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Career Paths at Tandem

Our career paths at Tandem provide guidance to our individual team members as well as to our managers and mentors who support the team’s career growth. No two individuals’ careers unfold the same way, and we don’t expect that to happen at Tandem: what is outlined below should be allowed a certain degree of flexibility, and will be updated regularly.

At Tandem, we believe in supporting you at the pace that works best for you. Career growth is often associated with access to opportunity. Our goal is to find and create opportunities in areas where you want to grow your skills. We believe in sponsoring people for stretch opportunities, and also keep the door open for you to find opportunities we haven’t thought of before.

Jump to Career Paths

Introduction

Each stage in the career path includes three components:

In general all of these should build on each other as you progress through the stages, each inheriting the points of the preceding stages.

Responsibilities & Impact

The things you need to do and how they impact Tandem and our clients

Technical Skills

A measure of the design or engineering skills that you may have acquired in a particular stage

Professional & Consulting Skills

A measure of the professional and consulting skills you may have acquired in a particular stage

A Note on Typical Prior Years of Experience

Each stage of the career path includes “typical years of prior experience.” This is just a guideline based on what we see in the industry. This is by no means a rule but is provided to further help us benchmark ourselves and candidates as they come into the company. In terms of advancement at Tandem some people will enter a new title early as it relates to the benchmark, some later, depending on their progress in the components of each position.

A Note on Salary Bands

We believe that transparency in salary bands promotes equality amongst our employees. And Tandem, as an employer, has an obligation to make opportunities for all of our team members as equitably as possible. We also believe that salaries should not be fixed, as individuals should be compensated based on their performance and impact to the organization. So, our salary bands widen as you progress toward the later stages of the path. This allows for more senior team members to choose for themselves how they want to invest in Tandem, our culture, our public profile, and our clients — and be compensated in kind.

Salary bands will be evaluated on a regular basis against the job market. Our goal is to be competitive with market salaries but also to recognize the significant intangible benefits at Tandem, including: industry-leading work/life balance, highly competitive medical benefits, a collaborative and people-focused culture, and a desire to seek meaningful and fulfilling work. Salary bands may be periodically adjusted for market and cost-of-living influences. As such, our career paths will be updated from time to time.

Baseline Responsibilities and Impact

The following are the baseline responsibilities and attributes Tandem expects from all designers and engineers (Apprentice through Principal):

Demonstrates Tandem’s core values consistently
Contributes to Tandem’s culture in a positive way, fostering inclusion, encouraging others, and collaborating as a team
Thoughtfully provides feedback to their team members in performance reviews, retrospectives, and on an ad-hoc basis including positive recognition and identifying opportunities for growth
Raises Tandem’s profile in the community through:
- Writing at least 2 blog posts each year
- Participating in Tandem sponsored community events and meetups
- Considering to submit proposals to speak at conferences
- Considering to contribute to open source
Engages in our hiring process by joining phone screens, code reviews, and interviews
Works with the Tandem sales team when called upon to assist in discovery, scoping, and estimation of projects
Provides support with Software Managed Services when necessary
Positively represents the Tandem team in all interactions with the client, supporting our team and our work with integrity. As consultants, our clients view every interaction with an individual as an interaction with the team as a whole.

Product Design Apprentice

Our apprentices are eager and curious learners who are focused on broad design and consulting skills. We don’t expect our apprentices to have all the answers, but we do expect them to be quick with questions and to actively seek out support.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 0-1

Standard Salary: $60,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Focuses on growing as a maker, is actively learning tools and processes that our team is using
Learns from more experienced colleagues and actively seeks them out, pairing up as much as possible
Comfortable presenting and discussing their work and progress with colleagues
Is working on refining their skills and grounding them in the principles of HCD

Technical Skills

Visual Thinking & Production: Can translate ideas into pixels and ask questions about tool usage in order to support
Research and Testing: Shows interest in research approaches and industry landscape. Understands the importance of user testing and has been exposed to some aspects of it
Technical Engagement: Capable understanding technical requirements or limitations and ideating solutions that work within that
Architecture: Knows different navigations structures and styles and is interested in exploring more

Professional & Consulting Skills

Has worked alongside or collaborated with other designers in some capacity
Can communicate design decisions clearly and confidently
At some point during apprenticeship is comfortable:
- Contributing to meetings and asking questions in a group including while clients are present
- Providing feedback to peers during design critique

Product Designer I

Level 1 Design Consultants continue to develop their design and professional expertise, including understanding enough to identify what they don’t know. Designers at this level are still committed to building a broad portfolio of skills while increasing mastery of their current skills. They are beginning the generalist journey and have a perspective when entering the tech realm. They have begun observing and trying out client communication.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 1-2

Salary Band: $70,000 – $90,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Contributing to client projects in a net-positive way, more steps forward than those backward
Pairs with more senior team members to continue building baseline skills
Understands how to filter feedback from peer designers and developers and updates designs based accordingly
Mentor apprentices and other more early-stage team members
Seeking and owning light interactions with clients (examples: delivering updates in standup or Slack)

Technical Skills

Visual Thinking & Production: Consistently delivers pixel perfect designs. Has a solid command of at least one design tools (Sketch, Figma, etc.). Can efficiently produce sketches or low-fi mockups to communicate ideas and identify direction before moving to hi fidelity production
Research and Testing: Understands the importance of shadowing in research and how to gather relevant information through different approaches
Technical Engagement: Can work on more advanced, (but not highly complex) features, such as those requiring understanding of complex site architectures or data modeling
Architecture: Can identify which navigation structures fit a project based on content

Professional & Consulting Skills

Communicates assumptions and gets clarification on tasks up front to minimize the need for rework
Seeks out and accepts feedback from peers both on design and professional/consulting topics
Works at producing realistic estimates and becomes increasingly more accurate
Beginning to understand trade-offs in decision making and seeks support in applying this type of thinking to their work

Product Designer II

Level 2 Design Consultants are growing into more design confident team members. They have experienced and excelled in subjects outside of their preference and continue to hone in on an area of expertise. Designers at this level organize their own work in a productive manner with little oversight from leads. Level 2 Designers can join a new project and reliably follow established standards and processes. They are aware of team needs and offer support and expertise to other team members when they need it.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 2-3

Salary Band: $85,000 – $100,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Solid contribution to the work of your project team with little rework necessary
Beginning to own small areas of the project and/or features
Capable of balancing form and function as well as project timelines
Updates and coordinates their work with clients, raising issues and pre-empting problems

Technical Skills

Visual Thinking & Production: Can tackle medium to high complexity design production tasks on their own, with minimal rework. Is capable of leading in an area of special expertise (such as leading a research outing or user testing session, or teaching other designers about illustration)
Research and Testing: Is comfortable participating in different parts of the user testing process, can create a test plan, screeners, scripts and understands how to collect metrics
Technical Engagement: Uses knowledge of HTML and CSS in work; can make ad-hoc changes to css in inspect (without deploying)
Architecture: Has created sitemaps for enterprise size applications or sites. Is comfortable in one or more site map creation tools

Professional & Consulting Skills

Comfortable expressing opinions in meetings and communicating with clients
Begins to assist more senior members in pre-sales client activities (discovery, scoping, estimation, etc)
Beginning to develop skills to explain design and business decisions to clients
Usually handles risk, change, and uncertainty within their personal scope of work effectively
Helps with project direction and voices concerns when it comes to client recommendations. Takes part in helping strategize successful transition for client and team
Advocates for users in all aspects of a project, and gives healthy and constructive pushback when needed

Product Designer III

Level 3 Product Designers can not only organize their own daily work in a productive manner but also effectively estimate their work and stay aware of prioritization. They have chosen a specialization to focus on while maintaining understanding of other realms. They ask for help as needed but have begun to lead client communication. They also actively seek out opportunities to lend expertise to their team members and provide mentorship to others.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 3-5

Salary Band: $95,000 – $125,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Consistently produces high quality work that requires little more than minor tweaks
Takes on responsibility for larger portions of a project as a subject matter expert (SME) – demonstrates leadership abilities which are accepted by others
Supports project lead (Senior or Principal Product Designer) in work they may delegate
Actively participates in helping to craft estimates and is more engaged in forward project planning
Takes on the ability to lead phone screens and interviews for new candidates

Technical Skills

Visual Thinking & Production: Can conceptualize and execute typography solutions. Can craft a custom research process based on identified client profile. Is capable and confident in presenting research findings and articulating actionable insights.
Visual Thinking & Production: Has equivalent skills working across tools (Sketch, Figma, Adobe, etc) and takes initiative to discover new tools and improvements to tools in use that could benefit the team. Able to make recommendations for the right tool for each project based off client needs and team structure.
Technical Engagement: Understands handoff needs intrinsically and can review files of other designers
Research and Testing: Can synthesize research findings and articulate recommendations for product
Architecture: Can make informed decisions about navigation structures. Understands how to apply different navigation styles based on the amount of content exists, and understands how that might scale as content grows

Professional & Consulting Skills

Takes initiative to instigate and lead client calls. Can manage a client solo. Is comfortable negotiating scope when necessary, and can be trusted to understand and consider the progress of and impact to the entire project team and accurately convey those to the client.
Has become highly reliable for project management tasks
Can manage “up” to project leads and more senior members of the team with tact and effectiveness
Can both explain and advocate for decisions to clients
Is developing skills to manage client expectations and have difficult conversations with clients
Handles risk, change, and uncertainty within their personal scope of work effectively. Usually handles uncertainty within project scope of work effectively and supports team members through the uncertainty.

Senior Product Designer

Our Senior Product Designers have strong design and consulting skills and have demonstrated leadership ability with positive responses and feedback from their peers and team members. They have deep domain knowledge and demonstrate proficiency in multiple areas across the discipline. Our senior designers should aim to support the growth of their team members through mentorship and coaching.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 5-8

Salary Band: $120,000 – $150,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Can serve as design lead on projects which includes:
- Making appropriate tool selections, keeping client needs in mind
- Establishing site/application architecture
- Managing the workload and work assignments of other team members while staying conscientious of individuals’ strengths, weaknesses, and goals and playing to these when managing work assignments
- Collaborating with development and/or product leads on scope and definition
Works effectively with the other leads on a project (product, dev, etc) to lead collaboratively
Strong design abilities as demonstrated by regular contribution of well architected and design screens
Can clearly articulate requirements and direction to other members of the team
Proactively provides feedback to Tandem’s leadership team on processes (hiring, feedback, delivery, sales, etc) to contribute to continuous improvement of the organization as a whole

Technical Skills

Visual Thinking & Production: Uses typography as a UX tool, able to clearly articulate the ways type selection affects composition, usability, or art direction. Able to challenge or expand existing brand assets to better suit the needs of the client and project. Can identify and implement successful relationships between type families.
Knows from experience which layout + composition conventions will work or not in a particular scenario.
Technical Engagement: Work derives from implementation feasibility in HTML + CSS, leads QC/acceptance testing with devs
Research and Testing: Can craft a custom research process based on identified client profile. Thrives in the research process and can apply research findings to actionable insights or recommendations.
Research and Testing: Understands how to apply different testing methodologies depending on the product being tested. Crafts a test plan according to recommendations.
Architecture: Can make tough site architecture decisions. Understands the importance of content, user behavior, mental models and business landscape plays in the decision of an application

Professional & Consulting Skills

Can successfully plan and deliver large, long-term projects and is adept at negotiating scope tradeoffs with clients
Explains and advocates for design and business decisions to clients
Mentors their teammates in an open, respectful, flexible, empathetic manner
Manages client expectations and can have difficult conversations with clients
Handles uncertainty within project scope of work and team effectively

Principal Product Designer

A Principal Product Designer has extensive design experience and has contributed significantly to the design of multiple large-scale enterprise systems throughout their career. They have multiple domain mastery that is tied together through creative thinking. They lead and teach by example. Our principal designers are trusted advisors in all areas—to their project teams, Tandem clients, and the Tandem leadership team.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 8+

Salary Band: $145,000 – $185,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Successfully plans and delivers complex, multi-team or system, long-term projects, including ones with external dependencies
Provides strategic guidance to clients outside of the realm of pure design, including: organizational design, process, hiring, design systems, etc

Technical Skills

Visual Thinking & Production: Advanced mastery of multiple design domains
Technical Engagement:
Research and Testing: Can craft a custom research process based on identified client profile. Is capable and confident in presenting research findings and articulating actionable insights. Follows through the entire product life-cycle to advocate for research insights and how it is applied to product decisions.
Research and Testing: Understands how to apply different testing methodologies depending on the product being tested and can articulate recommendations based on test findings. Is comfortable leading and recruiting people for different parts of the testing process.
Research and Testing: Leads the team in synthesizing research findings and helps apply insights to tangible recommendations. Can craft a plan based on synthesis that ties findings to product roadmap. Is able to articulate research findings to the client and defend recommendations.
Architecture: Comfortable with loose requirements and helping the client to define business and user requirements. Skilled at decomposition of large-scale enterprise systems and architectures

Professional & Consulting Skills

Trusted by clients as a strategic advisor in matters of process, people, and product in addition to technology
Gives feedback with bravery and continues feedback journey with same people if necessary. Gives feedback to people outside of design team – including managers. Coaches others on their feedback journey
Leads and serves clients and their clients with excellent customer service. Anticipates their needs and represents Tandem through their interactions. Is professional with the client no matter the circumstance. Thinks of new business opportunities through the engagement

Design Hiring Coordinator

Our Design Hiring Coordinators are designers who are looking for an introduction to the higher manager path and are dedicated to the growth of the design team, in addition to their hands-on delivery responsibilities. The Design Hiring Coordinator requires excellent time management skills, managing client work with the responsibilities listed below:

Annual Salary Add-On: $3,000 – $6,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Shepherds the design hiring process and owns communication with candidates throughout the process
Solicits the design managers’ input on moving candidates through the hiring pipeline and updates ATS accordingly
Assigns members of the Tandem team to the various steps of the hiring process by being aware of schedules, and ensuring the workload is evenly distributed
Collaborates with the design managers and other Hiring Coordinators on developing hiring processes and procedures in our effort to continuously improve
Navigates difficult conversations with candidates with care and empathy
Researches, recommends, and implements practices and tools to support the business

Design Manager

Our Design Managers are Senior or Principal Product Designers who are committed to supporting the professional growth of their team members, in addition to their hands-on-keyboard delivery responsibilities. Their workload is split 50/50 between people management and delivery time.

Annual Salary Add-On: $7,000 – $10,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Manage between 2-6 product designers of various skill levels and is responsible for their professional development, twice-annual performance reviews, salary adjustments, and if necessary corrective action
Participates in Tandem’s leadership team and contributes to our processes and standards as an organization
Advocates for the design discipline and supports learning and growth initiatives
Is active in supporting the hiring process

Attributes

Has demonstrated ability to mentor and coach
Can establish high-quality relationships and trust with direct reports
Empathetic and able to hold a difficult conversation
Thoughtful communicator and adaptable to different communication styles

Apprentice Software Engineer

Our apprentices are eager and curious learners who are focused on building out broad technical and consulting skills. We don’t expect our apprentices to have all the answers, but we do expect them to be quick with questions and to actively seek out support.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 0-1

Standard Salary: $70,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Focuses on growing as an engineer, learning tools and processes that our team is using
Learns from more experienced colleagues and actively seeks them out, pair programming as much as possible
Develops their productivity skills by learning the tools of the trade and best practices in agile, TDD, etc
Presents and discusses their work and progress with colleagues
Works on scoped features with guidance from team or other engineers, contributing meaningfully to tasks

Technical Skills

Has foundational knowledge of programming basics that would traditionally be expected of someone who completed an “immersion-style” bootcamp
Proficiency in at least one programming language and one application framework (e.g. Ruby and RoR, Javascript and Express, or Swift and iOS)
Understands the basic concepts of agile software development processes
Works on up defined stories requiring local modifications or existing code components, such as adding a button with an action, and implement them from start to finish even though some refactoring may be necessary

Professional & Consulting Skills

Collaborates with other software developers
Breaks down basic features into a set of steps to implement (decomposition) even though the architecture may not be ideal
Expresses an aptitude for pair programming, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Contributes to meetings and asks questions in a group including while clients are present
Provides feedback to peers through PRs or code reviews

Software Engineer I

Level 1 Software Engineers continue to develop their technical and professional expertise, including understanding enough to identify what they don’t know. Engineers at this level are still committed to building a broad portfolio of skills, increasing their mastery of current skills.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 1-2

Salary Band: $80,000 – $100,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Contributes to client projects in a net-positive way, more steps forward than backward
Pairs with more experienced team members to continue building foundational technical skills
Collaborates actively with team members from all disciplines, including design, product, and client engagement.
Seeks feedback and gets work reviewed by colleagues to gain more advanced knowledge
Guides any apprentices through the apprenticeship journey, leveraging their own early-career experience
Seeks out and owns light interactions with clients (e.g. delivering updates in standup or Slack and gathering or documenting requirements)
Completes work according to task prioritization

Technical Skills

Works on low complexity features, such as those requiring new implementations of existing patterns or minor improvements to existing architecture in a single layer of the application, such as the UI or API or database. They can complete this work independently if necessary, with minimal rework
Effectively debugs low complexity issues in the code using a systematic approach independently. Low complexity issues are those where it’s clear what remediation steps are required from the acceptance criteria.
Effectively debugs medium complexity issues in the code using a systematic approach, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members. Medium complexity issues are those where the remediation steps require more investigation, but do not require large refactors or multi-level system changes.
Consistently delivers code with test coverage for some of the primary functionality, focusing on essential behavior, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Delivers code with error handling for critical errors in integral parts of application functionality, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Demonstrates proficiency in at least one language and framework with foundational knowledge of another as well (example: proficient with Ruby and Ruby on Rails and has foundational knowledge of JavaScript and React)
Applies some of the best practices of their 2 main languages/frameworks and consistently delivers code that follows those best practices, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Provides high-level documentation for their work most of the time, including PR descriptions, commit messages, README updates, or content in the project management tool, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Communicates their opinions on technical matters and can explain the justifications behind their implementation decisions, even if they are founded in personal preference

Professional & Consulting Skills

Communicates assumptions and asks clarifying questions about tasks up front to minimize the need for rework
Asks questions to discover edge cases and identify product and/or technical concerns before implementation work starts on a feature, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Asks questions about timeline or budget when talking about requested changes with the team, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Seeks out and acts on feedback from peers both on technical and professional/consulting topics
Understands business requirements and translates them into data models at the logical level, if not the technical level, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Produces realistic estimates for their individual scope of work at the task level, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Understands trade-offs in decision making and seeks support in applying this type of thinking to their work, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Navigates project management tools and writes user stories and other documentation, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Contributes their technical and consulting opinions in client and internal meetings, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members

Software Engineer II

Level 2 Software Engineers are growing into more independent and autonomous team members. Engineers at this level organize their own work in a productive manner with little oversight from leads. Level 2 Engineers can join a new project and reliably follow established standards and processes. We hope that engineers at this level are aware of their team needs and offer support and expertise to other team members when they need it.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 2-3

Salary Band: $95,000 – $110,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Contributes to the work of their project team with little rework necessary
Owns small areas of the project and/or code-base such as taking responsibility to be a subject matter expert for a part of the domain
Transfers programming skills (command over languages, frameworks, libraries, etc) between technologies with proficiency
Updates and coordinates their work with clients, raising issues and pre-empting problems
Actively participates in Tandem’s interview process

Technical Skills

Happily contributes on all sides of the stack, frontend and backend
Works on medium complexity features, such as those requiring new implementation patterns in a single layer of the application, such as the UI or API or database. They can complete this work independently if necessary, with minimal rework
Works on high complexity features, such as those that integrate multiple systems or call out to a third-party, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Effectively debugs medium complexity issues in the code using a systematic approach. Medium complexity issues are those where the remediation steps require more investigation, but do not require large refactors or multi-level system changes.
Executes low complexity refactors, such as those that touch multiple components within a single layer of an application
Models data for low complexity features, such as those that require foreign key relationships but do not require polymorphism or join tables
Consistently delivers code with test coverage for some of the primary functionality, focusing on essential behavior. Primary functionality is that which is needed to meet the core requirements, such as data parsing logic. Nonprimary functionality is non-essential to the core requirements, such as a helper function for displaying date strings.
Delivers code with error handling for critical errors in integral parts of application functionality
Demonstrates proficiency in multiple languages and frameworks. Transfers programming skills between languages and frameworks with similar syntax
Applies best practices of their proficient languages and frameworks and consistently delivers code that follows those best practices, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Coaches less experienced team members on the basics of their proficient languages and frameworks
Provides high-level documentation for their work most of the time, including PR descriptions, commit messages, README updates, or content in the project management tool
Communicates their opinions on technical matters and can explain the justifications behind their implementation decisions, even if the basis for the opinion is from anecdotal experience and not aligned with current requirements
Provides specific, actionable technical feedback to other team members in PR and code reviews and identifies some opportunities for improvement

Professional & Consulting Skills

Asks questions to discover edge cases and identify product and/or technical concerns before implementation work starts on a feature
Asks questions about timeline or budget when talking about requested changes with the team
Produces realistic estimates for their individual scope of work at the task level. They explain assumptions, risks, and unknowns for their estimates.
Understands trade-offs in decision making and seeks support in applying this type of thinking to their work
Identifies scope creep and escalates to their team, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Actively seeks buy-in for technical direction and process decisions from members of their project team
Manages their personal scope of work to meet deadlines most of the time and consistently notifies the team if they may not be able to do so
Navigates project management tools and writes user stories and other documentation
Contributes their technical and consulting opinions in client and internal meetings
Assists more senior engineers in pre-sales client activities (discovery, scoping, estimation, etc)
Explains technical and business decisions to clients, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Handles risk, change, and uncertainty within their personal scope of work effectively, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members

Software Engineer III

Level 3 Software Engineers are independent team members who can not only organize their own daily work in a productive manner but also effectively estimate their work and stay aware of prioritization. They may be beginning to identify strengths and skill areas that they want to hone and specialize in. They also actively seek out opportunities to lend expertise to their team members and provide mentorship to others.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 3-5

Salary Band: $105,000 – $130,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Consistently produces high quality work that may require only minor adjustments
Takes ownership of larger portions of a project and/or code base as a subject matter expert (SME)
Demonstrates leadership abilities within their project team
Supports project leads (Senior or Principal Engineers) proactively
Actively participates in helping to craft estimates and is more engaged in forward project planning
Leads phone screens, code reviews, and interviews for new candidates

Technical Skills

Works on high complexity features, such as those that integrate multiple systems or call out to a third party, independently
Effectively debugs high complexity issues in the code using a systematic approach, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members. High complexity issues are those where the remediation steps are unknown and may require large refactors or multi-level system changes.
Executes medium complexity refactors, such as those that touch multiple components within many layers of the application
Models data for medium complexity features, such as those that require join tables
Consistently delivers code with test coverage for all of the primary functionality and some of the non-primary functionality, striving for at least 75% coverage
Delivers code with error handling for user input and other critical data errors in integral parts of application functionality
Consistently writes useful abstractions to increase code reusability and extensibility
Provides detailed documentation for their work most of the time, including PR descriptions, commit messages, README updates, or content in the project management tool, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Communicates their opinions on technical matters and can explain the justifications behind their implementation decisions, appropriate to constraints of relevant requirements
Decomposes complex requirements into constituent parts and documents these tasks as effective stories
Provides supportive, specific, actionable design and product feedback and suggests feasible alternatives
Provides supportive, specific, actionable technical feedback to other team members in PR and code reviews, and identifies areas for refactoring, while providing high-level implementation direction

Professional & Consulting Skills

Proactively manages scope with an eye towards timeline and budget, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Produces realistic estimates for their individual scope of work at the story level. They explain assumptions, risks, and unknowns for their estimates.
Explains trade-offs in their decision making, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Identifies scope creep and escalates to their team. Offers alternatives to the team and presents those alternatives to the client.
Explains technical and business decisions to clients
Leads client calls and negotiates scope with the client when necessary, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Manages client expectations and has difficult conversations with clients, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members
Finds opportunities to unblock their team members’ work some of the time
Reliably completes necessary project management tasks in addition to technical tasks
Manages “up” to project leads and more senior members of the team with tact and effectiveness
Handles risk, change, and uncertainty within their personal scope of work effectively. Handles uncertainty within project scope of work effectively and supports team members through the uncertainty, with some coaching and pairing assistance from other team members

Senior Software Engineer

Our Senior Software Engineers are those engineers who have strong technical and consulting skills and who have demonstrated leadership ability with positive responses and feedback from their peers and team members. They may specialize in specific technical or consulting areas though not necessary. Our senior engineers should aim to support the growth of their team members through mentorship and coaching.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 5-8

Salary Band: $125,000 – $165,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Serves as technical lead on projects which includes:
- Making technology selections
- Establishing architecture
- Managing the workload and work assignments of other team members while staying conscientious of individuals’ strengths, weaknesses, and goals and playing to these when managing work assignments
- Collaborating with design and/or product leads on scope and definition
- Contributing to the Project Weekly meeting
- Ultimately shepherding the execution of the technical vision of the project
Works with the other leads on a project (product, design, etc) to lead collaboratively
Demonstrates strong technical abilities, through regular contribution of quality code and sound architectural decisions
Clearly articulates requirements and direction to other members of the team
Proactively provides feedback to Tandem’s leadership team on processes (hiring, feedback, delivery, sales, etc) to contribute to continuous improvement of the organization as a whole

Technical Skills

Works on high complexity features, such as those that integrate multiple systems or call out to a third party, independently.
Delivers code that is easily understood by all members of the team and takes steps to make sure the team learns from their code.
Effectively debugs high complexity issues in the code using a systematic approach. High complexity issues are those where the remediation steps are unknown and may require large refactors or multi-level system changes.
Executes high complexity refactors, such as those that change the contracts between integrations.
Models data for high complexity features, such as those that require polymorphic associations, manipulation of advanced SQL concepts like views, triggers, or stored procedures, or requires complex normalization while considering performance
Builds scalable frontend solutions with an eye towards component architecture (separating business and presentation logic), accessibility, performance, and other web best practices
Consistently delivers code with test coverage for most of the primary functionality, and some of the non-primary functionality. Primary functionality is that which is needed to meet the core requirements, such as data parsing logic. Nonprimary functionality is non-essential to the core requirements, such as a helper function for displaying date strings.
Delivers code with error handling for user input and other critical data errors in integral parts of application functionality providing graceful fallback conditions
Builds solutions with an awareness of web security best practices, such as the OWASP Top Ten
Provides detailed documentation for their work most of the time, including PR descriptions, commit messages, README updates, or content in the project management tool
Communicates their opinions on technical matters and can explain the justifications behind their implementation decisions, appropriate to constraints of relevant requirements while also explaining other solutions considered and the benefits and considerations of those approaches
Resolves technical debt proactively within the framework of overall client and project objectives
Supports other team members in languages and frameworks that they may be less comfortable with by drawing on past experiences and breadth of technical knowledge
Collaborates with design, product, and other disciplines on the scope and definition of features

Professional & Consulting Skills

Successfully plans and delivers large, long-term projects and adeptly negotiates scope tradeoffs with clients
Defines roadmaps and sets vision for long-term projects
Proactively manages scope with an eye towards timeline and budget
Produces realistic estimates for their team’s scope of work at the sprint level. They explain assumptions, risks, and unknowns for their estimates.
Explains trade-offs in their decision making
Leads client calls and negotiates scope with the client when necessary
Manages client expectations and has difficult conversations with clients
Actively solicits opinions of all members of the team and coaches them to formulate well-researched, technically sound opinions
Supports their team member’s delivery with helpful and kind accountability strategies
Mentors their teammates in an open, respectful, flexible, empathetic manner
Handles uncertainty within project scope of work and team effectively and guides team members through that ambiguity

Principal Software Engineer

A Principal Software Engineer has extensive engineering experience and has contributed significantly to the development of multiple large-scale enterprise systems throughout their career. Our principal engineers are trusted advisors in all areas—to their project teams, Tandem clients, and the Tandem leadership team.

Typical Years of Prior Experience: 8-10+

Salary Band: $160,000 – $185,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Successfully plans and delivers complex, multi-team or system, long-term projects, including ones with external dependencies
Provides strategic guidance to clients outside of the realm of pure technology, including: organizational design, process, hiring, digital transformation, legacy systems, etc.
Consistently prioritizes the “big picture”: thinking about systems and architecture and how choices impact the client and project team in the long-term

Technical Skills

Guides large-scale and long-term refactoring at the application, system, and infrastructure levels while supporting and coaching other team members
Decomposes large-scale enterprise systems and architectures in an easy to understand way for other team members
Advocates for software testing practices and CI/CD implementations with other team members and with clients
As an individual contributor, delivers code with complex error handling logic, including useful reraises, logging, and very few if any fatal exceptions
Provides detailed documentation for their work most of the time, including PR descriptions, commit messages, README updates, or content in the project management tool with the goal of educating and mentoring their team members and clients
Has advanced technical mastery of multiple languages and frameworks, and competency with a breadth of others
Delegates implementation work to appropriately-leveled team members to meet project needs and grow their skills
Collaborates with design, product, and other disciplines on the scope and definition of architecture, systems, projects, et

Professional & Consulting Skills

Establishes trust with clients as a strategic advisor in matters of process, people, and product in addition to technology
Navigates and resolves ambiguity at both the technical and business levels while supporting and coaching other team members
Proactively identifies strategies to add business value for clients, both within and outside of technical solutions
Creates opportunities and sponsors their team members to lead initiatives within their project
Provides support and coaching to less experienced team members on technical implementations and strategies for client engagement
Makes highly effective use of delegation and team management to achieve success
Adeptly uses pairing as a mentorship and coaching strategy with other team member

Engineering Hiring Coordinator

Our Engineering Hiring Coordinators are software engineers who are looking for an introduction to the higher manager path and are dedicated to the growth of the engineering team, in addition to their hands-on-keyboard delivery responsibilities. The Hiring Coordinator requires excellent time management skills, managing client work with the responsibilities listed below:

Annual Salary Add-on: $3,000-6,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Shepherds the engineering hiring process and owns communication with candidates throughout the process
Collaborates with the engineering managers and other Hiring Coordinators on developing hiring processes and procedures in our effort to continuously improve
Solicits the engineering managers’ input on moving candidates through the hiring pipeline and updates ATS accordingly
Assigns members of the Tandem team to the various steps of the hiring process by being aware of schedules, and using a round-robin technique to ensure the workload is evenly distributed
Provides consistent status updates to the wider team to increase transparency of processes/decisions and to properly set expectations
Reads all ATS candidate evaluations and collaborates with managers to progress or reject candidates based on team feedback
Navigates difficult conversations with candidates with care and empathy
Researches, recommends, and implements practices and tools to support the business

Engineering Manager

Our Engineering Managers are Senior or Principal Software Engineers who are committed to supporting the professional growth of their team members, in addition to their hands-on-keyboard delivery responsibilities. Their workload is split 50/50 between people management and delivery time.

Annual Salary Add-On: $7,000 – $10,000

Responsibilities & Impact

Manages up to 6 software engineers of various skill levels through monthly 1:1s (at minimum)
Establishes high-quality relationships with their direct reports
Mentors and coaches their direct reports in both technical and professional/consulting skills
Identifies growth opportunities through the solicitation of feedback and / or direct observation for their direct reports
Collaborates with their direct reports on developing goals aimed at any relevant growth areas
Conducts twice-annual values-driven performance reviews for each of their direct reports
Performs salary adjustments and promotions for each of their direct reports
Initiates corrective action for their direct reports’ performance, if necessary
Proactively sponsors their direct reports for opportunities outside their direct reports’ project teams
Advocates for their direct reports’ concerns and needs with Tandem’s leadership team
Navigates difficult conversations with care and empathy
Communicates thoughtfully and adapts to different communication styles
Shepherds the engineering hiring process and owns communication with candidates throughout the process
Actively participates in weekly Tandem leadership meetings
Defines processes and sets delivery standards for the organization
Researches, recommends, and implements practices and tools to support the business
Assesses culture needs based on conversations with their direct reports and the rest of the company and makes recommendations for any necessary changes
Leads by example, modeling values-driven behavior and choices and coaching all team members to do the same

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