Career Philosophy
At Arillus, we believe your career is shaped across two axes — Impact and Leverage. Impact is about how far your contribution is felt, and Leverage is about what you use to create that impact. Remember these two words.
Impact
Section titled “Impact”Impact is where your contribution is felt within the organisation.
As you grow, your impact is expected to reach further:
| Level | Impact |
|---|---|
| L0 – L2 | Individual or project level — your work affects your immediate task or project |
| L3 – L4 | Multi-project level — your thinking, standards, and decisions influence how other projects are shaped, even ones you’re not directly working on |
| L5 – L6 | Company level — your impact shapes how the entire organisation works and grows |
Promotion at Arillus is not about time served. It’s about demonstrating that your impact has already expanded to the next level — and sustaining it there. A good way to think about it: am I impacting a single project I’m fully working on, or am I impacting the success of several projects — or a major portion of the engineers in the company?
Leverage
Section titled “Leverage”Leverage is the mechanism you use to create that impact.
When you start out, there’s really only one lever: your own technical or craft skills. You build things, you learn, you get better — and that’s how you create impact. As you grow, you get to choose how you continue to expand your impact. There are two paths:
Technical Leverage
Section titled “Technical Leverage”You go deeper into your craft. You solve harder problems. You make better architectural decisions. You produce output that sets the standard others learn from. Your impact multiplies because the quality and reach of your individual work is extraordinary.
People Leverage
Section titled “People Leverage”You invest in the people around you. You help others grow, you own their careers, you create an environment where a group of people can collectively do what no one person could alone. Your impact multiplies because ten people you’ve developed are each creating project-level impact — and that adds up to company-level impact.
Neither path is better than the other. Both are essential. A Principal Engineer who solves the hardest technical problems and a Group Lead who grows ten strong engineers are creating equivalent value for Arillus. We need both kinds of people, and we respect both equally.
The Fork: Starting at L3
Section titled “The Fork: Starting at L3”L0 to L2 is a single track. You’re building your foundation — technical skills, project understanding, professional habits. The leverage is your own capability; the impact is your own work.
At L3, the path forks — and you choose your direction.
By the time you reach L3, you’ve proven you can deliver independently and be trusted with a project’s technical output. Now the question becomes: how do you want to continue creating impact?
- Some people find that what energises them is going deeper — into harder problems, more sophisticated architecture, greater mastery of their craft. They take the Technical track.
- Others find that what energises them is growing people — mentoring, owning someone’s career, helping a group become greater than the sum of its parts. They take the People track (Group Lead).
Taking the people path is not a promotion. Let us be direct about this: becoming a Group Lead is not a step up from being an individual contributor. It is a different way of creating the same level of impact. The level — L3, L4, L5 — reflects your impact. The track reflects how you create it. A Staff Software Engineer and a Group Lead at L4 are at the same level, carrying the same weight, and are viewed exactly the same way at Arillus. One is not senior to the other. One is not better than the other. The only difference is leverage. We will never treat the people path as a reward or the IC path as a ceiling.
This is not a permanent commitment. You can move between tracks at any point in your career. An engineer on the Technical track can decide they want to take on people responsibilities — and an engineer on the People track can step back from group leadership and go deeper technically. The track reflects where you’re currently directing your energy, not a fixed identity. What matters is that you’re creating impact at your level, whichever way you choose to get there.
Functions Don’t Change
Section titled “Functions Don’t Change”At the core, every person at Arillus is deeply drawn to one function — engineering, product, or design. That’s not an assigned role; it’s a fundamental trait. People very rarely change functions, because it’s not about what you do day-to-day, it’s about what kind of problems you’re naturally wired to solve.
The Impact and Leverage framework applies within your function. A Group Lead in engineering is still an engineer — they still code, still make technical decisions, still grow in their craft. They’ve simply chosen to also leverage people as an additional mechanism for creating impact.
What This Means in Practice
Section titled “What This Means in Practice”- Your level reflects your current impact — not your title, not your years of experience, not what your previous company called you.
- Both tracks lead to L5/L6 — a Principal Software Engineer and a Senior Group Lead can both be at L5 or L6. The level is about the scale of impact, not the mechanism.
- Group Leads are still engineers — choosing the People track doesn’t mean you stop coding or give up your technical identity. You are still an engineer first. The difference is that you’ve added people as a second lever. A Group Lead who steps away from the craft becomes less effective at both tracks, not more effective at one.
- Tracks are not permanent — you can switch direction at any point. Arillus does not treat this like a one-way door. If you’re on the Technical track and want to try leading people, you can. If you’re a Group Lead and want to go heads-down technical for a period, you can. What matters is impact, not which hat you wore last year.
- Your Group Lead may not be the most technically experienced person in the group — and that’s intentional and fine. Their strength is growing people and owning careers. On deep technical questions, they’ll turn to the strongest technical voice in the group — that’s not a gap, that’s the system working correctly.