Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

IC2 Quality Engineer

I am prolific at delivering resilient and sustainable software projects from design to implementation and rollout

Scope Area of ownership and level of autonomy / ambiguity

• I execute on defined projects to achieve team-level goals.
• I independently define the right solutions or use existing approaches to solve defined problems.

Collaborative Reach Organizational reach and extent of influence

• I work primarily within the scope of my team with high level guidance from my manager/TL

Impact Levers Technical levers typically exercised to achieve business impact

• Craft - I am increasingly mastering my craft and leverage it for higher impact (e.g. software design)
• Mentorship - I may mentor new hires, interns, or more junior engineers.

🏆 Results

Impact

• I have a bias for actions, act with urgency and deliver high-quality work that will add the most value for our business, cross-functional stakeholders, and customers
• I work with my manager to direct my focus so my work advances my team's goals
• I prioritize the right things and don't overcomplicate my work. When necessary, I propose appropriate scope adjustments.
• I effectively participate in the core processes of my team, including recommending and implementing process improvements

Ownership

• I follow through on my commitments, take responsibility for my work, and deliver on time
• I proactively identify and advocate for opportunities to improve the current state of projects, and team processes
• I own my decisions and mistakes, and learn from them
• I think a step or two ahead in my work, solve the right problems before they become bigger problems, and problem-solve with my manager when I'm stuck
• I respond with urgency to operational issues (e.g., SEVs), owning resolution within my sphere of responsibility
• I look for opportunities to reduce KTLO and and work with the team to ease the burden for on-call
• I am vigilant about degradations in service by tracking key metrics, and I advocate for declaring a SEV if my concerns are warranted

Decision Making

• I Identify and gather input from the right stakeholders and consider customer needs to make informed and timely decisions-
• I understand the implications of my decisions and adjust my approach based on the impact and risk, and share that rationale with relevant stakeholders
• I escalate to my manager when I need help with a decision about my deliverables or priorities

🌟 Direction

Agility

• I’m open to change and enthusiastic about new initiatives
• I work with my manager to navigate complex and ambiguous situations
• I am learning to stay calm under pressure and building practices to take care of my well-being

Innovation

• I ask questions and contribute to new ideas/approaches
• I have a growth mindset and am comfortable experimenting with new approaches, learning, owning the outcomes, and sharing what I learned

🌳 Talent

Personal Growth

• I proactively ask for feedback from my manager, team, and cross-functional stakeholders and identify ways to act upon it
• I have self-awareness about my strengths and areas for development
• I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals and seek out opportunities to learn and grow (e.g., PGP, Dropbox-offered training, leveraging perks allowance etc.)

Team Development

• I model integrity and a high standard of excellence for my work
• I help the more junior members of my team, host interns, new hires, or a residency intern taking into account their unique strengths, backgrounds, and working styles
• I offer honest, timely and direct feedback that is delivered with empathy to help others learn and grow
• I contribute to interviewing and assessing candidates to help us build a diverse and talented team in terms of background and location. I am calibrated and consistently perform high-signal interviews
• I am able to represent my team’s initiatives and goals to candidates in a compelling way

🌈 Culture

Collaboration

• I can effectively collaborate and adopt necessary tools (e.g., pair programming) that adapts to virtual first and get work done
• I work with my manager to engage in productive conflict with thoughtful questioning and have the courage to state my point of view
• I avoid blame, clarify problems to focus on solutions, and “disagree and commit” when necessary to move decisions forward
• I promote and role model Dropbox core values

Organizational Health

• I contribute to a positive sense of community on the team (e.g. engage in team lunches, team offsites, and other group activities, help with new-hire on-boarding).
• I listen to different perspectives and I cut biases from my words and actions
• I practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis
• I champion Virtual First practices that help my team collaborate effectively

Communication

• I write and speak with clarity and focus
• I listen to understand others and ask clarifying questions
• I proactively share relevant information on my project including difficult task-level trade-offs that impact the product to my manager and team (including product/business partners)

🦉 Craft

Software Design

• I am able to understand the existing designs and technology choices within my component/feature, and I make appropriate adjustments to existing QE practice designs based on how the technology stack continues to mature
• Documentation and basic scripts (ex: command-line scripts) that I produce exhibit good separation of concerns

Architecture Design

• I’m able to decompose a simple problem or business scenario and understand how software components interact with each other. My understanding of system architecture is evident in the quality practices I deploy.

Quality Engineering Fluency

• I have general knowledge of all modern quality management approaches (ex: Regression, System, Functional, Integration, Unit) and software development domains (ex: Full Stack Web, Front-end, Back-end, Mobile)
• My quality practices are free of glaring errors and gaps and are focused on edge cases, and both revenue and customer impacting workflows.
• I am able to understand at a high level how feature and test infrastructure code is implemented and I know how to navigate through the code bases that support the features I’m responsible for.
• I actively engage and reconcile different opinions in quality practices reviews, follow best practices set up by others, and perform independent research on modern/innovative approaches to managing quality
• I address quality engineering tasks with both high throughput and appropriate focus on customer business impacting scenario
• I hands-on evaluate and test features/releases to uncover technical bugs/failures and to actively report on risks.
• My quality management approach is informed by technical specs, and hands-on knowledge of both feature and test infrastructure architecture.
• I effectively engage with cross-functional partners to remain in alignment on the needs of our customers and overall business goals. I use this information to inform how/when/where I deploy my quality practices.

Quality Assessment

• I effectively contribute to my QE teams reporting of quality metrics/measurements
• I successfully deploy quality practices that focus on reducing unknowns, variability, and risks associated to completion of the PDLC
• The data I collect (ex: bug reports, quality metrics/measurements) as part of my quality management strategy accurately reports technical bugs/failures with a focus on identifying root causes and providing quick feedback to cross-functional partners.

Test Automation

• I am able to execute automation scripts developed by SDET’s and Developers to increase the efficiency of my quality process