Junior vs. Mid vs. Senior Software Engineers – DEPT®

Generally speaking, here are the differences between junior, mid and senior engineers.

Junior developers usually have 1-3 years of development experience. They should be proficient in one or two languages/frameworks and have dabbled in a few other languages.

A mid-level engineer should have 3-5 years of experience or a bachelor’s in computer science with a year or two of experience. At this point, they should have mastered 2-3 languages/frameworks. At Devetry, we expect our mid-level engineers to have full stack experience (backend, frontend, and databases).

A senior engineer should have 5+ years of experience and be proficient in any modern language (or be able to quickly jump into anything new.) They should also have great communication, technical project management, and architecting skills.

Beyond these standard experiences, it’s also important to define skills and expectations within your organization.

At DEPT®, we use these:

Time scope of accountability: On average, how long are they working on a task? For juniors, this might be a few days; for seniors, many months.

The complexity of scope: How difficult is their work and what does it require?

Communication: What are the expectations surrounding communication?

Expertise: Generally speaking, how much do they know?

Leadership: Who are they in charge of? For both juniors and mids, it’s probably just themselves.

Oversight: What kind of oversight do they need? This can range from daily check-ins to as needed.