The Complete Guide to Tech Promotion Levels: Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple

L4 at Google. E4 at Meta. SDE II at Amazon. Level 62 at Microsoft. ICT3 at Apple. These titles describe roughly the same career stage - mid-level individual contributor - but the naming conventions make it nearly impossible to compare across companies without a reference guide.

This guide maps every major level at the five largest tech companies, including what each level expects, typical promotion timelines, approximate compensation jumps, and the key differentiators committees evaluate at each transition. Whether you are preparing for a promotion, benchmarking an offer, or trying to figure out what "Staff" even means, this is the reference.

Level Mapping Across 5 Companies

The table below maps equivalent career levels. Note that level names vary by role (engineering, PM, design, data science), but the numerical levels and scope expectations are broadly consistent within each company.

A few caveats: Amazon's internal levels (L4-L10) do not always align neatly with external titles. Microsoft's levels are numerical and vary slightly by organization. Apple's levels are the least publicly documented. The mapping above represents the most commonly accepted equivalencies based on scope, compensation, and responsibility data.

Entry to Mid-Level (Google L3 to L4 / Meta E3 to E4)

What Is Expected

At the entry level, you are learning the codebase, shipping features with guidance, and building foundational skills. The committee is looking for evidence that you can work independently on well-defined problems without constant oversight.

The bar is straightforward: can you take a feature spec, design a solution, implement it, test it, and ship it with minimal handholding? Do you respond well to code reviews? Are you ramping on the team's systems and contributing meaningfully?

Typical Timeline

1 to 1.5 years. This is the fastest promotion at most companies and is often considered the "expected" progression. If you have been at L3/E3 for more than 2 years, something specific is likely blocking you - usually code quality, independence, or task estimation accuracy.

Compensation Jump

The total compensation increase from entry to mid-level is typically $15,000 to $30,000 per year (base + equity). At Google, median L3 total comp is roughly $190K compared to $260K at L4. At Meta, E3 to E4 sees a similar jump from roughly $180K to $260K.

Key Differentiators

• Consistent code quality without extensive review cycles
• Ability to estimate and deliver on time for well-scoped tasks
• Starting to identify edge cases and failure modes proactively
• Contributing to design discussions (not just implementing)

Mid-Level to Senior (Google L4 to L5 / Meta E4 to E5)

What Is Expected

This is the transition from "competent individual contributor" to "technical leader within your team." Senior-level ICs are expected to own entire features or subsystems end to end. They define the technical approach, not just implement it. They mentor junior team members. They identify technical debt and propose solutions without being asked.

The committee wants to see that you are not just completing tasks - you are shaping the technical direction of your team's systems.

Typical Timeline

2 to 3 years. This is the promotion most people are targeting and where many engineers plateau. The gap is usually not technical skill - it is scope. You are technically excellent but have not demonstrated ownership over sufficiently complex problems.

Compensation Jump

The mid-to-senior jump is the most significant in percentage terms for many companies. Typical increase: $30,000 to $60,000 per year in total compensation. Google L4 to L5 moves median total comp from roughly $260K to $350K. Meta E4 to E5 is roughly $260K to $370K. This is where equity grants start becoming a major portion of compensation.

Key Differentiators

• End-to-end ownership of features or subsystems
• Authoring design documents for projects involving multiple engineers
• Mentoring at least one junior team member
• Identifying and resolving problems before they become incidents
• Influence beyond your immediate tasks - shaping team roadmaps and technical decisions

Senior to Staff (Google L5 to L6 / Meta E5 to E6) - The Hardest Jump

What Is Expected

The senior-to-staff transition is universally considered the hardest promotion in tech. It is not a linear step up from senior - it is a qualitative shift in how you operate. Staff-level ICs are expected to identify the most important problems for their organization (not just their team), define solutions that span multiple teams, and drive alignment across engineers they do not manage.

At senior, you excel at solving defined problems. At staff, you excel at defining which problems are worth solving.

Typical Timeline

3 to 5 years. Many excellent engineers never make this jump. It is not a reflection of their technical ability - it is usually a reflection of scope, influence, and strategic thinking. Companies have far fewer staff-level positions than senior positions, and the bar is correspondingly higher.

Compensation Jump

This is where compensation starts getting dramatic. Typical increase: $50,000 to $100,000+ per year in total compensation. Google L5 to L6 moves median total comp from roughly $350K to $500K. Meta E5 to E6 is roughly $370K to $530K. Stock grants at this level are substantial and refresh annually.

Key Differentiators

• Cross-team technical leadership on projects spanning multiple quarters
• Authoring organization-level design documents and technical strategies
• Navigating ambiguity - taking vague problems and creating structured solutions
• Multiplier effect - making other engineers more productive through tooling, mentoring, or process improvement
• Technical decision-making that accounts for organizational constraints, not just engineering ones
• Influencing without authority - driving alignment across teams you do not manage

Staff to Senior Staff (Google L6 to L7 / Meta E6 to E7)

What Is Expected

Senior Staff ICs are technical leaders whose scope encompasses an entire product area or infrastructure domain. They set multi-year technical direction, represent their area in leadership reviews, and are often the technical counterpart to a Director-level manager.

At this level, the committee is evaluating your organizational impact, not just technical depth. You should be able to point to decisions you drove that shaped the trajectory of a product or platform.

Typical Timeline

4 to 7+ years from staff to senior staff. Only a small percentage of staff engineers reach this level. The primary blocker is not skill - it is the intersection of ability, opportunity, and organizational need. You need to be in a position where your scope naturally extends to the organizational level.

Compensation Jump

Typical increase: $100,000 to $200,000+ per year in total compensation. At Google, L7 median total comp exceeds $700K. At Meta, E7 exceeds $750K. These numbers include significant stock grants that vest over multiple years.

Key Differentiators

• Setting technical direction for an entire product area or platform
• Representing the technical perspective in organizational leadership discussions
• Building and mentoring teams of senior and staff engineers
• Making trade-offs between engineering excellence and business objectives
• Industry-level technical contributions (papers, talks, standards work)

5 Universal Patterns Across Every Company

Despite different naming conventions, every major tech company evaluates the same underlying dimensions when deciding promotions. If you internalize these five patterns, you can navigate the promotion process at any company.

1. Scope Increase

Each level requires a measurable increase in the scope of your work. Entry level: individual tasks. Mid level: features. Senior: subsystems or projects. Staff: cross-team initiatives. Senior staff: organizational strategy. If your scope has not expanded since your last promotion, you are not ready for the next one.

2. Ambiguity Tolerance

At lower levels, problems are well-defined and you are evaluated on execution quality. At higher levels, problems are ambiguous and you are evaluated on your ability to define them. The senior-to-staff jump is the biggest leap in ambiguity tolerance - going from "solve this problem well" to "figure out which problem to solve."

3. Multiplier Effect

Early in your career, your value is measured by your direct output. As you advance, your value is measured by how much you amplify the output of others. Tooling you build, processes you define, mentoring you provide, design reviews you conduct. At staff level and above, your multiplier effect typically matters more than your individual contributions.

4. Technical Depth

Every company expects deepening technical expertise - but the definition changes at each level. At mid-level, it means knowing your team's stack deeply. At senior, it means understanding the broader system architecture. At staff, it means being able to evaluate technical trade-offs across multiple domains and make decisions that hold up over years.

5. Organizational Influence

At entry and mid-level, influence means your team respects your technical opinions. At senior, you influence your team's technical direction. At staff, you influence teams beyond your own. At senior staff, you influence the organization's technical strategy. This is a continuous spectrum, and committees look for clear evidence of expanding influence at each transition.

The "Invisible Ceiling" - Why Senior to Staff Is the Hardest Jump

This deserves its own section because it trips up more talented engineers than any other transition. Here is why the senior-to-staff jump is fundamentally different from every promotion that came before it.

Every Previous Promotion Was About Doing Things Better

L3 to L4: better code, better estimates, more independence. L4 to L5: bigger features, better designs, stronger mentoring. Each step was a quantitative improvement on the same kind of work. You got promoted by being demonstrably better at the thing you were already doing.

Staff Requires Doing Different Things

The staff level is not "super-senior." It is a different job. You stop being the best person in the room at executing and start being the person who decides what the room should execute on. This requires political skills, strategic thinking, and organizational awareness that most engineers have never practiced.

There Are Fewer Seats

Most companies have a ratio of roughly 10:1 or higher between senior and staff ICs. That means even if you are performing at staff level, there may not be an opening on your team. This is why career coaches often recommend an internal transfer to a team where staff-level scope is available - not because you are not ready, but because the opportunity does not exist where you are.

The Documentation Bar Is Higher

For L4-to-L5 promotions, a decent self-assessment and a supportive manager can be enough. For L5-to-L6, the committee scrutinizes the packet closely. They want specific examples of cross-team influence, quantified organizational impact, and evidence of strategic thinking. This is where a well-structured promotion packet becomes non-negotiable.

How to Know Which Level You Are Actually Operating At

Your title says one thing. Your actual operating level might say another. Here are five questions that reveal where you really are:

1. What is the scope of the problems you solve? Individual tasks (entry), features (mid), subsystems (senior), cross-team initiatives (staff), organizational strategy (senior staff)?
2. How defined are your problems before you start? Fully scoped tasks (entry/mid), defined goals with ambiguous approach (senior), ambiguous goals and approach (staff)?
3. How many people's productivity do you directly improve? None (entry), 1-2 (mid), your team (senior), multiple teams (staff)?
4. Who comes to you for advice? Nobody yet (entry), peers on your team (mid), people across teams (senior), people across the organization (staff)?
5. Do you write design docs or review them? Neither (entry), write feature-level docs (mid), write system-level docs (senior), review and approve org-level technical decisions (staff)?

If your answers consistently land one level above your current title, you are already operating at the next level - and you should be building a promotion packet now, not waiting for someone to notice.

For company-specific guides on what committees look for, see our detailed breakdowns for Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. And for a deep dive into Google's specific process, read our Google Promotion Packet Guide.

The Bottom Line: Every Level Transition Is Worth $15K to $200K+ Per Year

The numbers speak for themselves. Whether you are targeting L4 to L5 ($30K-$60K/year) or L5 to L6 ($50K-$100K+/year), each promotion is the single highest-ROI event in your career. Nothing else - not a bonus, not a stock vest, not a side project - comes close to the compound value of moving to the next level one cycle earlier.

The common thread at every transition: the committee evaluates a document. Not your code. Not your Slack messages. Not your manager's verbal pitch. A document. Make sure yours is structured, quantified, criteria-mapped, and committee-ready.