Want to become a senior dev? I’ve made this Senior Developer Roadmap 🗺️ just for you!
This is my take on what skills and traits you need to grow into a senior position. It’s still a work in progress, so expect some improvements in the future.
TIP: Click on the image to load the full resolution version.
Here’s a quick rundown of the content included:
Prerequisite: Previous Role’s Roadmap
You need to have gone through the previous roadmap for your role as outlined in roadmap.sh. This is important since your team will look to you for technical guidance in your specific stack.
Code Quality
As a senior developer, you need to uphold quality not just for your own work, but in the work of your team. This means creating standards, doing reviews and documenting as needed.
Decision Making
A senior role is characterized by making good decisions. There are many technologies we can use to create products so choosing the right one for the project is important.
Technical Solutions
Another task of a senior dev is turning ideas into practical solutions. Not only do you build new features, but you also have to fix and improve existing ones with an eye towards reliability and performance.
Communication
It’s a misconception that the senior dev sits behind closed doors coding all day. You also need to be able to convey your ideas well, both to dev teammates and nontechnical colleagues.
Project Planning
Sure you might think this is a PM’s job, but remember that you’re also tasked to create solutions, which is part of the project planning process. So know how your company’s project planning process works so you can work effectively within it.
Technical Mentorship
One of the most gratifying tasks of a senior dev is improving the technical capability of the team. This happens through mentorship.
Leadership
Finally, the best trait of a senior dev is being a good leader of the team. This is also the toughest part of the journey, since you need to cultivate new patterns of thinking that involve raising up others more than yourself.
Got comments, feedback and questions about it? Just email me or comment below!
I also put it up in Github so you can clone it easily: https://github.com/glennsantos/senior-developer-roadmap/
There’s also a checklist version of the map there, if that’s more to your liking.
Stay tuned for the Tech Lead Roadmap coming soon!
