Does anyone have advice on what I should call myself? I was a senior in public accounting (~3 years of experience) when I switched into software development after self-teaching for 5 years on the side. I settled for an entry-level role to get my foot in the door, but after 7 months I was made the lead of one of a few teams with the rest being led by principal engineers. I think it’s fair to say im clearly not a recent college graduate and am performing like I have already been a software engineer for a few years now.
I now have 2 engineers below me. My technical skills have grown much stronger than an entry level, and my non-technical skills are on par with the other principal engineers. My team has been thriving and has received quite a bit of recognition from the company.
I’m coming up on a year and ready to ask for a raise since I believe I’m vastly outperforming an entry-level role compared to my peers, but I don’t know what to push for since these job levels are less clear than they are in accounting. Level II? Level III? Senior? It’s tough to rank the experience gained from my CPA and accounting background (that would be very valuable if I were still an accountant of course). Naturally engineers want to devalue it (fair enough), but it’s clearly paying dividends in my ability to deliver the company value.