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People December 16, 2025

Knowledge, Skills, Behavior

Engineering roles should have a well understood definition of what should be known, tasks to be accomplished, and expections of how you show up day to day for your team.

This following is a high level list of things that every Entry Level Engineer should strive for.

Knowledge

  • Aware of branching and merging concepts
  • Knows basic Object-Oriented concepts such as polymorphism, inheritance, etc. but has taken this further into SOLID principles
  • Knows where to find out more about new technology Standard Reading: Code Complete Clean Code The Clean Coder Working Effectively with Legacy Code Headfirst Design Patterns

Skill

  • Can check code in and out and manage their source control repository
  • Can merge code conflicts
  • Can add code to an existing project structure
  • Can fire up the debugging tool, setup thru and work with breakpoints
  • Can write “Test First”
  • Can contribute tests and code to a build
  • Database backup and restore
  • Can implement error handling effectively according to departmental best practice
  • Can implement error logging effectively according to departmental best practice

Behavior

  • Daily check-ins (at least)
  • Preparing their code for review (Keeping it clean and analyzing it)
  • Keeps the build on their project healthy
  • Follows their personal development plan
  • Contributes to the development of applications that are robust, handle errors gracefully and communicate their state effectively to those that need to maintain them.

So You May Be Asking..

When Will I Be a Senior Engineer?