[rramadass]

1. Good Problem domain knowledge and versatile "T-shaped" breadth/depth of Solution Domain technologies.

2. Good communication skills to interact with Clients/Marketing/Sales/Management/Peers/Juniors.

3. Actual varied work experience e.g. Code Complete has a line like "actual 10 years experience and not 1 year experience repeated 10 times".

[loige]

Great points, thank you!

I really love your clarification on point 3. I like to think time spent on the industry is not necessarily an indication for actual experience. I have seen people that have spent years and years in the same company doing the same tasks over and over and I tend to believe that they have grown much less than other professionals that managed to be exposed to more challenges during the same time-span.

I also love the idea of T-shaped profiles and of course communication skills are a must!

[rramadass]

There is actually a whole lot of details and nuance hiding behind the bullet points.

For example, "Communication Skills" is not mere language fluency. It refers to interaction with each of the listed stakeholders using their language, understanding their pov and anticipating their needs. Thus with "Clients" focus on "What and Why", with "Marketing" on "Product Positioning and Product Family", with "Peers" on "Module interfaces and Technical details" etc. etc. Basically the "Senior" Engineer needs to have a 360-degree view of both the primary Engineering discipline and all the ancillary Business disciplines (as needed).