“Are You Sure You’re a Senior Dev?” — What Is Grading in IT and Why It Is Important

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Grading in IT is a term used to “classify” specialists by levels of skills, experience, and responsibility. But each company determines what it expects from a Senior and what it expects from a Junior. And even within the same business, tech leads of different teams may have a different vision of the IT levels.

We have asked Anna Reznikova, Head of Recruitment at ITExpert, and Oleksii Pavlenko, Engineering Manager at iDeals Solutions Group, PhD, how to determine whether a candidate is suitable for the position and how an IT specialist can find out their grade.

What is a grading system, and why is it needed in the IT field?

Grading is the categorization of specialists by the level of qualification, responsibility, or experience in the talent market or within the company, from Junior to Senior. Grading is also a certain vision of skills, which can be used to influence motivation, understand the strengths, weaknesses, and growth areas of employees, and facilitate hiring.

The grading system allows you to effectively build teamwork by determining the complexity of tasks for a specialist, taking into account skills.

Grades also affect the salary range for a position, and sometimes even the extra benefits, as well as working conditions.

Grades in the company vs. in the talent market: what’s the difference?

Grades in the IT market are quite standard: they are divided into Trainee/Junior, Middle, and Senior levels. In Ukraine, the minimum required level of experience for each grade is as follows:

• Junior — at least one year of experience;
• Middle — 2.5+ years of experience;
• Senior — 4.5+ years of experience.

However, as Anna adds, there are companies and locations for which the level of a senior is determined by 7+ years of experience, and a specialist can be considered a junior for up to five years (depending on the responsibilities within the grade).

MAANG companies (an abbreviation for the largest tech IT giants — Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have internal grading systems, for example, SDE I-II distribution at Amazon. Quite often, according to Oleksii Pavlenko, they correspond to market levels. That is, SDE I ≈ junior. However, this applies to the titles themselves, since the requirements of such giants are much higher and there are cases when a senior from Ukraine moves to the entry-level in MAANG.

If there are more intermediary levels, they may correspond to the grading Junior — Strong Junior — Middle — Strong Middle, etc. These intermediate levels allow a specialist who has not yet reached a Middle level to take a position higher than a Junior.

The difference between grading in different companies increases regarding positions above senior. For example, Meta (Facebook) has the following classification:

• Staff Software Engineer
• Senior Staff Software Engineer
• Principal Engineer
• Distinguished Engineer

At Microsoft, seniors are offered to grow first to Principal SDE and then to Partner SDE. In Ukraine, however, a senior level is usually offered a Team/Tech Lead position (although Middle can also take the lead position, as it is sometimes seen as horizontal growth), and then an Architect and CTO (Chief Technology Officer).

What’s the reason for the difference? It’s important to understand that internal levels may not correspond to market levels at all. A superstar in even a great company may have a lower level compared to others in different businesses because niche skill sets cannot be applied to more standard projects.

How grading affects IT recruiting

Due to different market visions, recruiters may not indicate the grade in job vacancies or specify it not only by years of experience but also with project tasks/responsibilities. For example:

1. Junior — needs mentoring, support, peer advice, and checks, low level of responsibility;
2. Middle — independently and confidently performs tasks, the level of responsibility is increasing;
3. Senior — high level of responsibility, can participate in architectural decisions or mentor colleagues.

Such a candidate’s portrait includes, first of all, areas of responsibility. For example, if we’re talking about working with documentation for a QA Engineer, then for a Junior, it will include requirements assessment and testing, and for a Senior, it will also include test review and system design.

Oleksii adds that although years of experience are not something he pays attention to when evaluating resumes, it’s impossible to reach the senior level in a year. “A person must go through all the stages of development, to have been in different roles and grow — that is something like natural experience gaining,” he says.

When analyzing resumes, both recruiters and managers pay attention to the grade indicated by the candidate. This is especially important if the hiring manager specifies a certain grade in the job brief and is not ready to consider other options. For example, if they are looking for a senior Java developer and the candidates have indicated middle level in their resume, although they have 5+ years of experience and meet the basic requirements, the recruiter can clarify whether they are currently positioning themselves exclusively as middle.

It also happens that candidates who are considered seniors in the market are middles for a particular company, although their responsibilities may be similar to those of seniors. The opposite situation, in Oleksii’s opinion, is only possible for a junior: they may be hired for a position they are not qualified for if the employers see their potential. On the other hand, a middle and a senior are expected to be a full match with the vacancy. An exception might be rare or outdated technologies, such as Haskell, in which case a downgrade will be justified.

How IT professionals can find out their grades without tests and registrations

To assess yourself, you should focus on your experience: quantitatively and qualitatively.

Quality would mean how deeply and productively a specialist has worked with a particular technology. Each area has its own must-have requirements. For example, for DevOps Engineers, these are cloud technologies (AWS and Google Cloud are more common lately), Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform.

At the same time, if you have something to boast about, it makes sense to add it not only to your resume but also to professional social networks, such as LinkedIn. Candidates with Senior/Team/Tech Lead/Architect/CTO titles are much more likely to be targeted by IT headhunting — that is, not to look for vacancies themselves but to receive offers from recruiters even if they have a job.

The final decision on the level of the candidate according to the internal grading system is made by the hiring manager and the responsible technical specialist (tech lead, architect, or senior). The recruiter does not and cannot make such a decision. At the same time, the candidate is eligible to disagree with the assessment and refuse to cooperate.

What to consider when creating an internal grading system

The grading system should include:

• clearly defined levels
• descriptions of competencies and areas of responsibility
• “graded” system of remuneration

The easiest way is to take the standard junior — middle — senior role division as a basis. Grading, which includes intermediate positions, such as strong Junior, or a system with 6+ levels, makes sense only in large companies.

Usually, the smaller the company, the fewer specialists on different levels it has. For example, a small organization with one QA Engineer and two developers may have only middles. But if the product idea is complex and innovative, then such a core team for startups should consist of specialists with experience in lead and architect positions.

Also, a properly built grading system should take into account the promotion of current employees. Usually, the review takes place every six months or a year and is initiated by the manager. An employee’s request is acceptable if they feel they have grown in skills and experience. However, sometimes, as Oleksii says, it is easier to grow in the level of position, as well as in salary, if you move to a new company. That’s why, to retain talent, a company should ensure a convenient system of internal promotions.

Thus, to implement grades in an IT company, you need to:

1. Develop clear and objective criteria for evaluating employees. This may include skills, experience, responsibility, and performance.
2. Define the different levels (grades) and their descriptions.
3. Determine how evaluations will be conducted and how employee progress will be reviewed.
4. Provide access to training resources and development opportunities for employees to improve their skills.
5. Ensure clear communication about the grading criteria and provide regular feedback to employees.

You can also use international methods of grading, such as Hay. It includes three groups of factors:

• knowledge and skills
• problem-solving
• independence and responsibility

All of them are used to evaluate all positions in the company.

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However, the implementation of such methodologies requires expert consulting. If a company does not have the resources for this, it is easier to use a standardized IT grading system with three levels.

And finally, even the most detailed grading system can become outdated. It is advisable to update your vision internally every 2–3 years. In addition, when dealing with talented T-shaped specialists, be flexible — grades should help, not limit you!