I suspect we're in the midst of a standardization around higher levels. I, too, had seen "staff" as being both above and below the more-common "senior", depend

I suspect we're in the midst of a standardization around higher levels. I, too, had seen "staff" as being both above and below the more-common "senior", depending on the company. In the last couple years, though, I've been hearing it more and more exclusively as being between senior and principle (and being the first step that is unambiguously on the path towards principle instead of management). The term "staff+" is one I've heard from a few sources over the last year to refer to the purely-IC roles above senior/lead. I didn't know what to attribute this standardization to, aside from the industry as a whole evolving. The original post points to some possible causes: a book named "Staff Engineer," several conferences, and a few communities based around it.