The harsh reality of staff/principal engineering positions is the number of opportunities. There are a handful of companies that are big enough to have roles beyond senior engineers. In those big corporations, there are a few roles available and they are rarely open. Therefore, moving from one company to another is just so damn hard. There are more senior manager/director level roles than a principal engineering role where you oversee multiple teams or a department. If you want to make it to management, your best bet might be your own company or a startup. Happy to hear about your findings.
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I see quite a lot of recruiting for staff/senior-staff/pricipal roles, both within FAANG and without. It’s a bit harder to know what this actually means outside of FAANG, but my (very first) impression is that plenty of midsize companies have roughly similar positions to the better known FAANG staff+ roles.