Panel: Staff+ Engineering Skills

Staff+ engineering is a critical role in any high-performing engineering organization. But what does it take to get promoted or get hired into a staff role? What does it take to keep it? Join us for a panel discussion with experienced Staff+ engineers who will share their insights.


Speaker

Erin Doyle

Sr. Staff Software Engineer @Lob, with 20+ Years Previously as a Full Stack Engineer and Instructor @Egghead

Erin Doyle is a Sr. Staff Software Engineer @Lob. For the last 20+ years prior she’s been working as a Full Stack Engineer with a focus on the Front-End. She’s also an instructor for Egghead.io and given talks and workshops focusing on building the best and most accessible experiences for users and developers.

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Speaker

Adam Schirmacher

Staff Engineer & Manager of Staff Engineers @Gusto

Adam is currently a Staff Engineer @Gusto whose code moves $50B+ per year. He was formerly a director at Gusto who managed Staff Engineers. He focuses on being supportive yet demanding - ensuring that not only are current challenges handled, but that his organization is ready to tackle the next set of challenges too.

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Speaker

Joy Ebertz

Principal Engineer @Harness, Blogger, and Speaker, Previously @Box

Joy is a Principal Software Engineer at Split by Harness, leading our backend team from a technical perspective. Prior to Harness, she worked at Box. At both Harness and Box, she has led efforts around splitting monoliths into microservices, revamping authentication and authorization frameworks, creating REST API standards, audit logging and more. In addition to designing software and writing code, she also maintains a blog: https://medium.com/@jkebertz.  In her free time, she does a lot of traveling, reading, and running ridiculously long distances (mostly on trails).

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Speaker

Caleb Hyde

Site Reliability Engineer @Expel

Caleb is a Systems Engineer by education, software developer by vocation, and hobby roboticist. Their work focuses on Site Reliability and Data Engineering.

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From the same track

Session Staff Plus Engineering

An Incident Story: Tips for How Staff+ Engineers Can Impact Incidents

Monday Oct 2 / 10:35AM PDT

In this talk, Erin Doyle, will walk through her experience with a critical 3-day-long incident.

Speaker image - Erin Doyle

Erin Doyle

Sr. Staff Software Engineer @Lob, with 20+ Years Previously as a Full Stack Engineer and Instructor @Egghead

Session Staff Plus Engineering

Things Every Staff+ Engineer Should Know

Monday Oct 2 / 11:45AM PDT

As staff+ engineers, we're often thrown into the deep end and expected to navigate huge amounts of ambiguity including ambiguity about what our jobs even are. It's common to feel like there's a huge amount of trial and error or even luck.

Speaker image - Joy Ebertz

Joy Ebertz

Principal Engineer @Harness, Blogger, and Speaker, Previously @Box

Session Staff Plus Engineering

Managing Staff+ Engineers: Opportunities and Challenges

Monday Oct 2 / 01:35PM PDT

Staff+ engineers can be a powerful force in your organization…if you let them. Effectively managingStaff+ engineers requires different strategies than many managers are used to employing.

Speaker image - Adam Schirmacher

Adam Schirmacher

Staff Engineer & Manager of Staff Engineers @Gusto

Session Staff Plus Engineering

Risk and Failure on the Path to Staff Engineer

Monday Oct 2 / 03:55PM PDT

Even as inaction can be a risk, deciding which actions to take in one's career involves choosing between different bets. I've developed a rubric for judging specific risks that I've taken.

Speaker image -  Caleb Hyde

Caleb Hyde

Site Reliability Engineer @Expel

Session

Unconference: Staff+ Engineering

Monday Oct 2 / 05:05PM PDT

What is an unconference? An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. Attendees come together, bringing their challenges and relying on the experience and know-how of their peers for solutions.