new role on the career ladder on the effective date — at once if that date has already come, otherwise automatically on the day.
The move stays on record
From then on their role card shows what the new role requires, and their role history records the move and who put them forward.
Permissions
Who does what
- Managers
- Only the person's direct manager can propose a promotion. They can revise it when asked for more, and withdraw it at any point until it takes effect.
- Managers further up
- Anyone above the proposing manager can read the case and approve, reject or ask for more information while it is waiting for a decision.
- Employees
- Never sees a request about themselves in the app, at any status. Once it takes effect, the new role appears in their role history.
- Admins
- Set the organisation's policy — whether promotions need approval and whether the employee is told when one takes effect — but see no requests by virtue of being an admin.
Good to know
The details
- Private until it is real
- In the app, the person never sees a pending, returned or rejected request about themselves, so a promotion is never half-announced and a rejection never reaches someone who did not know it was on the table.
- Nobody above? It still goes through
- If the proposing manager has nobody above them, the request is approved on submission, so a founder is not left waiting for a sign-off that cannot come.
- Rejection is final, a question is not
- A rejected request is closed. Asking for more sends it back to the manager with a note, to revise and submit again.
- Safe against a changing organisation
- If the target role has been deleted, or the person has been given a different role in the meantime, the request fails instead of applying; if the person has left, it is withdrawn. The managers involved are told, and a failed request can be fixed and resubmitted.
- Any published role, not just the next level
- The new role can be any role in a published framework — the next level on the same track, a move to the management track, or a role in another department.
Keep exploring
Related
Templates to start from
Engineering
Software Engineer
Five levels from Junior to Principal, across six competencies from shipping code to growing the team.
- 5 levels
- 6 competencies
Who it is for
For startups
Startups
For founders of 10–60-person startups setting up levels, their first managers and fair promotions.
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.
Further reading
- Promotions
How to run a fair promotion process
Promotion criteria written down in advance, a manager who proposes, someone above who decides, and a written case — a promotion process a growing company can explain to everyone.
Updated 1 October 2026
FAQ
Common questions
Why can't people see promotion requests about themselves?
Because until it is decided, it may not happen. Keeping the request away from them at every status spares people a rejection they never knew was possible; they hear about the promotion when it takes effect. This is how the app works: it does not limit anyone's right under data protection law to ask their employer for the data held about them.
Who approves a promotion?
Anyone above the proposing manager in the reporting line. There is no approval chain to configure, and an organisation can switch approval off entirely.
Can a skip-level manager propose a promotion?
No. Proposals come from the person's direct manager; managers further up take part as the people who decide.
Can a promotion take effect on a future date?
Yes. The manager picks the effective date in the case. If the date has already come when the request is approved, the new role applies straight away; otherwise it applies automatically on that date.
What should a promotion case say?
It is written by the manager in their own words. A strong case points at what the target role requires in the skills matrix and at what the person's check-ins and growth actions already show.
Make your next promotion a decision you can explain
Start free, publish your career ladder, and run promotions through the people who should decide them.
Free plan · No credit card required