The WunderGraph Engineering Growth Framework

At WunderGraph, our goal is to bring everybody together to build digital products end-to-end. From interface design to API implementation, we provide the platform to go from sketch to product in a category-defining collaborative experience. We want to take the friction out of bringing digital ideas to life, making room for your ideas and productivity.

2025 has been the most exciting year for WunderGraph so far. We successfully completed our Series A (TechCrunch coverage ) in January. In December 2024, we were a team of 12, and as of August 2025, we are now over 30. We still can't believe it! At the end of September, we will launch The Hub , and we are confident it will transform how organisations collaborate to build digital products.

We’re growing quickly on all fronts, and with growth comes complexity. Our engineering team remains the largest at WunderGraph, and we’re continuing to scale Sales and Marketing in the U.S. and beyond.

To support this growth, we need a solid foundation-a clear, thoughtful career framework that grows with us, supports our people, and enables a culture of high-impact work.

As we tripled our team this year, three core pain points became clear:

1. Hiring at the right level: Fairness and consistency are always top of mind. We want a transparent process for our team and for anyone interested in joining us.
2. Supporting career growth and conversations: Our founding engineers are still with us after 3 years, and many talented colleagues have joined since. We want everyone to have the opportunity to build a fulfilling career at WunderGraph.
3. Consistency across the board: Consistency is critical when managing a global team with diverse backgrounds and skills. Having a framework that aligns the whole team on expected impact and results is a top priority.

We kicked this off as a collaboration between our CTO, Dustin Deus , the People & Culture Lead, Alex , and the wider leadership team, with feedback loops from our engineers. From the start, we made it clear: this is version 1, and it will grow with us.

To reach this version, we reviewed 30+ engineering career frameworks from tech companies with similar profiles, from Series A to Series C, including GitLab , GitHub, Sourcegraph , CircleCI , Buffer , Cleo , and more. We studied evaluation criteria, level mapping, progression logic, and performance models. Then we combined those learnings with our company values and future vision.

To align levels, pay, and roles with the market, we partnered with Ravio , a modern benchmarking platform built for tech companies.

At WunderGraph, we believe our people deserve the opportunity to do the boldest, most meaningful work of their lives. Our Engineering Growth Framework is built around one word: impact. Impact isn’t just about shipping code. It’s about how you do it, why it matters, and who it enables.

Our career discussions and decisions are grounded in demonstrated impact across three performance areas. These are inspired by Microsoft’s performance model introduced under Satya Nadella (not the ones before—if you know, you know) and tailored to our values:

• Engineering Excellence (Individual Impact) → How well you own and grow your technical skills. This includes technical contribution, problem-solving, and innovation.

• Partnering with others (Together Impact) → How you work with others to amplify results. This covers teamwork, knowledge sharing, cross-functional support, and customer interactions.

• WunderGraph Culture (Help Team Thrive) → How well each of us embodies WunderGraph values, culture, our core beliefs (read Alexendra's companion article), and ways of working.

We reference and apply the Framework often to make sure it doesn’t sit in Notion as a static document, but stays a living part of our engineering culture. Here are some of the ways we currently use the Engineering Growth Framework:

• Hire engineers with the right experience and growth mindset: Hiring is complex and critical, so we ensure candidates align with the framework before joining.

• Reflect on strengths and areas to develop: Both individually and in 1:1s.

• Guide conversations around performance, growth, and goals.

• Support recalibration when expectations and delivery diverge.

• Shape long-term, fulfilling careers.

Not every engineer wants to become a manager, and they don’t have to. Our framework supports two equally valued tracks:

Each of the 6 levels has two horizontal steps, reflecting the growth that happens within a level before moving to the next:

• Step 1 – Growing confidence. You deliver reliably and meet expectations.

• Step 2 – Seasoned contributor. You go beyond expectations and create impact across teams.

We’re building a unique Management Growth Framework, with clear paths to and from the IC track. It reflects our belief that leadership is a role, not a rank, and that technical and people leadership are equally important.

We had our first engineering-wide performance conversations based on the Framework in July 2025. The goal is to continue with quarterly check-ins during this period of accelerated growth to track the team's development.

Progression and associated pay at WunderGraph happens in two ways:

• Vertically: from one level to the next (e.g., Eng 02 → Eng 03)

• Horizontally: across the two steps at each level before moving up a level

“Tech Lead” is a hat, not a title. Any engineer can step into this role on a project-by-project basis.

We involved the team for initial feedback, and we were grateful to see that the framework was well received. It reflected the way we already work and the expectations we had set before writing anything down. Everyone agreed on the need for clarity and fairness. We’re committed to iterating on the framework as we scale, so we’ve invited ad hoc feedback to our People Lead and will hold organised review sessions after one or two calibration cycles.

We know that Staff level (Eng 05) and Principal (Eng 06) are where definitions can blur. In larger companies, these roles focus heavily on architecture and cross-team collaboration. In a smaller company like ours, these roles can take many forms, from strong technical leaders to hybrid strategists. They are crucial for executing our strategy and keeping the team aligned on our north star, whilst still remaining very hands-on. We continue to refine these levels with input from the team and through external benchmarking.

We remain open to amending the framework as our team and company evolve. Our engineers are already using the framework in practice, and we allow everyone the opportunity to provide feedback. After at least six months of use, we will form a working group to review whether it still reflects our strategy and the team’s reality.

We’re proud of the foundation we’ve laid, but we know this is just the beginning. WunderGraph is growing, and our framework will grow with us.

We’ll continue to connect career growth to impact, not checklist achievements. We’ll continue to prioritize clarity over complexity. And we will keep building a culture where excellence, mindset, and collaboration matter most.

In the interest of transparency, you can explore the WunderGraph Public Handbook and Resources as well as the WunderGraph Growth Framework - Engineering, to learn more about our engineering mindset and culture.

If you’re passionate about shaping the future of APIs and want to be surrounded by a top team that values ownership and engineering excellence, we still have some spots open in our team. See our current vacancies here: WunderGraph Jobs .