Career path
A coherent progression through related career levels or competency levels. Each career path declares a type: main IC, specialization, advanced IC, or management.
Career model
How career paths, levels, specializations, overlays, and learning areas fit together.
The model separates company seniority from domain competency and optional responsibilities. This lets one person combine a main career level, one or more specializations, and a role overlay without treating them as the same kind of progression.
Career level
A progression point with expected scope, responsibility, and knowledge. Levels inherit prerequisite knowledge through explicit buildsFrom references.
Learning area
An educational grouping inside a career level. Learning areas explain why concepts belong together; they do not replace the concept graph's tracks and layers.
Specialization
A domain-competency career path such as Backend, Security, or Data. Foundations, Practitioner, and Advanced describe domain depth, not company seniority.
Role overlay
An optional responsibility set attached to an existing career level, such as Lead Software Engineer. overlayOf controls placement, while buildsFrom controls inherited knowledge.
Example profile
One person combines multiple dimensions
Senior Software Engineer+Advanced Backend+Lead Software Engineer overlay
The main career level describes general engineering scope. The specialization describes domain capability. The overlay describes an additional responsibility that does not replace the formal level.
Relationship rules
How progression is declared
type- Classifies the career path as
main-ic(main IC),specialization,advanced-ic, ormanagement. buildsFrom- Declares the career levels whose cumulative concepts are prerequisites for the current level.
type: overlay- Marks a level entry as a role overlay rather than a normal progression level.
overlayOf- Declares one or more career levels where a role overlay appears in the interface.
learningAreas- Groups the concepts introduced by the current career level into understandable learning themes.
Concept maturity
Expectations have depth
Career levels may expect a concept at awareness, working, or advanced maturity. Learning areas can override the default maturity for individual concepts, while concept pages may define what each maturity means.