Principal engineer @Portland,OR
I completed my final interview today and expecting to receive offer later this week for Principal engineer position at Autodesk. Can anyone from ADSK advice me about the expected TC (base/rsu's) and so I can negotiate better. With Nike, my current base is $148k with no additional stocks or rsu's. I have 8 yoe.
They either have messed up designation or you are too good for that 8 year experience. Btw, how many principal engineers they have and what’s your tc?
Yet need to discuss the offer with recruiter. I had a call tomorrow. During the interview process they said its approx $170k base
We have too many titles. Zzz. Principal = low end l5/e5 or high l4/e4. Not sure about Portland, but in SF a principal median is about 155. With 12% yearly bonus. Initial RSUs are upto you to negotiate, but you get yearly 25k refreshers for sure and additional based on performance.
Appreciate your response. I was offered $165k base. Can you talk about I5/I4 and what's the hierarchical structure looks like? And is Principal is like Tech lead at Autodesk or it's more like an Architect?
After principal comes sr principal/architect. So I guess you can say it’s more like a tech lead. Mostly you’ll be an ic with more responsibilities related to setting and maintaining the code/design standards for your team. Guiding other devs etc. you’d basically be the person responsible for making sure all the code that goes in isn’t garbage. if you want to manage people then you become an engineering manager. Above the architect comes director/ sr architect.
It's likely you could end up with a manager with such poor technical ability they would likely make a better candidate to be your direct report. There is a common thread of senior managers only hiring non technical managers of technical departments leaving the engineers bothered frustrated and lacking of any vertical mobility. This leads to the high rate of turn over you may have read about. Be prepared to be patient and have the heart of a teacher.
Autodesk has some of the worst title inflation in the bay haha