Testing

At Level 4, you scale good testing practices across teams. You proactively identify where testing is failing the organization—whether through gaps, flakiness, confusion, or lack of tooling—and drive change. You shape the culture of testing, not just the coverage. Your impact is felt in how confidently teams ship, how quickly they debug, and how easily new engineers get up to speed.

Key Behaviors

  • Leads initiatives to improve test tooling, infrastructure, or conventions
  • Introduces patterns that increase speed, clarity, and coverage
  • Helps teams reduce flakiness, duplication, or redundant test cases
  • Brings test strategy into planning and design reviews
  • Mentors others on writing meaningful, maintainable tests

Common Struggles

  • May struggle to influence teams without formal authority
  • Can overstandardize or push tools that don't fit all contexts
  • Risks investing heavily in testing infrastructure with unclear ownership

Success Indicators

You know you're successful when you:

  • Improve reliability and confidence across teams through better testing
  • Help orgs reduce the cost and confusion of test maintenance
  • Enable faster feedback loops and earlier defect detection
  • Scale a testing culture that prioritizes simplicity and value

Mindset Shift

From:

"I improve test practices across teams."

To:

"I shape how the company thinks about risk and quality."

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • Where is testing slowing us down—or not protecting us?
  • How can we reduce the cost of poor test decisions?
  • What would a culture of high-confidence delivery look like here?

Build These Habits

  • 1
    Promote holistic test strategies that span unit to production checks
  • 2
    Partner with stakeholders to align on risk and quality trade-offs
  • 3
    Evolve standards and infrastructure to keep pace with scale

Seek Feedback

  • "What makes testing harder than it should be?"
  • "Do our tests match the confidence we want to have?"
  • "Where can we remove friction without losing quality?"

Signals You're Ready to Level Up

  • Teams improve test effectiveness with your input
  • Your test strategies shape release plans and architectural decisions
  • Others cite your examples or tooling when testing is discussed

Focus Summary

  • Test like an architect
  • Influence like a leader
  • Build a culture of trusted software

At Level 4, your testing impact goes beyond code. You remove pain points, sharpen priorities, and help teams move faster with confidence.