Technical
Skill
Development
Plan
1 / 8
1.
Technical
Skills
Inventory
Current
proficiency
across
the
tools
,
platforms
,
and
practices
that
make
up
my
day
-
to
-
day
work
.
Levels
are
self
-
assessed
and
confirmed
against
the
last
two
performance
reviews
.
LAN G UAG ES
&
RUN T IMES
TypeScript
ADVANCED
Node
.
js
ADVANCED
SQL
(
PostgreSQL
dialect
)
ADVANCED
Python
WORKING
Bash
/
Shell
scripting
WORKING
Go
FOUNDAT IONAL
FRAMEWORKS
&
API
DESIG N
NestJS
/
Express
ADVANCED
REST
&
OpenAPI
3.1
ADVANCED
GraphQL
WORKING
gRPC
/
Protocol
Buffers
WORKING
FastAPI
FOUNDAT IONAL
React
(
internal
admin
tooling
)
FOUNDAT IONAL
DATA
&
ST ORAG E
PostgreSQL
tuning
&
partitioning
ADVANCED
Redis
(
caching
,
rate
limiting
)
ADVANCED
Apache
Kafka
WORKING
Elasticsearch
WORKING
MongoDB
WORKING
dbt
&
Snowflake
FOUNDAT IONAL
CLOUD
&
IN FRAST RUCT URE
AWS
(
ECS
Fargate
,
Lambda
,
RDS
,
SQS
/
SNS
,
S
3)
ADVANCED
AWS
IAM
&
VPC
networking
WORKING
Terraform
WORKING
Docker
ADVANCED
Kubernetes
/
EKS
FOUNDAT IONAL
GitHub
Actions
·
ArgoCD
WORKING
T EST IN G
&
CODE
QUALIT Y
Jest
&
Vitest
ADVANCED
Testcontainers
integration
suites
WORKING
Pact
contract
testing
WORKING
k
6
load
&
soak
testing
WORKING
Pytest
FOUNDAT IONAL
ESLint
·
Prettier
·
SonarQube
ADVANCED
SECURIT Y
&
COMPLIAN CE
OAuth
2.1 /
OIDC
&
JWT
ADVANCED
OWASP
Top
10
remediation
WORKING
Dependency
scanning
(
Dependabot
,
Trivy
)
WORKING
Secrets
management
(
AWS
Secrets
Manager
)
WORKING
Threat
modelling
FOUNDAT IONAL
SOC
2
Type
II
evidence
collection
WORKING
OBSERVABILIT Y
&
RELIABILIT Y
OpenTelemetry
instrumentation
WORKING
Datadog
dashboards
&
monitors
ADVANCED
Prometheus
&
Grafana
WORKING
ARCHIT ECT URE
&
PRACT ICE
Domain
-
driven
design
WORKING
Event
-
driven
architecture
WORKING
C
4
modelling
&
ADRs
WORKING
2 / 8
SLO
/
SLI
definition
and
error
budgets
WORKING
Incident
command
&
blameless
postmortems
ADVANCED
Trunk
-
based
development
&
feature
flags
ADVANCED
RFC
authorship
FOUNDAT IONAL
Kanban
&
technical
code
review
leadership
ADVANCED
COLLABORAT ION
&
T OOLIN G
Linear
·
Jira
ADVANCED
Notion
·
Confluence
documentation
ADVANCED
Figma
developer
handoff
WORKING
Written
stakeholder
updates
(
Product
,
Compliance
)
WORKING
Technical
mentoring
(2
direct
mentees
)
WORKING
EMERG IN G
&
ADJ ACEN T
LLM
API
integration
(
OpenAI
,
Bedrock
)
FOUNDAT IONAL
Retrieval
-
augmented
search
patterns
FOUNDAT IONAL
Evaluation
harnesses
for
model
output
FOUNDAT IONAL
Cost
governance
&
FinOps
tagging
FOUNDAT IONAL
Foundational
—
can
work
in
it
with
guidance
or
documentation
at
hand
.
Working
—
can
ship
independently
and
review
others
’
work
in
it
.
Advanced
—
trusted
authority
on
the
team
;
sets
internal
standards
.
3 / 8
2.
Skills
Gap
Analysis
Where
the
current
skill
set
diverges
from
what
the
Senior
Engineer
→
Staff
Engineer
path
requires
over
the
next
twelve
months
.
Priority
reflects
both
career
impact
and
near
-
term
team
need
.
SKILL
AREA
CURRENT
TARGET
(
DEC
2026)
PRIORITY
Go
backend
services
Foundational
Production
-
proficient
—
three
services
owned
HIGH
Event
-
driven
architecture
Working
Design
authority
for
the
order
pipeline
HIGH
Kubernetes
&
platform
operations
Foundational
Working
,
CKA
certified
,
owns
deploy
pipeline
HIGH
Security
engineering
Working
Threat
-
modelling
lead
for
the
payments
surface
MEDIUM
RFC
authorship
&
technical
writing
Foundational
Advanced
—
eight
approved
RFCs
,
four
blog
posts
MEDIUM
Data
engineering
(
dbt
,
Snowflake
)
Foundational
Working
—
owns
six
analytics
models
in
production
MEDIUM
LLM
feature
integration
&
evaluation
Foundational
Working
—
one
shipped
feature
with
an
eval
harness
MEDIUM
Terraform
&
infrastructure
as
code
Working
Advanced
—
authors
modules
consumed
by
two
teams
LOW
4 / 8
3.
Professional
Development
Goals
Seven
goals
for
the
2026
cycle
.
Each
is
written
to
be
verifiable
—
if
the
success
measure
cannot
be
demonstrated
with
a
link
,
a
dashboard
,
or
a
certificate
,
the
goal
is
not
complete
.
G OA L
01
Ship
three
production
Go
services
Move
from
reading
Go
to
owning
it
in
production
.
The
team
is
standardising
new
payment
services
on
Go
,
and
I
want
to
be
one
of
the
people
who
can
design
,
review
,
and
on
-
call
for
them
.
Target
: 30
September
2026 ·
Priority
:
High
·
Sponsor
:
Daniel
Whitfield
AC T IONS
S UC C ES S
M EAS UR E
Three
Go
services
running
in
production
with
a
combined
error
rate
below
0.1%
over
a
30-
day
window
,
and
sign
-
off
from
the
staff
engineer
that
my
code
review
comments
meet
the
standard
for
the
language
.
G OA L
02
Become
the
design
authority
for
the
order
event
pipeline
The
order
lifecycle
still
runs
on
a
monolithic
nightly
cron
job
with
no
replay
capability
.
I
want
to
lead
the
migration
to
an
event
-
driven
model
and
be
the
person
the
team
trusts
on
message
delivery
guarantees
.
Target
: 30
June
2026 ·
Priority
:
High
·
Sponsor
:
Priya
Raghunathan
,
Staff
Engineer
AC T IONS
S UC C ES S
M EAS UR E
Order
pipeline
migrated
with
zero
message
loss
across
the
shadow
run
,
RFC
approved
by
the
architecture
group
,
and
the
pattern
reused
by
at
least
two
other
teams
by
year
end
.
Complete
the
Ultimate
Go
course
(
Ardan
Labs
)
by
31
March
,
including
all
exercises
.
Port
the
existing
notification
service
from
Node
.
js
to
Go
and
take
it
through
the
full
release
process
.
Build
the
new
rate
-
limiting
gateway
from
scratch
,
including
the
Redis
-
backed
sliding
window
algorithm
.
Pair
with
a
staff
engineer
on
two
code
reviews
per
sprint
for
the
first
quarter
.
Contribute
three
sections
to
the
internal
Go
style
guide
covering
error
wrapping
,
context
propagation
,
and
testing
conventions
.
Pass
the
Confluent
Certified
Developer
for
Apache
Kafka
(
CCDAK
)
exam
by
31
March
.
Author
an
RFC
covering
the
transactional
outbox
pattern
,
idempotency
keys
,
and
the
cutover
strategy
.
Run
a
four
-
week
shadow
period
with
dual
writes
before
decommissioning
the
cron
job
.
Document
failure
modes
,
poison
-
message
handling
,
and
the
dead
-
letter
replay
runbook
.
5 / 8
G OA L
03
Earn
AWS
Certified
Solutions
Architect
–
Professional
Deepen
cloud
architecture
judgement
beyond
the
services
I
use
daily
,
particularly
around
multi
-
account
strategy
,
network
design
,
and
cost
trade
-
offs
at
scale
.
Target
: 30
June
2026 ·
Priority
:
High
·
Study
budget
: £400
approved
AC T IONS
S UC C ES S
M EAS UR E
Exam
passed
by
30
June
,
and
at
least
one
architecture
change
adopted
in
production
that
reduces
ECS
task
idle
spend
by
20%
or
more
.
G OA L
04
Own
the
deployment
pipeline
and
reach
working
proficiency
in
Kubernetes
Deployments
currently
take
42
minutes
and
require
two
manual
approvals
.
I
want
to
own
the
pipeline
end
to
end
and
remove
the
friction
the
team
complains
about
every
release
.
Target
: 31
October
2026 ·
Priority
:
High
·
Sponsor
:
Daniel
Whitfield
AC T IONS
S UC C ES S
M EAS UR E
Median
deploy
lead
time
under
12
minutes
,
change
failure
rate
reduced
from
14%
to
below
8%,
and
CKA
certificate
on
file
.
Complete
the
Adrian
Cantrill
SAP
-
C
02
course
and
all
six
practice
exams
with
a
score
above
85%.
Run
a
cost
review
of
the
payments
AWS
account
and
document
the
top
ten
savings
opportunities
.
Present
the
network
architecture
findings
to
the
platform
group
in
a
30-
minute
session
.
Pass
the
CKA
certification
by
31
October
.
Migrate
the
two
highest
-
traffic
services
to
ArgoCD
with
progressive
delivery
.
Introduce
automated
rollback
on
error
-
budget
burn
and
document
the
new
release
runbook
.
Run
four
lunchtime
Kubernetes
sessions
for
the
wider
engineering
team
.
6 / 8
G OA L
05
Lead
security
engineering
for
the
payments
surface
Payments
carries
the
highest
regulatory
and
reputational
risk
in
the
product
.
I
want
to
move
from
consuming
security
reviews
to
running
them
.
Target
: 31
December
2026 ·
Priority
:
Medium
·
Partner
:
Information
Security
team
AC T IONS
S UC C ES S
M EAS UR E
Threat
model
signed
off
by
InfoSec
,
zero
high
-
severity
findings
open
on
the
payments
API
at
the
December
scan
,
and
ASVS
Level
2
evidence
documented
for
the
SOC
2
file
.
G OA L
06
Build
working
competence
in
analytics
engineering
Product
decisions
in
the
payments
area
are
still
made
on
hand
-
pulled
spreadsheets
.
I
want
to
own
the
subscription
and
refund
models
so
the
numbers
are
trustworthy
and
self
-
serve
.
Target
: 30
September
2026 ·
Priority
:
Medium
·
Partner
:
Analytics
team
AC T IONS
S UC C ES S
M EAS UR E
Six
models
in
production
with
freshness
under
15
minutes
,
zero
failed
data
-
quality
tests
across
two
consecutive
months
,
and
a
25%
reduction
in
warehouse
credits
consumed
by
the
payments
data
sets
.
Complete
a
threat
model
of
the
payments
API
using
STRIDE
,
reviewed
with
the
InfoSec
lead
.
Drive
the
service
to
OWASP
ASVS
Level
2
conformance
and
track
each
control
to
closure
.
Close
all
open
high
-
severity
findings
on
the
payments
API
and
add
regression
tests
for
each
.
Run
two
internal
tabletop
exercises
on
payment
-
fraud
incident
response
.
Complete
the
dbt
Advanced
course
and
the
Snowflake
performance
-
tuning
workshop
.
Build
and
own
six
dbt
models
covering
subscription
cohorts
,
refunds
,
and
failed
-
payment
recovery
.
Add
freshness
and
volume
tests
to
every
model
and
wire
them
into
the
existing
alerting
.
Run
a
Snowflake
credit
review
on
my
models
and
eliminate
unused
full
-
table
scans
.
7 / 8
G OA L
07
Grow
technical
writing
and
mentorship
impact
The
work
I
have
done
has
stayed
too
quiet
.
Writing
down
decisions
clearly
and
developing
other
engineers
is
the
difference
between
a
strong
senior
engineer
and
someone
the
organisation
can
build
around
.
Target
:
Rolling
,
assessed
December
2026 ·
Priority
:
Medium
AC T IONS
S UC C ES S
M EAS UR E
Eight
RFCs
merged
,
four
blog
posts
published
,
both
mentees
promoted
to
mid
-
level
engineer
at
the
next
review
cycle
,
and
one
meetup
talk
delivered
with
a
recording
archived
internally
.
4.
12-
Month
Roadmap
Sequenced
so
that
certifications
support
the
project
work
rather
than
competing
with
it
.
Q
1
is
deliberately
front
-
loaded
because
the
study
material
is
already
purchased
.
QUARTER
PRIMARY
FOCUS
KEY
DELIVERABLES
MILESTONE
Q
1 2026
Jan
–
Mar
Go
foundations
and
Kafka
certification
Ultimate
Go
completed
;
CCDAK
exam
passed
;
notification
service
ported
and
released
;
first
three
style
-
guide
sections
merged
Go
service
live
in
production
Q
2
2026
Apr
–
Jun
Event
pipeline
migration
and
AWS
Professional
Outbox
RFC
approved
;
four
-
week
shadow
run
complete
;
AWS
SAP
-
C
02
passed
;
rate
-
limit
gateway
in
production
Cron
job
decommissioned
Q
3
2026
Jul
–
Sep
Analytics
engineering
and
platform
migration
Six
dbt
models
live
;
Snowflake
credit
review
delivered
;
ArgoCD
migration
of
two
services
underway
;
threat
model
drafted
Analytics
models
self
-
serve
Q
4
2026
Oct
–
Dec
Kubernetes
ownership
,
security
,
and
visibility
CKA
passed
;
automated
rollback
shipped
;
ASVS
Level
2
evidence
filed
;
four
blog
posts
published
;
meetup
talk
delivered
Deploy
lead
time
under
12
minutes
Publish
eight
engineering
RFCs
and
contribute
to
the
review
of
at
least
ten
others
.
Write
and
publish
four
posts
for
the
company
engineering
blog
on
the
order
pipeline
,
error
budgets
,
and
Go
adoption
.
Mentor
two
engineers
through
structured
fortnightly
sessions
,
each
with
a
written
growth
plan
.
Deliver
one
talk
at
a
regional
engineering
meetup
on
event
-
driven
migration
in
a
regulated
environment
.
8 / 8
