Dropbox: Engineering Management Career Framework

Impact

• I act with a bias for action, and lead my team to deliver high-quality work that will add the most value for our business and customers
• I redirect my team's focus if our results aren’t moving the needle for our business/team goals or serving the needs of customers in a meaningful way
• I get work to a simple place by focusing on the heart of the problem, prioritizing the right things, and minimizing unnecessary work
• I am responsible for ensuring that results do not come at the expense of long term growth, retention, or psychological safety
• I am ultimately accountable for the consequences of my team’s technical decisions, and for achieving the right architecture and tradeoffs to reach and maintain high engineering throughput.

Ownership

• I proactively follow through on my commitments and take responsibility for my work, and the work of my team
• I think a step or two ahead, and help my team solve the right problems before they become bigger problems
• I take accountability for my and my team's decisions, mistakes and help my team learn from them to prevent them in the future. I embrace and share the learnings with others
• I escalate appropriately to ensure the team is unblocked, and help them learn how to unblock themselves
• I involve my team in the discussion of “what to build” and not just the “how to build”, creating a sense of ownership for the end results

Decision Making

• I identify and gather input and customer insights from others to make informed decisions, balancing value for the customer with other business goals
• I make timely decisions and don’t cut corners that would compromise my customer’s trust
• I understand the implications of decisions and adjust my approach based on the impact and risk
• I escalate appropriately when I need help with a decision about my team's deliverables or priorities

Operational Excellence

• I set team priorities, goals, and expectations at the right altitude and hold my team accountable for progress against them
• I run efficient processes and operational cadences, leveraging appropriate asynchronous and synchronous methods, to get to the right outcomes
• I build healthy partnerships with stakeholders and teams with whom my team has long-lived relationships
• I am learning about how to best support my team in maintaining their well-being and respect work/life boundaries in line with Dropbox’s virtual work practices

Agility

• I embrace change and am enthusiastic about new initiatives
• I help my team navigate ambiguity and remain resilient through change, by staying calm under pressure and taking care of my/my team's overall well-being
• I navigate ambiguity by focusing on the greater purpose, goals, and desired impact to move forward one step at a time

Innovation

• I have a growth mindset and a pursue ideas that challenge conventional approaches while seeking opportunities for improvement
• I encourage my team to have a growth mindset and experiment with new approaches and help them learn from failures, and own the outcomes
• I find new ways of utilizing customer feedback to influence my teams' plans

Strategy and Change Management

• I define my team's priorities and secure buy-in from partner teams with the help of my manager
• I strategically prioritize between running the business (KTLO), foundation, and new initiatives to optimize for execution over the long-term
• I generate excitement for my/the team's strategy

Personal Growth

• I have self awareness, and empathetically connect with others
• I proactively work on self development knowing my strengths, and seeking new feedback
• I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals and seek out opportunities to learn, and grow
• I connect with others with empathy and understanding
• I invest time and seek out opportunities to learn and grow into a better manager and leader (e.g., PGP, Dropbox-offered training, leveraging perks allowance etc.)

Team Development

• I foster the career growth of my team by seeking challenging, impactful work for all members of my team based on their unique skills, strengths, backgrounds and working styles. I give opportunities to work on next-level assignments that demonstrate readiness for promotion when appropriate
• I provide timely, direct and actionable feedback and coaching to my team in an empathetic manner, to drive high performance and career growth
• I celebrate and reward the variety of contributions expected of engineers, not just high-profile projects, but also reducing toil and improving team cohesion

Hiring and Talent Development

• I attract and hire across a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, locations and strengths
• I actively work to engage and retain Dropboxers and establish the right mix of talent and experience on my team
• I set clear expectations and address performance issues with support from my manager

Organizational Design

• I am learning how to think about the talent on my team strategically: how to create equitable growth opportunities for team members while addressing gaps and risks through recruiting, training, internal mobility, and performance management
• I structure my team so the right people are in the right roles with clearly defined responsibilities, and expectations. In consultation with my manager, I ensure projects are staffed appropriately to set them up for success, placing my strongest technical leaders where they are the most needed and impactful

Collaboration

• I promote and role model Dropbox core values, leading by example
• I build relationships across teams and help them get to win-win outcomes
• I engage in productive conflict with thoughtful questioning and have the courage to state my point of view
• I avoid blame and solve the right problems, disagreeing and committing when necessary to move decisions forward
• I manage conflict with empathy in mind

Organizational Health

• I listen to different perspectives and I remove biases from my words and actions
• I help foster effective communication across my team and promote inclusive meeting culture
• I create an inclusive environment for my team where it’s safe to speak up
• I practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis
• I champion good Virtual First practices that help my team collaborate effectively
• When I become aware of any lapse in my team’s culture, I communicate and follow through on plans to correct and prevent recurrence of the lapse
• I am aware of my public presence and actions and their influence on the people around me and Dropbox’s culture
• I help shape the Dropbox engineering culture through my involvement with activities outside of my team

Communication

• I communicate with clarity, brevity, and tailor my message to my audience
• I proactively share information so the relevant stakeholders are informed and aligned
• I champion my team, and team members with others at Dropbox, including leadership
• If there is a significant issue not being addressed, I initiate a crucial conversation even when uncomfortable

Culture Leader

• I create an environment of psychological safety to support connection, empathy, and healthy conflict with support from my manager
• I hold team members accountable to actions that uphold Dropbox core values and support our engineering community

Software Design

• I am able to give quality feedback on designs written by other members of my team, asking probing, insightful questions that solidify choices and surface erroneous assumptions
• I encourage ways to simplify systems. I prioritize work that will lead to lower maintenance and costs with meaningful and measurable impact.
• I preemptively identify technical risks before they jeopardize the project.
• I resolve cross-team dependencies earlier to ensure the successful execution of the project.
• I discourage re-inventing the wheel by leveraging other Dropbox solutions or off-the-shelf solutions with the possible trade-off in mind.

Business Acumen

• I engage in listening sessions (All Hands, Quarterly Business Updates, etc.) to increase my learning and guide my work/priorities
• I have a working knowledge of Dropbox’s org/team structure and how teams work together across Dropbox, and able to independently work with partner engineering teams to unblock code reviews, and engineering designs

Impact

• I identify new opportunities for my team to execute that have the most customer, org or company-wide impact
• I refocus my team's efforts when results aren’t moving the needle for our business/team goals or serving the needs of customers in a meaningful way
• I know which levers to pull to drive meaningful results and understand the wider, cross-functional implications of my team's work
• I am responsible for ensuring that results do not come at the expense of long term growth, retention, or psychological safety
• My team is delivering results across multiple impactful projects while demonstrating a very high standard of execution
• I suggest and improve how our team measures and communicates customer impact

Ownership

• I have a sense of responsibility and obligation to act on opportunities I see across my org
• I create an environment where my teams can learn from mistakes to drive better business outcomes. I embrace and share the learnings with others
• I unblock myself and my team by assessing, and eliminating barriers focusing on solutions, including implementing process and scale improvements
• I respond with urgency, and drive urgency in my team to operational issues (e.g., SEVs), owning resolution within my sphere of responsibility
• I actively seek out and eliminate sources of toil on my team to reduce the impact of KTLO and SEVs

Decision Making

• I make informed decisions by having productive debate with the right stakeholders, seeking diverse perspectives, balancing details with the big picture, and optimizing for the company
• I am able to leverage insights about our customers to help inform my decisions, balancing the value for the customer with other business goals
• I am able to reach the right decision despite conflicting perspectives and act thoughtfully and decisively

Operational Excellence

• I set team priorities, goals, expectations and key metrics at the right altitude and hold my team accountable for progress against them
• I run efficient processes and operational cadences, leveraging appropriate asynchronous and synchronous methods, to get to the right outcomes
• I ensure that appropriate information is disseminated within the team
• I build healthy partnerships with stakeholders, and teams with whom my teams have long-lived relationships
• I support my team in maintaining their well-being and respect work/life boundaries in line with Dropbox’s virtual work practices

Agility

• I am a calming influence on my team in times of change, and uncertainty
• I coach my team to navigate complexity, and ambiguity

Innovation

• I champion bold, and innovative approaches for my team, and lead them to generate solutions that aim to deliver better results
• I set audacious goals for my team, encourage them to take risks, and share lessons learned
• I have a growth mindset and am comfortable enabling the team to experiment, learn and own the outcomes, and sharing what I learned
• I find new and creative ways of leveraging customer insights and including customer voices to influence strategy

Strategy and Change Management

• I communicate company and functional updates and decisions in a way that creates context, understanding, and alignment for my team
• I am increasingly thinking about how my team fits within the broader engineering organization and I make tradeoffs that optimize for the overall organization rather than locally for my team
• I define the strategy for my team in alignment with stakeholders, company-wide priorities, and customer needs
• I define the roadmap to execute on that strategy and inspire my team, and cross-functional stakeholders to work toward that strategy
• I resolve misalignments with stakeholder teams and cross-discipline partners with differing goals
• I am independently planning for and articulating goals over increasingly longer time horizons, even in the face of material ambiguity
• When necessary, I’m able to introduce change into the organization and guide my team accordingly

Personal Growth

• I have self-awareness and connect with others with empathy
• I proactively ask for feedback and work on self-development knowing my strengths, and take actions on my development areas
• I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals and seek out opportunities to learn, and grow
• I invest time in being a better manager and leader

Team Development

• I foster the career growth of my team members by taking into account their unique skills, strengths, backgrounds and working styles and career goals through coaching, on-the-job experiences, mentoring, and internal mobility. I give opportunities to work on next-level assignments that demonstrate readiness for promotion when appropriate
• I celebrate when a member of my team focuses on reducing toil. For example, I do this by highlighting their contributions with the rest of the team and including it favorably in their review
• I attract and hire a diverse team across a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, locations and strengths

Hiring and Talent Development

• I am actively involved in interviewing and assessing candidates to help us build a diverse and talented team. In addition, I ensure my team is calibrated and conducting interviews.
• I build strong relationships with candidates and can represent Dropbox's mission, strategy, and culture throughout the interview process
• I set clear expectations, evaluate, and manage both high and low performance with a focus on excellence and growth
• I can guide and grow senior ICs, helping them advance their careers by finding highly-leveraged roles for them within the organization, not just my team

Organizational Design

• I structure my team so the right people are in the right roles with clearly defined responsibilities. I independently ensure projects are staffed appropriately to set them up for success, placing my strongest technical leaders where they are the most needed and impactful
• I create equitable growth opportunities and delegate appropriately for everyone on my team
• I can independently plan for the headcount and recruiting needs of my team

Collaboration

• I help break down silos within and across functions and influence others to reach the best outcome for Dropbox, regardless of my level/title
• I build deep cross-functional relationships, facilitate the right conversations, balancing multiple perspectives, and engage in productive conflict with thoughtful questioning/challenging, disagreeing and committing when necessary to move decisions forward

Organizational Health

• I enable others to bring their authentic selves everyday and contribute to building community at Dropbox
• I remove barriers to inclusion for my team and ensure diverse perspectives are considered and included
• When I become aware of any lapse in my team’s culture, I communicate and follow through on plans to correct and prevent recurrence of the lapse
• I am aware of my public presence and actions and their influence on the people around me and Dropbox’s culture
• I ensure diverse perspectives are included, leveraging inclusive meeting practices
• I practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis

Communication

• I communicate with clarity, brevity, focus, and tailor my message to my audience
• I proactively share information so the relevant stakeholders are informed and aligned
• I hold crucial conversations even when they feel uncomfortable, and I listen to and seek to understand others
• I champion my team and team members with others at Dropbox, including leadership

Culture Leader

• I create an environment of psychological safety where all Dropboxers are included and heard to support connection, empathy, and productive conflict where dissenting opinions are valued and addressed
• I hold team members accountable to actions that uphold Dropbox core values and support our engineering community
• I help my team network and build relationships across Dropbox, creating connection and inclusion across my team and with other teams

Software Design

• I am able to give quality feedback on designs written by other members of my team, asking probing, insightful questions that solidify choices and surface erroneous assumptions
• I encourage ways to simplify systems. I prioritize work that will lead to lower maintenance and costs with meaningful and measurable impact.
• I preemptively identify technical risks before they jeopardize the project.
• I resolve cross-team dependencies earlier to ensure the successful execution of the project.
• I discourage re-inventing the wheel by leveraging other Dropbox solutions or off-the-shelf solutions with the possible trade-off in mind.

Architecture Design

• I establish processes for rolling out a component or major feature (and deprecating an existing system or feature) reliably
• I discourage introducing toil and future maintenace work by reviewing potential scaling issues and requiring adequate documentation.
• I require and monitor clear success and learning metrics consistently post-launch through the lifetime of the system or feature.
• I’m capable of reviewing the overall health and engineering quality of a system or collection of features - including requiring regular health reviews, test strategy and ensuring that the health and maintenance of my team's systems

Technical Strategy

• I hold my team accountable for alignment of the software and systems in my area to overall technical strategy, making tradeoffs where appropriate in consultation with staff engineers

Business Acumen

• I engage in listening sessions (All Hands, Quarterly Business Updates, etc.) to increase my learning and guide my work/priorities
• I have a working knowledge of Dropbox’s org/team structure and how teams work together across Dropbox, and able to independently work with partner engineering teams to unblock code reviews, and engineering designs

Impact

• I plan for and execute on multiple impactful projects, work streams and teams
• I identify new opportunities for my team to execute that the most customer, org or company-wide impact
• I refocus my team's efforts when results aren’t moving the needle for our business/team goals or customers in a meaningful way
• I know which levers to pull to drive meaningful results and understand the wider, cross-functional implications of my team's work
• I am responsible for ensuring that results do not come at the expense of long term growth, retention, or psychological safety
• I improve how our team/org measures and communicates customer impact

Ownership

• I have a sense of responsibility, and obligation to act on opportunities I see across my org
• I create an environment where my teams can learn from failures to drive better business outcomes
• I unblock myself and team by addressing, and eliminating the root cause by focusing on solutions, including implementing process and scale improvements
• I am accountable for inspection, oversight, and pruning of the portfolio of projects within my domain and hold managers reporting to me accountable for delivering the results needed by the organization

Decision Making

• I make informed decisions by consulting the right stakeholders and balancing details with the big picture
• I am able to leverage insights about our customers to help inform my decisions, balancing the value for the customer with other business goals
• I am able to reach the right decision despite conflicting perspectives and act thoughtfully and decisively
• I ensure that investments are appropriately prioritized across my portfolio of projects

Operational Excellence

• I set goals, objectives, and identify key metrics at the right altitude, and hold my team(s) accountable for progress against them
• I run efficient processes and operational cadences, leveraging appropriate asynchronous and synchronous methods, to get to the right outcomes
• I ensure that appropriate information is disseminated within my team
• I build healthy partnerships with stakeholders, and teams with whom my teams have long-lived relationships
• I support my team in maintaining their well-being and respect work/life boundaries in line with Dropbox’s virtual work practices

Agility

• I am a calming influence on my team in times of change, and uncertainty
• I coach my team to navigate complexity, and ambiguity
• When necessary, I am able to introduce change into the organization, and guide my team accordingly

Innovation

• I champion bold, creative, and innovative approaches for my team, and lead them to generate solutions that aim to deliver better results
• I set audacious goals for my team, encourage them to take risks, and share lessons learned
• I have a growth mindset and am comfortable enabling the team to experiment, learn and own the outcomes

Strategy and Change Management

• I communicate company and functional updates and decisions in a way that creates context, understanding, and alignment for my team " I define the strategy for my team in alignment with stakeholders, company-wide priorities, and customer needs
• I define the roadmap to execute on that strategy and inspire my team, and cross-functional stakeholders to work toward that strategy
• I resolve misalignments with stakeholder, teams and cross-discipline partners with differing goals
• I think and articulate strategy over long time horizons. I am able to think broadly and cross-functionally about areas outside of my teams’/org’s primary responsibilities

Personal Growth

• I proactively ask for feedback from those I work with and identify ways to act upon it
• I have self-awareness about my strengths and take actions on my development areas
• I connect with others with empathy
• I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals, and seek out opportunities to learn and grow
• I invest time in being a better manager and leader

Team Development

• I foster the career growth of my team members by taking into account their skill, and career goals through coaching, on-the-job experiences, mentoring, and internal mobility. I give opportunities to work on next-level assignments that demonstrate readiness for promotion when appropriate
• I have a strong pulse on my team's engagement, and a proactive retention strategy
• I attract and hire diverse talent across a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, locations and strengths, keeping in mind the long-term health and success of my org and/or teams
• I am actively involved in interviewing and assessing senior candidates and I ensure my team(s) are calibrated and conducting interviews. In addition, I am increasingly getting involved in hiring initiatives and potentially a member of hiring committee
• I build strong relationships with candidates and can represent
• Dropbox's mission, strategy, and culture throughout the interview process
• I set clear expectations for my team, and hold them accountable for performance expectations and take different approaches to motivating high performers and turning around low performers
• I actively participate in or lead some cross-org initiatives that improves processes, people experiences, and technologies for a broader set of people than my reports
• I work to ensure that everyone is well leveraged by leading through other people managers, mentorship and sponsorship and by finding opportunities for those who are under leveraged.
• I can guide and grow both managers and senior ICs, helping them advance their careers by finding them highly-leveraged roles within the organizatio

Organizational Design

• I structure my team so the right people are in the right roles with clearly defined responsibilities, and expectations. I ensure projects are staffed appropriately to set them up for success, placing my strongest technical leaders where they are the most needed and impactful
• I increasingly think in terms of the broad organization, rather than treating it as a collection of individual teams
• I plan for long-term headcount and recruiting needs to guarantee the long-term success of my organization and/or team(s)
• I create sustainable processes, reward systems, and people practices to ensure my team’s long-term success

Collaboration

• I help break down silos within and across functions and influence others to reach the best outcome for Dropbox, regardless of my level/title
• I build deep cross-functional relationships, facilitate the right conversations, and settle disagreements by managing different viewpoints
• I avoid blame and solve the right problems, disagreeing and committing when necessary to move critical priorities forward
• I have a holistic view of the org, customer insights, and Dropbox’s goals that I champion, using my experience and judgment to optimize for the wider org rather than locally to my teams.

Organizational Health

• I enable others to bring their authentic selves everyday and contribute to building community at Dropbox
• I remove barriers to inclusion for my team and ensure diverse perspectives are considered and included. I work to elevate existing standards while coaching my reports on how to do the same
• I practice vigilance in surfacing cultural issues that might not be explicitly raised to me. I proactively solicit feedback from my team on culture and leverage tools at hand (e.g. Pulse, Soapbox) to gain deeper insight into my team
• When I become aware of any lapse in my team’s culture, I communicate and work with my leadership team follow through on plans to correct and prevent recurrence of the lapse
• I practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis

Communication

• I communicate with clarity, brevity, focus, and tailor my message to my audience, and listen to understand others
• I write crisp narratives to create understanding, influence others, and enable effective decision-making
• I proactively share information and decisions made so my team and relevant stakeholders are informed and aligned.
• I hold crucial conversations even when they feel uncomfortable, and I listen to and seek to understand others
• I stay current on Dropbox’s business, product, customers, and competitive market
• Dropbox’s strategy and business priorities inform my and my team’s priorities
• I have a working knowledge of Dropbox’s org/team structure and how teams work together across Dropbox

Culture Leader

• I create an environment of psychological safety to support connection, empathy, and healthy conflict
• I hold team members accountable to actions that uphold Dropbox core values and support our community
• I help my team network and build relationships across Dropbox, creating connection and inclusion across my team and with other teams

Software Design

• The expectations for software design does not go beyond M4 (though some specialist managers may go deep in this area)

Architecture Design

• I’m capable of reviewing the overall health and engineering quality of a system or collection of features - including requiring regular health reviews, reviewing key metrics, test strategy and ensuring that the health and maintenance of my organization's systems

Technical Strategy

• I hold my team accountable for alignment of the software and systems in my area to overall technical strategy, making tradeoffs where appropriate in consultation with staff and principal engineers

Impact

• I drive the most important long-term priorities for the company that create the highest value for my customer
• I know when to shut down company-wide initiatives that don't create value and how to re-structure my team's or org's roles and goals
• I know which levers to pull to drive meaningful results, and consider company-wide implications of my team's work
• I am accountable for ensuring that results do not come at the expense of long-term growth, retention, or psychological safety within cross-functional teams in my organization

Ownership

• I have a sense of responsibility, and obligation to act on opportunities I see across the company
• I am accountable for the inspection, oversight, and pruning of the portfolio of projects within my domain and hold managers reporting to me accountable for delivering the results needed by the organization
• I am ultimately accountable for the alignment between the portfolio of projects in my domain, and Dropbox’s business objectives

Decision Making

• I act thoughtfully, and decisively in critical situations even when making challenging or unpopular decisions
• I ensure that investments are appropriately prioritized across my portfolio of projects and Dropbox’s business objectives

Operational Excellence

• I ensure the right balance of operational excellence, innovation, and speed across teams against company-level goals

Agility

• I drive transformation for the company, help other leaders champion change, and generate excitement for change across Dropbox

Innovation

• I push boundaries and generate ideas—even if they are risky—that drive the greatest company-wide, and customer impact
• I create an environment that fosters innovation, and helps Dropboxers take smart risks, own the outcomes, and learn from failures

Strategy

• I deeply understand what is happening in the business and in the market. I use this understanding to work with my cross-functional partners to define a long-term vision for my team or org
• I anticipate challenges for and influence the direction of my teams or org, even when faced with significant misalignment, to execute work toward that vision
• I effectively and broadly evangelize my strategy to remove roadblocks and ensure my team executes consistently against the direction I lay out
• I am able to resolve cross-engineering misalignments blocking decisions on strategic choices with long-term consequences

Personal Growth

• I have self-awareness and connect with others with empathy
• I proactively ask for feedback from those I work with and have self-awareness about my strengths, and take actions on my development areas
• I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals, and seek out opportunities to learn and grow
• I invest time in being a better manager and leader

Hiring and Talent Development

• I attract senior and diverse talent across a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, locations to Dropbox and have strong followership across the company
• I am actively involved in interviewing and assessing senior and leadership candidates. I am a debrief mod for senior candidates and a leader in hiring committee. I look holistically at our hiring processes/standards and help drive improvements
• I take a holistic approach to talent engagement, and retention across my teams/org
• I successfully drive the full talent lifecycle for my group, including hiring, culture-building, growth, performance management and retention
• I actively initiate and lead cross-org initiatives that improves processes, people experiences, and technologies for people across the company
• I champion a high-performance culture across the company, create an environment for continuous growth and development, and identify career opportunities for Dropboxers across teams ensuring they are well leveraged
• I am an expert at growing great managers both able to effectively run their teams and who can themselves grow great managers

Organizational Design

• I have a clear succession plan, and build a strong bench that sets my team up for success in the future for key roles on my team with a long-term view
• I invest in developing a pipeline of future leaders for Dropbox
• I help prioritize, and structure the engineering organization to successfully execute against a portfolio of investments
• I ensure projects are staffed appropriately to set them up for success, placing my strongest technical leaders where they are the most needed and impactful

Collaboration

• I remove barriers to collaboration across Dropbox
• I influence, and build relationships with leaders across the company while expertly navigating organizational dynamics

Organizational Health

• I sponsor community-building efforts and inclusion initiatives
• I have a strong grasp of organization design, and know when to apply small or large changes to increase results or team health
• I am able to debug and address the vast majority of organizational health issues
• I practice vigilance in surfacing cultural issues that might not be explicitly raised to me. I proactively solicit feedback from my team on culture and leverage tools at hand (e.g. Pulse, Soapbox) to gain deeper insight into my team
• When I become aware of any lapse in my team’s culture, I communicate and work with my leadership team follow through on plans to correct and prevent recurrence of the lapse
• I practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis

Communication

• I communicate complex, challenging, or unpopular ideas with poise and conviction, and gain commitment from others
• I write crisp narratives to create understanding, influence others, and enable effective decision-making across my org
• I engage in executive-level communications and represent Dropbox effectively in external forums

Culture Leader

• I create an environment of psychological safety to support connection, empathy, and healthy conflict
• I shape Dropbox's culture and personify Dropbox core values. I work to elevate existing standards while coaching my other reports on how to do the same
• I help orgs foster relationships across Dropbox, creating connection and inclusion across different orgs at Dropbox

Business Acumen

• I stay current on Dropbox’s business, product, customers, and competitive market
• Dropbox’s strategy and business priorities inform my and my org's priorities

Architecture Design

• I’m capable of reviewing the overall health and engineering quality of a system or collection of features - including requiring regular health reviews, reviewing key metrics, test strategy and ensuring that the health and maintenance of my organization's systems

Technical Strategy

• I hold my team accountable for alignment of the software and systems in my area to overall technical strategy, making tradeoffs where appropriate in consultation with staff and principal engineers

Impact

• I drive the most important long-term priorities for the company that create the highest value for my customer
• I know when to shut down company-wide initiatives that don't create value and how to re-structure my org's roles and goals
• I know which levers to pull to drive meaningful results, and consider company-wide implications of my team's work
• My teams plan for and executes on either a portfolio of strategic objectives or a single strategic objective with significant complexity

Ownership

• I have a sense of responsibility, and obligation to act on opportunities I see across the company
• I hold those reporting to me accountable for delivering the results needed by the organization and ensure that investments are appropriately prioritized across my portfolio of objectives

Decision Making

• I act thoughtfully, and decisively in critical situations even when making challenging or unpopular decisions

Operational Excellence

• I ensure the right balance of operational excellence, innovation, and speed across teams against company-level goals
• I am skillful in detecting, and addressing the situations where my personal attention is required while otherwise allowing my Directors to own their strategic objectives

Agility

• I drive transformation for the company, help other leaders champion change, and generate excitement for change across Dropbox

Innovation

• I push boundaries, and generate ideas—even if they are risky—that drive the greatest company-wide impact
• I create an environment that fosters innovation and helps Dropboxers take smart risks, own the outcomes, and learn from failures. I define strategic objectives that provide space to develop bold new ideas

Strategy

• I deeply understand what is happening in the business and in the market. I use this understanding to collaborate with my cross-functional partners, VP, and Directors to define a long-term vision for my org/EPD
• I anticipate challenges for, and influence the direction of my teams or org, even when faced with significant misalignment, to execute work toward that vision

Personal Growth

• I proactively ask for feedback from those I work with and have self-awareness about my strengths, and take actions on my development areas
• I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals, and seek out opportunities to learn and grow
• I invest time in being a better manager and leade

Hiring and Talent Development

• I attract senior and diverse talent across a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, locations to Dropbox and have strong followership across the company
• I am actively involved in interviewing and assessing executive leadership candidates. I look holistically at our hiring processes/standards and help drive improvements
• I actively identify and prioritize areas of investment to improve processes, people experiences, and technologies across the company.
• I create long-term initiatives accordingly and lead or put leaders in charge of these initiatives and oversee their planning, execution.
• I take a holistic approach to talent engagement, and retention across my teams/org
• I champion a high-performance culture across the company, create an environment for continuous growth and development, and identify career opportunities for Dropboxers across teams
• I am an expert at both hiring and growing Directors, and I know what great looks like across all of the Core Responsibilities
• In addition to executing the responsibilities of a direct manager and leader of my organization effectively, I operate against the long term talent needs of the engineering function as a whole

Organizational Design

• I have a clear succession plan, and build a strong bench that sets my team up for success in the future for key roles on my team with a long-term view
• I invest in developing a pipeline of future leaders for Dropbox
• I help prioritize, and structure the engineering organization to successfully execute against a portfolio of investments
• I give my Directors scope to drive the talent lifecycle for their groups, and know when I need to step in and go deep

Collaboration

• I remove barriers to collaboration across Dropbox
• I influence, and build relationships with leaders across the company while expertly navigating organizational dynamics

Organizational Health

• I sponsor community-building efforts and inclusion initiatives
• I drive engineering or org-wide efforts to ensure a consistent and strong culture while keeping in mind org-wide culture, diversity, equity, and inclusion
• I am capable of debugging, and addressing even the gnarliest organizational health issues
• I practice vigilance in surfacing cultural issues that might not be explicitly raised to me. I proactively solicit feedback from my team on culture and leverage tools at hand (e.g. Pulse, Soapbox) to gain deeper insight into my team
• When I become aware of any lapse in my team’s culture, I communicate and work with my leadership team follow through on plans to correct and prevent recurrence of the lapse
• I practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis

Communication

• I communicate complex, challenging, or unpopular ideas with poise and conviction, and gain commitment from others
• I engage in executive-level communications and represent Dropbox effectively in external forums

Culture Leader

• I create an environment of psychological safety to support connection, empathy, and healthy conflict
• I shape Dropbox's culture and personify Dropbox core values. I work to elevate existing standards while coaching my other reports on how to do the same
• I help orgs foster relationships across Dropbox, creating connection and inclusion across different orgs at Dropbox

Business Acumen

• I help inform Dropbox’s business, and product by staying current on our customers, and competitive market
• I develop my own informed opinions on how Dropbox should leverage or guard against industry and market trends
• I engage in listening sessions (All Hands, Quarterly Business Updates, etc.) to increase my learning and guide organization's priorities
• I have a working knowledge of Dropbox’s org/team structure and how teams work together across Dropbox

Architecture Design

• I’m capable of reviewing the overall health and engineering quality of a system or collection of features - including requiring regular health reviews, reviewing key metrics, test strategy and ensuring that the health and maintenance of my organization's systems

Technical Strategy

• I hold my team accountable for alignment of the software and systems in my area to overall technical strategy, making tradeoffs where appropriate in consultation with principal engineers