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Re:What does a Principal Software Engineer do? by frizzle112 on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @12:29PM (#29554397)
I think it depends on the complexity of what you're building. If it's something very novel or something that requires a lot of domain or technical expertise, then you might need a principal engineer to be the point person to figure out how to even build it, or build it right. Some problems are best solved by a single person with the right skills.

Some career ladders allow for this, others are more rigid about the size of team you need to be directly leading .

Re:What does a Principal Software Engineer do? by HeyLaughingBoy on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @04:29PM (#29558111)
I think this is the appropriate answer. In my experience as Staff engineer, the tasks I was best suited to were the nebulously defined "the customer needs X" where X cross cut a lot of domains and required input from a variety of people that would be affected by that feature X. This usually meant that I'd have to get them all together at some point and find a way to satisfy all their contradictory needs before even coming up with what the real task definition of X was.

That's generally more than you'd expect from a typical Senior Engineer.