Core Competencies Matrix Engineering
Additive as you move across levels
7 Core Competencies
Highlighted = needs to improve
Green = perceived or observed
Blue = no opportunity / not yet
observed
Black = not applicable / no
opportunity
1. Problem Solving:
Ability to structure issues at hand
and bring about feasible solutions.
Quantifying problems before working
on solutions. Making decisions based
on analysis of facts & data. Ability to
understand key metrics and what
they mean for the business.
2. Delivery Performance /
Business Focus:
Ability to focus on targets and deliver
high quality products and results.
Effective handling of blockers and
helping the team and others in
delivering good quality in an
appropriate time. Putting the
customer in the center of every
decision and problem solving
exercises. Being motivated by
creating consumer and customer
value in everyday work.
1. Junior Engineer
1. Works on issues assigned
by the team and is
thorough
2. In case of difficulties
involves the right people
who can help solve a
problem
3. Learns from their mistakes
1. Considers the value
delivered to the business
and customers/users
when working on their
tasks.
2. Works as part of the team
and is conscientious about
delivery
3. Works on stories in priority
order
4. Understand the concept of
OKRs (objectives/key
results) and outcome
driven work
5. Participates and is
proactive in team OKR
check-ins
6. Volunteers to present own
work or team’s work at the
showcase
7. Continuously improving
self
8. Cares about the success
of Homegate as a
business
2. Engineer
1. Identifies problems, flags
them and helps the team
define them
2. Does the analyses
required to come up with
conclusions and solutions
to problems
3. Is thorough and produces
reliable analyses
4. Works on issues assigned
by the team, investigates
reasons, maps
stakeholders and
identifies dependencies
5. Scopes own work with
help from the team
6. Is able to deal with
blockers effectively -
asking for support or
escalating when
necessary
1. Display a basic
understanding of our
customer’s average
behaviors and
expectations in
discussions
2. Delivers efficiently,
reliably and consistently
good quality solutions
3. Understands HG’s OKRs,
key business metrics
(revenue/cost) and their
drivers
4. Understands their teams
OKRs (objective/key
results) and knows
whether they're being
achieved or not
5. Participates in setting up,
getting and organizing
data for OKR check-ins
6. Demonstrates a strong
commitment to meeting
their Segment and Team
OKRs
7. Participates in creation
and follow up of actions
from team OKR check-ins
3. Senior Engineer
1. Applies analytical rigour to
identify root causes of
problems at hand and
come up with appropriate
solutions
2. Effectively recognises
patterns over time and
follows this with actionable
suggestions for
improvement
3. Is able to drive any given
topic / problem and reliably
find solution with no need
to being supervised
4. Breaks big problems into
smaller parts in a
structured manner and puts
them back together into
solutions
1. Takes a lead or an active
role in planning
2. Understands their
segment’s OKRs and
knows whether they're
being achieved or not
3. Plans towards the success
of their Segment and Team
OKRs
4. Raises issues, presents
actions and rigorously
follows them through to
meet their teams
objectives,
5. Always delivers good
quality and does everything
they can to deliver when
they said they would
6. Pro-actively ensures that
requirements, tasks and
priority are aligned for
delivery of team goals
7. Regularly identifies and
unblocks obstacles and
supports the team in
delivering its goals.
8. Demonstrates these
capabilities across more
than one team or context.
4. Engineering Manager
Principal Engineer
1. Questions whether we are
working on the right problem,
tries to quantify the issue at
hand before diving into a
solution/project
2. Helps others with their
analytical thinking skills
(research, organize data and
findings, propose, analyze
and improve solutions)
3. Solves problems with
pragmatism and helps to
lower complexity in how we
operate and the results we
produce
1. Initiates the creation of
measurable objectives, key
results (OKRs) and relevant
metrics to increase delivery
efficiency and to drive
business goals
2. Motivates and leads
engineers towards fulfilling the
business and engineering
OKRs (objectives/key results)
of HG
3. Drives progress and brings in
improved practices to the
team, continuously improving
tools & methodologies used
internally through own
initiative.
4. Actively drives change and
innovation
5. Goes beyond their individual
contribution to help the whole
team to deliver effectively and
seeks to remove blockers
before they become major
issues. Inspires others in the
team to do the same.
6. Can guide delivery across
team boundaries.
5. Head of Engineering
1. Comfortable with ambiguity,
builds structure and quantifies it
to turn it into an initiative with
clear measurable business goals
2. Evaluates issues from multiple
perspectives, considers the big
picture and looks for the
not-so-obvious dependencies
3. Contributes to own and other
teams’ analytical thinking by
challenging assumptions, helping
to define critical metrics and
guiding towards big picture
conclusions
4. Can synthesise multiple streams
of thought including others’ work
and bring it together in a clear
structure & smooth flow
5. Effectively differentiates scope
and urgency of problems in light
of overall company strategy and
specific department goals
6. Is able to evaluate rigor and
accuracy of performed analysis
very quickly in order to identify
weaknesses or areas that
require further drill-down
1. Actively challenges colleagues
and helps other teams to ensure
real focus on delivery with clear
ways forward
2. Weighs long term customer
satisfaction over short term
profits
3. Is able to prioritise the best use
of their time between their
immediate team's delivery and
wider departmental activities in
order to make the biggest impact
4. Manages delivery across all
development teams
6. CTO
1. Actively builds analytical
capabilities/ problem solving
skills in their team(s) and
highlights needs for
improvement in other areas
of the company
2. Always has a clear
perspective on key strategic
questions that need to be
further analysed in their
department to ensure that
strategic goals can be met
1. Ensures that business
needs are taken into
consideration in every
decision
2. Owns Engineering OKRs for
a broad segment of the
company
3. When driving innovation and
new initiatives always starts
with the business and works
backwards: “How technology
and innovation can be an
enabler for business”
4. Ultimate responsibility for
delivery across all
disciplines and the whole
department

3. Communication Skills &
Teamwork:
Ability to communicate clearly
whether written or oral while adapting
to the audience. Speaking out your
own opinions and sharing ideas.
Ability to disagree with concepts
without being disruptive. Ability to
work effectively with peers from other
departments towards common goals.
4. Leadership Potential:
Demonstrates independent thinking.
Taking full ownership. Proactively
engaging in solving issues outside of
immediate job scope. Involvement in
wider company initiatives.
Contribution to other teams’ efforts.
Consistently identifying how the
company can do better and working
to bring new ideas to life. Is a role
model others like, respect and follow.
1. Voices concerns or need
for clarification to their
team leads
2. Regularly communicates
status to the team in a
cohesive, understandable
and clear way
3. Contributes to
documentation that follows
a structure determined by
the team
4. Works and collaborates
within cross-functional
teams
5. Can express own needs
and feelings in a
non-violent manner
6. Open and willing to clarify
context, by expressing
their standings, and
thought process
1. Is a valuable contributor to
the team
2. Is humble (actively listen,
starts with questions to
clarify context, ask for
feedback, accepts failures,
equally considers all
opinions)
3. Driven to learn
continuously
4. Displays strong motivation
to make a difference
8. Continuously improving
team
1. Communicates
assumptions and gets
clarification on tasks up
front to minimize the need
for rework
2. Can produce
documentation
summarising own work
clearly
3. Clearly presents simple
concepts, data and factual
accounts
4. Separates important
points well from
nice-to-know information
5. Turns numbers into clear
conclusions and learnings
understandable by all
6. Contributes to a
productive and positive
atmosphere within own
team
7. Takes critical feedback in
a calm manner, reflects
and takes appropriate
actions upon it.
8. Open-minded, willing to
pick not own, but the best
approach / solution for the
problem
9. Is able to discuss difficult
topics in a friendly,
supportive and
constructive manner
10. Offers assistance to
others on previously
encountered problems.
11. Always willing to help
others
1. Is a valuable contributor to
the team who moves
ideas forward and who
also brings issues to the
team's attention
2. Is well connected to the
rest of Homegate, and is a
source of feedback on
issues that need to be
addressed by own team
3. Motivates peers to work
together on an issue
4. Naturally places trust in
others and listens to
everyone’s ideas
regardless of role and
seniority
5. Assumes positive intent
first and gathers context
9. Facilitates continuous
improvement of team
1. Owns the discussion of
how to solve self-contained
problems
2. Provides relevant and
actionable feedback to
other engineering team
members
3. Communicates technical
decisions through design
docs, tech talks etc.
4. Summarises own work with
a clear focus on the "so
what?"; ensures
recommendations are
specific and
action-orientated
5. Is able to communicate
effectively with everybody
across the organisation
1. Takes the initiative to
identify & highlight areas
that could be improved to
make immediate impact on
team’s results
2. Contributes to other teams’
projects and looks for
opportunities to make a
difference across the
company
3. Clearly demonstrates
ownership for their work,
tries to bring together
different parties involved
and can be held
accountable for delivering
the expected results
4. Acknowledges failures and
focuses on learning from
7. Ensures that the team
delivers good quality.
8. Understands the capabilities
of the team and
communicates that clearly to
stakeholders
9. Is able to have a view on all
relevant topics coming from
team and other stakeholders,
prioritise them adequately and
spend their time on those
appropriately and effectively,
without getting lost in details.
1. Communicates near-term
plans and progress for a
single crew
2. Is able to identify and involve
people with experience in
given area of discussion to
make better decisions
3. Helps other engineers grow
4. Tailors messages well to
diverse teams and audiences,
considers what the audience
needs to know in building up
their message
5. Creates awareness of
shortcomings and
dependencies at stakeholder
level in a way that’s
understood and taken into
account
6. Can facilitate challenging
debates within a cross
functional group towards
productive outcomes
7. Has a good sense of what is
appropriate in which situation
(time application)
8. Actively engages with Product
stakeholders to ensure
optimal collaboration
cross-functionally
9. Understands the nuance
when delivering a message,
knowing own biases and
actively communicates the
context in order to invite
healthy challenges.
1. Leads other team members &
guides their work, providing
clear frameworks for
approaching problems and
establishing reasonable
deadlines
2. Collaborates closely with
stakeholders to address
dependencies and
shortcomings. Helps to align
own projects with company
priorities
3. Is a role model who leads by
example, inspire. Liked,
trusted, respected and
followed by others -
demonstrated by their peer
feedbacks
1. Communicates plans to a broad
audience to explain/justify their
reasoning for major choices
2. Can present to large internal or
external audiences in a
compelling tone
3. Actively builds the
communication skills of their
team(s)
4. Is able to assess the importance
information in order to ensure
that the important pieces are well
understood
1. Coaches other team members
and helps them with their
development needs
2. Is engaged with other teams’
work and proactively contributes
to their success
3. Resolves conflicts involving key
stakeholders and ensuring
alignment based on company
goals
4. Is a key driver of Homegate
image/mindset throughout the
company
5. Is an ambassador for the culture
that engineering stands for
6. Demonstrates leadership within
the crew about priorities and
planning
1. Engages with other
functions within the
company and creates plans
that align Engineering goals
with goals of other
communities
2. Can tailor and deliver
communication of any kind
in a way that very specific
targets will be reached
(motivation, information,
activation etc...)
3. Is able to effectively deliver
general key company
messages to any external
audience on the spot without
preparation
4. Has the training and
experience to deliver
PR-messages
5. Ensures that all team
members are aware of
company communication
policies and core messages
1. Defines the vision and key
goals for own department
2. Ensures that all their team
members understand and
fully embrace the overall
mission and vision of the
company as well as the
specific mission and goals of
the department
3. Motivates their team(s) to
take full ownership of
department goals and to go
beyond the obvious task
4. Build the team that shows
strong initiative to drive
overall company success by
stepping up when immediate
support is needed even if
this affects areas that are

5. Industry Knowledge:
Knowledge of the real-estate/
marketplace/ tech landscape in CH
and Europe. Familiarity with moves
by key players in the market.
Personal network in the industry.
Being a source of key market
insights and bringing in applicable
learnings to the company
6. People Management & Team
Building:
Building trust within the team.
Continuously encouraging an
engaging team atmosphere.
Motivating teams towards the
company's bigger ambitions. Ability
to develop own team members’ skills
and expertise. Hiring the right talent
and creating a strategic approach for
own team’s talent building
instead of speaking in
absolutes
6. Understands the big
picture (company vision &
objectives) and how their
own work relates to it
7. Is fully aware of own
strengths and
weaknesses, recognizes
them and works actively
to improve them
1. Understands how 1. Has understanding of a
businesses operate marketplace business,
their own topic area and
shares a well written
analysis
2. Follows key trends in
technology and the online
market to identify benefits
for the company
1. Can achieve given 1. Contributes to a positive
objectives effectively by team environment. For
working with others example,by giving thanks
2. Brings a positive attitude and express relevant
and positive energy to gratitudes, by having
work every day. some fun and healthy
distance to themself
2. Makes decisions and acts
in the interest of company
and the team over interest
of themselves or a single
entities (no ego)
3. Can be vulnerable/admit
weakness or
failures/mistakes to own
team
them without putting blame
on others
5. Onboards new team
members and helps them
in navigating the
organisation
6. Is role buddy for other
members of the
Engineering team
1. Has advanced
understanding of their own
topic and marketplace
business and particularly of
the detailed functioning of
Homegate and helps other
team members
2. Understand and can relay
key points in customer
journey and consumer
journey.
3. Is aware and executes
best-in-class approaches &
tools used by most
successful companies in
own area
1. Invests the time to train,
help and develop peers in
own team
2. Can organise and manage
the execution of the team's
work and deliverables
3. Gives timely and actionable
feedback to team members
4. Improves collaboration
within teams by making
issues visible, fostering
open discussions and
orchestrating follow-up
actions, across teams if
needed
5. Is supportive and trusted
by others to address
whatever the problems are
6. Can be vulnerable/admit
weakness or
4. Is one, other teammates
reach out to in case of
problems or challenges
5. Is a key driver of knowledge
exchange within the company.
Organises, runs and reviews
workshops and other
knowledge sharing events to
coach the team and make it
grow
6. Is able to take neutral
perspective and incorporate
different standpoints before
making a decision or giving a
feedback
7. Helps others to grow by
supporting them and letting
them look good puts self into
the background
1. Is aware of major shifts that
can affect customer behaviour
2. Is knowledgeable about
marketplace landscape, can
provide relevant reference
source, can identify
company’s critical gaps
compared with competitors
1. Proactively looks for ways to
resolve roadblocks for team
members and across teams
2. Motivates team members to
execute their goals and
retains top talent
3. Gives feedback to
peers/outside of own team to
clearly set expectations,
foster cooperation and
alignment towards common
goals
4. Creates an environment &
tone of discussion where
team members are
comfortable debating &
disagreeing
5. Regularly discusses
development needs with
7. Actively represents Homegate
externally, creating a picture of
Homegate as a great place to
work
1. Is knowledgeable about
marketplace business and all its
details; can interpret industry
information in ways that drive
unique and insightful knowledge
for the company
2. Always questions the need for
developing something in-house
versus building on external
expertise (SaaS over custom
built)
1. Lead the management of people
and teams across the
department. Demonstrate and
lead best practice in
management and leadership
2. Actively mentors and supports
other managers, particularly
those new to management or the
organisation. Can act as a point
of escalation for issues others
are unable to resolve.
3. Helps to shape and protect the
culture and values of the
department and the organisation
across the department. Drives
change when they observe
behaviours contrary to our
culture or values.
4. Plays a more influential role in
what we choose to build in order
not part of the core mission
of the department
5. Encourages the team to
approach with different ideas
to maximize impact
6. Drives a culture in which the
engineering team can excel
1. Continuously challenges
company strategy and key
goals based on latest market
insights
2. Expert level understanding
of the marketplace business
and all its details; able to
discover new business
drivers, opportunities and
threats
3. Has and actively build up a
network in the industry that
they can rely upon to
arrange external meetings,
potential partnership
opportunities or finding great
talent for Homegate
4. Analyses the impact of
strategic moves by key
stakeholders in the business
(competitors, suppliers, new
market entrants etc...) on
own department and overall
company strategy and
formulates
recommendations for the
leadership team
5. Maintains their network and
uses it to actively place
company messages or
pursue wider company
interests
1. Actively pushes the
evolution of their department
with regards to building
capabilities, hiring and
developing talent, scaling
the organisation and building
a succession plan
2. Helps his directs to make
tough decisions, or make
them if necessary, if
effectiveness of own
department is compromised
by low performance
3. Ensures career development
of top talents even if this
requires to promote top
talents into other roles within
the company
 failures/mistakes even direct reports and creates
outside of team opportunities for them to grow
6. Follows high standards in
talent hiring, is able to attract
top talent to own team
7. Establishes a culture where
mistakes are openly
addressed and post mortems
are executed to derive the
right learning
8. Identifies retention risks and
takes appropriate action to
mitigate them
to ensure that the work of the
teams is having an impact on the
success of the digital business
as a whole.
5. Raises the bar on own teams by
identifying top talents and least
effective and continuously
monitoring their development

7. Functional Expertise:

Expertise in their function.

Familiarity with best-in-class
approaches & tools. Ability to apply
expert knowledge to a current job.
Sharing expertise to the benefit of
other team members

Engineering 1. Crafts straightforward 1. Is trusted to give quality
code contributions to reviews on small to
develop simple features medium level changes
and fix bugs 2. Is comfortable working on
2. Writes tests for new any part of the stack, after
features a short ramp up
3. May not be comfortable 3. Writes correct and clean
with all technologies at code with guidance
Homegate, but is learning 4. Analyses operational
4. Knows and uses existing issues and acts upon
dashboards to detect them to ensure
operational issues. continuous functioning of
Follows processes to the business
escalate them 5. Promotes learning from
5. Applies tools and mistakes or issues
processes to deploy 6. Efficiently applies the
applications to production tools to govern and deploy
6. Reads and understands applications. Able to
basic metrics to evaluate manage minor hiccups on
performance of an his own
application 7. Improves visibility of
health of the platform by
providing metrics and
dashboards to Engineers
and the Business
8. Applies critical thinking to
their own and peer’s code
to ensure readability,
maintenance, testability
and performance
9. Builds examples and
working code quickly to
prove or disprove
assumptions
1. Reasons about the design
of our existing systems,
and understands what
changes would match or
contradict a given design
2. Has proficiency or will
quickly learn all core
technologies at Homegate
3. Identifies opportunities for
better testing, either in
coverage and in
methodology
4. Drives operational issues
to its resolution.
5. Actively explores
technologies and follows
news around them making
recommendations for
improvements
6. Improves tooling and tech
stack to help maintenance
and productivity for
Engineering
7. Guides other Engineers on
how to do code reviews,
how to write readable code
and improve test coverage
8. Collaborates with
stakeholders like Product
Management and Design
to turn insights into
customer delight while
balancing technical debt
and constraints
9. Helps to improve the
knowledge and abilities of
their colleagues beyond
their immediate team. This
may include teaching,
talks, writing and recruiting.
1. Has a strong engineering
background and is still
capable of contributing to
code and leading by example
2. Has good judgement of
technical risk and is able to
find solutions that minimize or
avoid it completely
3. Speaks out regarding code
maintainability and testability,
identifies and executes on
significant refactors
4. Go-to expert; understands the
broad architecture of the
entire system
5. Provides technical advice and
weighs in on technical
decisions that impact other
teams or the company at
large; Researches and
proposes new technologies
6. Balances technology adoption
with business interests and
customer focus, taking into
account legacy
7. Understands details of costs
of their team. Actively works
to understand the costs of
new projects while making
decisions
8. Strive for improvement of
cost-efficiency for new and
existing projects,
understanding the opportunity
costs of this work
9. Balances the needs of
delivery with the requirement
to ensure applications are
stable, performant,
sustainable and secure.
10. Develops Engineers’
expertise on best practices,
web and other standards and
innovative technologies by
organising demos, coding
dojos and workshops
1. Supports by design of new
systems that create new
technical capabilities at
Homegate and solve difficult
problems that require many
engineers to build
2. Develops effective engineering
practices (i.e. on-call, dev tools,
planning) to maximize the
effectiveness of the team. Drives
performance and stability of the
platform and interfaces with
stakeholders to get it done
3. Understands deeply the entire
architecture for a major part of
our business and is able to
articulate clearly the scaling and
reliability limits of that area
4. Drives improvement and
innovation on Homegates
technical stack and finds new
ways to enhance the productivity
of Engineers and the reliability/
performance of applications
5. Advances the not-so-popular
maintenance tasks together with
product management to ensure
security and that privacy of our
customers is respected
6. Ensures all team members
embrace software quality on all
levels. Helps them understand
the importance of it. Ensures
Engineering principles are being
followed and lived as part of our
culture
7. Understands the value vs costs
of the entire lifecycle of the
products they have responsibility
for in the context of the wider
department. Champions an
approach to work that ensures
costs and value are thought
about throughout.
8. Identifies systemic knowledge
gaps within Engineering and its
leadership. Actively builds
analytical capabilities to monitor
1. Is able to guide the
development of long-term
high-impact high-risk
engineering/product initiatives
that involve many engineers
2. Challenges his team on how
all of the engineering
systems at Homegate are
designed and how they
interact with each other, and
has relevant feedback on
which systems get built
3. Provides manpower and
budget to operate the
platform and applications in
a secure, reliable and
performant manner
4. Provides a clear perspective
on key strategic goals for the
platform and tooling around
it. Engages in driving it
forward. Continuously
shapes vision of what
Homegates Engineering
should be
5. Effectively balances
technological innovation with
customer needs and
business interests
6. Can present and defend
technology choices and
impacts towards leadership
team and external audits
those and defines goals and
actions to resolve them