A somewhat pragmatic definition of seniority: The more senior you are, the more damage you get to do to the business if you're wrong. Intern working on a file

A somewhat pragmatic definition of seniority: The more senior you are, the more damage you get to do to the business if you're wrong. Intern working on a file format? Somebody else can redo the work if you screw up. CTO setting development strategy? Tank the whole product development effort, hobbling even good developers. I consider a senior engineer to be (in broad strokes): - Somebody who can organize other engineers to accomplish an objective. - Somebody who can pinch hit if needed on any projects under their direction. - Somebody who actively teachers other engineers about what the engineer knows, inside of work or out. - Somebody who has either fucked up a few times, or salvaged a fucked-up situation (business or development), and can explain what happened, what their role in it was, and how they should've done things differently (because there's always a better set of actions to take). - Somebody who can interface directly with customers if needed and who can help compromise between business objectives and engineering ones--even if it means saying no to new shiny or sugardadddy customer. EDIT: It's very important not to confuse a domain expert with a senior engineer. I've worked with brilliant DBAs and syadmins and OOP folks, and they're much better in their fields than I am--but that doesn't make them suited for architecture and project work.