Currently working at small startup (5 full stack devs + 2 mobile devs) as an engineering team lead but basically I am in charge of everything related to technologies. I hire developers, review their code (not mobile), architecture stuff, do devops and etc. Founders are ok to give me any title I want and until now I didn't really care about the title (I always thought that people will treat you according to your knowledge) but recently I decided to brush up on algorithms and data structures and try my luck with FAANG companies. Question: Will my title matter at all if I apply to FAANG company as senior engineer? Would my chances be higher if I was let's say CTO or head of engineering or they don't care about it?
titles does not matter in most of the cases, every company has their way of mapping you to the level (L4/L5/L6) based on your tenure, experience, current level in your existing firm, your projects and ofcourse your interview experience. This mapping is easier for them if you are coming from known big companies but if you belong to a small 10 person startup then they will use other factors such as number of years spent in industry, your impact etc to map you to a level within their company. good luck.
I’ve interviewed many “CEOs” “CTOs” and “VPs” who couldn’t meet the ICT3 bar so NO they don’t matter
Title inflate to get past recruiters, title deflate to show humility