Which is my reasonable level at Google/Amazon/Microsoft
10 YOE, 7 of them is Backend Software Development and last 3 was a Team Lead position. Charged in cloud architecture, great DDD practices, and high standards of code coverage. General Machine Learning, I'm excited about continuous development in AI. I've got an offer to L5 Amazon, but have a feeling I can be more valuable on higher levels. What are the major requirements for higher levels at the big companies?
I would say medium to high L63 or low L64 (very unlikely) for Microsoft at least. Most people at L61/62 have like 5-7 or more YOE ive seen on average, especically if they came from smaller or non industry companies.
L63 at best. Very rarely saw an external L64 hire from non-top tech company.
Charged in cloud infrastructure?
Microsoft’s L64+ requires Microsoft experience to succeed. You’re expected to drive projects that involve several other teams. Pure leadership, system design and coding skills will not be enough.
In my org, I have seen people with background comparable to yours come in as 62/63. You can definitely make Senior, depending on how well you perform in the interviews.
If you can do system design well as well as coding during the interviews you can be L6 at Amazon and T5 G and E5 FB. Otherwise if not enough system design depth or experience building / leading a scalable application then one level below.
You can expect: Microsoft: L63/L64 Amazon: Sde2(L5)/Sde3(L6) Google: L4/L5 It mostly depends on your interview performance. If you are able to get L5 from amazon, the skills for the next level (which is senior) are mostly combination of design skills and leadership skills. Most companies for senior roles are interested in your ability to lead, mentor other engineers, drive cross-team projects, experience with solving complex problems. Also, when describing your previous work, you would want to highlight challenges you faced including people and technical challenges, how did you overcome from them, what was your learning, and how would you avoid them in future. This is basically to showcase your growth potential.
Senior is very difficult at top companies. L5/Amazon or L62/MSFT or L4/GOOG seems more likely. Microsoft is more lenient with L63 compared to others, so you have have a shot at L63/Senior at MSFT.