Testing

At Level 5, you influence how an entire engineering organization approaches quality and confidence. You don't just write or guide tests—you shape mindsets, standards, and systems that enable thousands of confident changes per day. You lead cross-functional efforts to balance speed, safety, and simplicity at scale.

Key Behaviors

  • Defines org-wide testing strategies aligned with product and risk profiles
  • Advocates for and delivers quality initiatives with executive buy-in
  • Connects test strategy to uptime, velocity, and customer satisfaction
  • Establishes durable systems for test governance and review
  • Develops or sponsors internal tooling that makes testing easier and faster

Common Struggles

  • Balancing ideal strategy with practical team capacity
  • Navigating cross-org alignment and competing priorities
  • Avoiding complexity or overreach in frameworks and tools

Success Indicators

You know you're successful when you:

  • Make high-confidence development and deployment a competitive advantage
  • Shape how teams think about reliability and quality at every level
  • Lead initiatives that measurably reduce incidents and increase trust
  • Create scalable systems where quality happens by default

Mindset Shift

From:

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

To:

"I create systems where confident delivery is the default."

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • Do teams feel confident in what they ship—and why?
  • Where do our quality efforts feel misaligned with real pain?
  • What tools or guidance would make it easier to do the right thing?

Build These Habits

  • 1
    Maintain close feedback loops with teams doing the work
  • 2
    Turn war stories into playbooks, docs, and onboarding tools
  • 3
    Capture test strategy in product development processes

Seek Feedback

  • "Do teams feel confident in what they ship—and why?"
  • "Where do our quality efforts feel misaligned with real pain?"
  • "What tools or guidance would make it easier to do the right thing?"

Signals You're Ready to Level Up

  • Your work is referenced in launch planning, postmortems, and goals
  • Teams adopt your testing philosophy without needing your involvement
  • Engineering leaders use your language to talk about quality trade-offs

Focus Summary

  • Define the vision
  • Clear the path
  • Make confidence the default

At Level 5, you lead through trust, strategy, and systems thinking. You help an entire organization deliver with confidence—because you made quality scalable, intuitive, and core to how the company works.