What makes a developer a senior developer?

  • Pure technical skill is almost secondary to the ability to elevate and empower team members to work at their best
  • A base level of technical skill obviously does feed into the above, but it’s not the only factor
  • A senior developer should demonstrate leadership of the team, in some way
  • Leadership can come in the form of technical/architectural direction, e.g. introducing lesser known programming concepts to less experienced team members; owning large-scale refactoring of system components deemed to be in need
  • Sheer breadth of domain knowledge makes you a person people come to for help
  • Demonstration of ability to help guide technical direction of the project, and introduce better ways of working.