The short answer is scope. A staff engineer solves complex, unscoped problems and sets technical direction for a department or a domain. A principal engineer sets technical vision and strategy across several departments. Both are individual contributor roles above senior, and at most companies neither manages people.
Principal sits higher. At Dropbox, staff is IC5 and principal is IC6, with senior principal at IC7 (Dropbox career framework). At Etsy there is even a step in between: Staff I and II, then Senior Staff, then Principal (Etsy Engineering Career Ladder).
Staff vs principal at a glance
| Staff engineer | Principal engineer | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | A department or a domain | Several departments, often the whole company |
| Problems | "Significantly complex, unscoped" | Cross-department needs |
| Main output | Technical direction | Technical vision and strategy |
| Dropbox level | IC5 | IC6 (IC7 senior principal) |
| Etsy level | Staff I, Staff II | Principal (after Senior Staff) |
| Ukraine median pay, DOU summer 2026 | $7,130 net/month | $5,925 net/month |
Sources: Etsy, Dropbox, dev.ua summary of the DOU survey.
What a staff engineer does
Etsy describes the staff level as working on "significantly complex, unscoped problems", with influence over a department or domain and responsibility for its technical direction (Etsy).
Will Larson, who wrote the StaffEng guides and the book Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track, adds that staff isn't a title you simply hold. It is a combination of the role, the behaviours, the impact and recognition from the organisation (StaffEng). You can have the title and not be doing the job, and the reverse also happens.
The four staff archetypes
Larson describes four shapes the role takes (staff archetypes):
- Tech Lead
- Architect
- Solver
- Right Hand
The Tech Lead is the most common. This person guides the technical approach and execution of a team or a cluster of teams, coordinates the work, removes blockers and maintains relationships with other teams. The other three archetypes are less common, and each one shapes the day very differently. If you are aiming for staff, read Larson's descriptions and figure out which one fits the problems your organisation actually has.
What a principal engineer does
A principal works on needs that cross departments and defines technical vision and strategy for several of them at once (Etsy). The role is rare, and impact is judged at company level. If a staff engineer asks "where should this domain go?", a principal asks "where should engineering at this company go?".
Dropbox puts a further level, senior principal (IC7), above principal (Dropbox).
Staff and principal vs engineering manager
After senior, most ladders split into two tracks: technical leadership without reports, and management (StaffEng overview). Staff and principal engineers usually don't manage people. Their counterparts on the management track, engineering managers and directors, spend a large share of their time on people.
Dropbox makes this explicit with a parallel management track from M3 (Engineering Manager) to M7 (Senior Engineering Director) next to IC1 to IC7 (Dropbox). The full map of both tracks is in software engineer levels.
How to become a staff engineer
The step from senior to staff is about impact beyond your own team. Concretely:
- Take problems nobody has scoped yet and give them shape
- Set a technical direction that other teams actually follow
- Write it down: design docs, then strategy
- Build support for your initiatives instead of waiting for permission
- Pick the problems that matter most to the organisation, not the most interesting ones
These come from the Etsy ladder and Larson's guides (Etsy, StaffEng).
Dropbox adds a useful rule for any promotion: you need "demonstrated, sustained impact at the next level" (Dropbox promotion principles). In practice that means doing staff-level work for a while before anyone calls it that.
How to go from staff to principal
Grow your scope from one domain to several. The work becomes less about solving and more about setting the vision others solve against. It also depends on whether the company has problems at that scale.
Interviews for staff and principal
For staff-level frontend roles, interview guides describe questions on platform thinking, design system strategy, migrations and impact across the organisation. Behavioural rounds carry a lot of weight at this level and are central to deciding where you are placed (GreatFrontEnd FAANG guide).
Prepare stories with real scope: a migration you led, a direction you set, a decision you had to argue for with people outside your team.
Staff and principal engineer salary
Ukraine. In the DOU summer 2026 survey (May to June 2026, published 13 July 2026), staff software engineers had a median of $7,130 a month net. Principal software engineers had $5,925, and system architects $7,000. For comparison, Lead+ was $5,500 and senior $4,500 (DOU salary report, dev.ua).
Yes, principal came out below staff. I don't know the sample sizes behind these two numbers, and principal is a rare title, so a small group could easily skew the median. I wouldn't conclude that principal pays less.
US. I couldn't verify a US median for staff or principal from a primary source. Levels.fyi shows $200,000 median total compensation for all US software engineers (13 November 2026), but that page doesn't break it down by level (Levels.fyi). Per-company pages are the only reliable way to see staff and principal pay at a given employer.
More on pay by level in senior software engineer salary.
Further reading
- StaffEng and the book Staff Engineer by Will Larson
- Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
- Etsy Engineering Career Ladder
- Every public engineering career ladder (swyx)
FAQ
Is principal higher than staff engineer?
Yes. At Dropbox staff is IC5 and principal IC6. At Etsy there is Senior Staff between them.
Do staff and principal engineers manage people?
Usually not. They are on the individual contributor track. Engineering managers and directors are the management counterparts.
Is a staff engineer the same as a tech lead?
Not exactly. Tech Lead is one of four staff archetypes Will Larson describes, and the most common one. Tech lead can also be a role held by a senior engineer.
How much does a staff engineer earn in Ukraine?
$7,130 a month net, median, in the DOU summer 2026 survey.
Practise the fundamentals that still get tested
Even at staff level, interviews still include coding and technical depth. The ShortLesson app has short lessons and interview questions on TypeScript, React, HTTP, GraphQL and more, so you can keep the basics sharp while you work on scope: open the courses.
