--- title: "Principal Engineer: Where the Level Sits Above Staff" description: "What a principal engineer is, how it differs from staff and distinguished, why the title means different things at Amazon or Oracle, and what to ask." url: "https://www.marian.coach/principal-engineer-role/" lang: "en" image: "https://www.marian.coach/_astro/speaker-11.5jzeDN0W_2rqHJb.jpg" --- A **principal engineer** is a senior individual contributor who sets technical direction across an organisation, with nobody reporting to them. They make the trade-offs between product areas that no single team can make. The work is architecture, multi-year bets and growing the staff engineers below, done mostly through writing, reviews and trust. On a full ladder it’s the third rung of what Will Larson calls [Staff-plus](https://staffeng.com/guides/overview-overview/): staff, then principal, then distinguished. It’s rare. When Uber had about 2,000 engineers in 2020, two of them were principal level, roughly 0.1%, against 2.5 to 3% at staff ([Pragmatic Engineer](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/uber-engineering-levels/)). ## The ladder, rung by rung | Rung | Scope | Clock | The decision it owns | Who feels a bad call | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Senior | One team’s hardest problems | A sprint to a quarter | How to build it | The team, quickly | | Staff | Several teams in one product area or domain | Quarters | The best option inside that area | Those teams, for a few quarters | | Principal | An organisation, across product areas | A year or more | Which area takes the cost of a trade-off | The org, and the director who backed it | | Distinguished | The company, sometimes the wider industry | Years | Which bets the company makes at all | The company | The rows follow the published ladders. [Dropbox](https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/ic6_principal_software_engineer.html) puts its principal (IC6) on “org/company-wide multi-year, multi-team goals”, “partnering closely with Directors/senior EPD leadership”, while its staff level owns multi-team strategy for one product or platform. [GitLab](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/development/management/principal-engineer/) describes distinguished as the IC equivalent of a director and fellow as the equivalent of a VP. In practice, the clock column is the softest one. GitLab’s [career matrix](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/careers/matrix/development/dev/principal/) asks principals to plan “with a 6 month view”, Dropbox says multi-year. Both ladders are public, so read the column as a direction of travel. ![Marian Kamenistak at the Engineering Leaders Community conference 2026.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-47.DhgSfapL_Z1MIG07.webp) Explaining a trade-off to the people who will live with it is a large part of the job. ELC conference, 2026. ## Principal engineer vs staff engineer: what changes? A principal engineer decides which product area pays for a trade-off, while a staff engineer usually optimises inside one area. On most published ladders principal sits one rung above staff, and its decisions run on a clock of a year or more, against quarters for staff. The [staff engineer guide](https://www.marian.coach/what-a-staff-engineer-role-is-all-about/) covers what staff owns. The move to principal changes the kind of decision more than the size of it. A staff engineer usually finds the best answer inside one area. A principal decides which area pays: the platform team that loses a quarter so three product teams can ship, the migration that gets funded while another waits a year. Those calls hurt somebody, and the principal has to explain them to directors who weren’t in the design review. ![Hand-drawn diagram: one Principal box spanning an organisation, an arrow to a row of product areas where Staff owns one product area, and below it a row of teams where Senior owns one team.](https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/principal-engineer-role/infographic.webp) Larson’s [four archetypes](https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes/) help here, as long as you treat them as shapes and not levels, which he says himself in a [2021 mailbag post](https://lethain.com/mailbag-should-we-call-them-architects/). He ties the Tech Lead to roughly one per eight engineers, the Architect to organisations of around 100 engineers, and the Right Hand, who borrows an executive’s scope and authority, to around 1,000. The Solver goes wherever the hardest problem is. At principal scope the Architect and Right Hand shapes are the common ones, because those are the shapes that only exist in bigger orgs. What principals get hired for, going by the postings behind this page: cross-team architecture that no single team owns ([GitLab](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/8786095002)), build-versus-buy and multi-year bets ([Weave](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/weave/be890e53-b0fc-42a8-b148-6f9e4e6053d4)), legacy migrations ([Twilio](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/twilio/jobs/7944264)) and growing staff and senior engineers ([Olo, Belfast](https://jobs.lever.co/olo/a8cb78bf-37c4-49e7-afc8-067c5d03caac)). Alex Ewerlöf names the risk on the other side: a principal who stops talking to the teams becomes “ivory tower and irrelevant” ([his 2024 piece](https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/principal-engineer)). ## Why the same title means three different levels “Principal” is the least portable title on the IC track. At [Amazon](https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer/levels/principal-sde), principal is L7, the level right after senior, because there is no staff rung. Levels.fyi shows an average L7 total compensation of $641,534, most of it in stock. Microsoft’s principal spans levels 65 to 67, which [one comparison](https://testrigor.com/blog/engineering-levels-in-different-companies-compared/) maps to Google’s staff level; Microsoft publishes no official map, so treat that as approximate. Going down the scale, [Oracle’s Prague posting](https://www.dreamworkhq.com/job/16e5bf54-873c-40ce-b49b-5f84902fc621) for a principal engineer in its cloud media services team sits at career level IC4 and asks for six years of experience. At Capital One, “Principal Associate” is the [senior software engineer band](https://www.levels.fyi/companies/capital-one/salaries/software-engineer). Twilio prints the level in the title: “Principal Engineer (P5)” in the US, and the same job family appears as L5 in its [India posting](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/twilio/jobs/7996776). If the posting carries a code, ask what band the code maps to. The code is the honest part. In Czechia the title is rare. On 9 October 2026, Productboard, Mews, Kiwi.com, Rohlik and GoodData had no principal software role open, and [Productboard’s](https://www.productboard.com/careers/open-positions/) highest IC openings were staff. The principal postings in Prague come mostly from global companies: Microsoft’s GitHub Actions role is listed at CZK 1,983,000 to 3,553,000 base a year ([posting copy](https://freehire.me/jobs/principal-software-engineer-github-actions-microsoft-zwkwio6k)), labelled IC5. For a Western European anchor, [Elastic](https://jobs.elastic.co/jobs?gh_jid=8223682) posts €104,800 to €165,700 base for a principal AI engineer in Ireland. ## Questions to ask before you accept the title - **Which internal level is this, and what sits above it?** If the answer is IC4 or a band shared with senior engineers elsewhere, you’re negotiating a senior offer with a better word on it. - **How many principals are there per 100 engineers?** Uber’s ratio was 0.1%. A company with ten principals among 200 engineers is using the title for something else. - **Who do I report to?** [Weave’s posting](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/weave/be890e53-b0fc-42a8-b148-6f9e4e6053d4) asks for company-level strategy and a multi-year vision, with the role reporting to a director of engineering. Company-wide scope with a director as your manager is a mismatch worth naming before you sign. - **Tell me about a decision the last principal made that a manager disagreed with. Who broke the tie?** GitLab and Twilio both list influence “without direct authority” as a requirement. You want to know if it ever wins. - **How much of the last person’s week went to coding?** [Dropbox](https://jobs.dropbox.com/listing/8261911?gh_jid=8261911) wants a “company level technical strategist” who also stays “deeply hands on”. That’s a strategy role and a delivery role in one seat, and delivery usually wins the week. - **Am I on an on-call rotation?** GitLab, Cloudflare, Microsoft and Olo put principals on incident rotations. GitLab’s handbook mentions “weekday and weekend and occasional night” shifts. - **Which roadmap item fails if this role disappears?** Senior ICs are expensive. [Calcalist reported](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/1v9v8m3wx) in September 2026 that Oracle’s cuts hit principal core infrastructure engineers harder than most roles. That’s one company only, so read it as a warning sign. A role tied to a named roadmap item is easier to defend than a role tied to “strategy”. ![Marian Kamenistak seated, leaning forward with hands clasped, smiling.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/portrait-leaned-in.DS1dDwka_1U5UwW.webp) The questions above take ten minutes in a final round and save a year of guessing. Around half the staff-track engineers I work with end up changing companies, often because the path above them exists only on a slide. Moving for the level is a reasonable call. If you’re sizing up a principal offer or arguing your own case for the level, [Staff+ mentoring](https://www.marian.coach/staff-engineer-mentor/) is where we work through it, starting with a free intro call. ## Neighbouring roles - [Staff engineer: the rung below](https://www.marian.coach/what-a-staff-engineer-role-is-all-about/) - [Engineering manager: the people side of the same org](https://www.marian.coach/engineering-manager-role/) - [Member of technical staff: the flat title AI labs use](https://www.marian.coach/member-of-technical-staff/) - [Platform engineer: running the platform as a product](https://www.marian.coach/platform-engineer-role/) ## Frequently asked What is a principal engineer?+ A principal engineer is a senior individual contributor who sets technical direction for an organisation, without direct reports. The job is deciding trade-offs between product areas, partnering with directors on multi-year bets, and growing the staff engineers below. On a full ladder it sits above staff and below distinguished. Is principal higher than staff?+ Principal sits above staff on most published ladders. Staff engineers usually own direction for several teams in one area, while principals decide between areas for a whole organisation. Amazon is the common exception: it has no staff rung, so its principal is the level right after senior and maps roughly to staff elsewhere. What is above a principal engineer?+ Above principal usually come senior principal, distinguished engineer and fellow. GitLab describes distinguished as the individual contributor equivalent of a director and fellow as the equivalent of a VP. Smaller companies often stop at principal, so the next move there is CTO, chief architect, or a bigger company. Is principal engineer at Amazon L6 or L7?+ Principal at Amazon is L7. L6 is senior software development engineer, and Amazon has no staff title in between, so the jump from L6 to L7 is large. Levels.fyi data shows most L7 pay arriving as stock rather than base salary. What is the difference between a principal engineer and an engineering manager?+ A principal engineer owns technical direction, an engineering manager owns people and delivery. The principal has no direct reports and influences through design reviews, written proposals and trust. The EM hires, reviews performance and answers for team commitments. Principals usually partner with directors as opposed to first-line managers. Is principal engineer a high position?+ Principal engineer is a high position wherever the ladder is real. Uber in 2020 had two principal engineers among roughly 2,000, about 0.1%. But some banks and enterprises use principal for a senior band, so the title alone tells you little. The internal level and the reporting line tell you more. [1:1 mentoring](https://www.marian.coach/engineering-manager-mentor/) ## Ready to move this from advice to action? 1:1 mentoring for engineering leaders. 317 mentees since 2019. Rate a session under 7/10 and you don't pay for it. First intro is free. [Book a free 30-min intro →](https://www.marian.coach/meet) ## Read next - [![Marian Kamenistak speaking at an engineering leadership event.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-21.BdOplLV4_mJDuE.webp) ### AI Platform Engineer: What You Build and What You Own AI platform engineer: how the role differs from ML platform and MLOps, the five layers you run, who owns what, and a plan for your first 90 days. 9 October 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/ai-platform-engineer-role/) - [![Marian Kamenistak standing in front of a brick wall, hands together, smiling.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/portrait-outdoor.CdyTp4cl_wWxqm.webp) ### Member of Technical Staff Meaning: Why AI Labs Use One Title Member of technical staff meaning: the flat title OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI give engineers and researchers, what it hides, and what to ask before you sign. 9 October 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/member-of-technical-staff/) - [![Marian Kamenistak speaking to a full room of engineering leaders at an ELC meetup.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-02.s8OR-HcL_OL1Oe.webp) ### Platform Engineer: What the Job Is and Where It Leads Platform engineer: what the job looks like week to week, how it differs from DevOps, what it pays, and the red flags hiding in a job ad. 9 October 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/platform-engineer-role/) ### New posts, straight to your inbox. 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