Career pathways are designed to clarify your relative position and opportunities for growth at Float. Whether you’d like to pursue your craft as an Individual Contributor (IC), have a management component to your role, or move between the two throughout your career, this guide illustrates the potential paths and their respective titles.
We’re a growing team, so note that while this includes all the role opportunities today at Float, it isn’t finite, and as we scale, we’ll continue to revisit these pathways. We'll also continue to gather feedback from each of you to ensure we’re addressing opportunities as they arise and providing you with paths to grow and do the best work of your life at Float.
Each role at Float is mapped to an equivalent job level for Management and ICs, respectively. We use levels for ICs to also help us benchmark pay internally and externally, specifically with our SaaS peers.
<aside> 🚀 Just because a role doesn't currently exist at Float, doesn't mean it won't in the future.
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| IC2 | IC3 | IC4 | IC5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example Titles | Coordinator | - Senior |
Breadth and depth of knowledge. How their area(s) of expertise develop over time. | Reputation for getting things done. Broad, generalist knowledge of core concepts within their role.
Begins to focus on attaining expertise in one or more areas of their role. Learning our existing tools, resources and processes.
Rarely makes the same mistake twice. Learns from failure and without the need for constant significant feedback from more senior team members.
Contributes to our organisational discourse in their area of specialisation. | Understands and makes well-reasoned decisions and tradeoffs within their area of expertise.
Demonstrates knowledge of industry trends and regularly educates their team in their area of expertise.
Seeks external references and education to accelerate their learning.
Clarifies success metrics and ties efforts toward delivering business value.
Emerging understanding of broader organisational and cross-departmental objectives. | Go-to expert in their role.
Provides expert advice and weighs in on complex decisions and problems that impact other teams or our organisation at large.
Researches and proposes new tools to facilitate self-, team- and organisation-wide learnings and improve productivity.
Leads the discourse on themes particular to their areas of specialisation. Educates our organisation on relevant industry trends. | Anticipates broad change pertaining to their area of expertise and ensures we're always ahead of the curve.
Understands deeply the end to end nature of their job function and is able to articulate clearly the scaling limits in their area, while proposing solutions to them.
Uses their expertise to develop ideas that enable many potential futures without knowing exactly what the future is.
The person that others come to for a second opinion. | | Responsible
What they’re expected to deliver and how they go about it. | Makes steady progress on tasks; capable of asking for help to get themselves unblocked.
Able to own small-to-medium projects from planning and development through to completion.
Capable of operating autonomously day-to-day.
Capable of prioritising tasks; avoids getting caught up in unimportant details or distractions.
Helps when help is needed in their department. Contributes to improving departmental documentation and processes. | End-to-end responsibility on projects of increasing complexity.
Devises creative solutions based on limited information and precedent.
Persistent in the face of roadblocks; dispatches them efficiently, pulling in others as necessary.
Requires minimal direction or oversight. Adapts existing department frameworks and processes.
Takes the initiative to fix issues before being assigned them. | Recognised as a prolific contributor to core projects.
Identifies and proactively tackles future issues before they grow into something even bigger.
Regularly delivers projects or work as and when required; expectations are always managed and clearly articulated. | Understands and helps drives the vision of the company. Part of mission-critical planning and strategy.
Consistently delivers large projects at the highest level.
Quickly breaks down complex problems into potential solutions, knowns, and unknowns, in order to get to resolutions faster.
Capable of solving the hairiest problems that the team encounters. | | Communication & leadership
How they communicate and lead people and/or projects across the organisation. | Gives timely, helpful feedback to peers and Managers.
Communicates assumptions and gets clarification on tasks up front to minimise the need for rework.
Understands how their work fits in to department objectives. | Ensures they always communicate decisions at the right time, to the right people and in the right format (ie. Loom vs meeting vs Slack)
May have a direct report. Mentors team members through sharing learning and best practices.
Communicates and partners effectively across functions; is able to work well with whatever function necessary.
Capable of debating and critiquing ideas in a group setting.
Proactively identifies problems for their own work and adjacent work; communicates these issues early to help course-correct. | Is able to facilitate cross-team work and improving the effectiveness of others.
May have up to two direct reports. Makes others better through mentorship or guidance on areas related to their functional knowledge.
Shares their views regularly through talks and/or blog posts.
Provides feedback on projects outside of their core area.
Identifies and proposes strategies to problems affecting their team.
Has made an obvious positive impact on our growth trajectory. | Primarily acts as a multiplier by building systems, authoring tools, or introducing policies or patterns that raise the level of productivity of our entire organisation.
Respected in the industry for their views shared through talks and/or blog posts.
Leads the conversations internally about the direction of major areas of their job function.
Can expertly debate, critique, and convince our organisation on where it needs to go.
Seen as a role model and mentor to everyone in their team.
Decisions have a direct impact on our long-term success or failure. |
| Example Titles | - Manager
Breadth and depth of knowledge. How their area(s) of expertise develop over time. | Solid understanding of people management practices, particularly professional development.
Actively learning how to handle difficult management situations.
Emerging understanding of our broader organisational process & practices.Strong understanding of our success metrics to help prioritise and focus their team's efforts. | Developing proven structures and process that help their team achieve outstanding results.
Holistic, integrated understanding of our organisational and cross-departmental objectives. | A solid understanding of people management strategies and how to develop leaders in that function to be successful.
Previous experience as a Director. | Clear expertise as a Manager, leader and operator.
Previous experience as a Senior Director or equivalent.
Well regarded for their impact within their industry. | | Responsible
What they’re expected to deliver and how they go about it. | Accountable for their team's performance, their productivity and collective impact.
Champions the delivery of team projects, clearing blockers and re-priortising effort when required.
Scale themselves by effectively delegating work.
Collaborates in the hiring process for their function.
Takes ownership of their own development. | Accountable for OKR measures and results.
Excels at getting the team to focus on the highest impact projects.
Connects team’s efforts with savvy grasp of ecosystem and organisational context.
Continues to contribute to ongoing function work, whilst overseeing the delivery of multiple projects or initiatives.
Able to lead hiring efforts for their team and determine headcount.
Helps identify and implement more productive tools and processes for their team. | Drives significant impact and improvements across their department; strategically plans for how people and processes scale.
Owns budget within their department.
Begins to manage Managers.
Active in workforce planning for a multi-function department; works to secure necessary budget.
Drives broader organisational efforts around culture, work, and values. | Collaborates regularly with the Executive team in the development of company-wide strategy and planning, in line with our emerging customer and business needs.
Manages Managers. | | Communication & leadership
How they communicate and lead people and/or projects across the organisation. | Leads career development for their team, including performance reviews, ongoing coaching, and regularly check-ins.
Helps their team set goals, seek training, and continuously improve.
Represents their team in department communication and progress updates.
Developing an ability to articulate a departmental strategy. | Creates opportunities for reports to grow within our organisation.
Comfortable managing and hiring team members with different skill sets and areas of focus.
Represents their team in cross-departmental and all-team communication. Regularly updates evergreen information (ie. internal Notion docs) for our organisation.
Recognised for their impact on team culture; people are excited to work with them. | Leverages past experience and uses strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with other department leaders to seek alignment, improvement and ensure a cohesive organisational strategy.
Debates and defines future strategic direction with leadership and Executives.
Sells Float as an organisation to potential candidates. | Makes real change in how our organisation approaches its business.
Their reputation attracts high-performing talent to the organisation.
Confidently articulates vision for the team that excites and inspires leaders and Executives.
A respected speaker and/or writer within their industry. |
We have closely referenced the Radford Global Compensation Database role level and description framework.
<aside> 🙋♂️ Got a question about how this impacts your role? Add a Talking Point in 15Five, so you can discuss it in your next 1:1 with your manager or reach out to them on Slack.
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📩 If you have any other questions about the framework and pay, chat with your manager Amber or Sarah.
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