Roles
Systeric runs three roles, and they share one shape. Product Engineer, Product Manager, and Product Designer are each a track on the same template. This page is the framework, stated once. Each role doc applies it with that discipline’s ladder, attributes, and rubric.
One template, five parts#
Every role doc answers the same five questions in the same order:
- The ladder (your altitude). One path that gets more senior. Engineering and design fork at Lead into an IC track (depth) and a management track (people); product is a single lean track. All rejoin at the top. Your rung is how much ambiguity you absorb before you need direction, not your years.
- The seven attributes (your shape). A small set of durable attributes, specific to the discipline. You are not “a Mid”, you are a jagged profile across the seven. A mirror, not a scorecard.
- Gauging by shape. Place a person on each attribute and you have their radar. A higher rung keeps everything a lower one has and only adds; nothing recedes. Where a track forks (engineering, design), the IC side pushes the depth spokes and management the people spokes. A longer spoke is a different job, not a better person.
- Hiring. Two gates: the non-negotiables (critical thinking, honesty, ownership, low ego, high agency) that end the conversation if failed, then a read on each attribute.
- Growing. Two moves: double down on the spike, clear the one blocker. Growth goes exponential at the leverage shift, when your job becomes growing your reports rather than your own output.
The three tracks#
| Track | Trunk starts at | Apex |
|---|---|---|
| Product Engineer | Intern | CTO |
| Product Manager | APM (apprenticeship) | CTO |
| Product Designer | Intern | CTO |
All three rejoin at the same apex: the CTO, the one best at building product. Whichever discipline you climb, the top of building product is one role. (PM starts as an apprenticeship rather than an intern role, because product judgment is learned by watching how PMs decide before you own the call. Product is also the leanest track: a small, senior function with no management chain, since AI makes execution cheap and judgment the scarce thing.)
How a project is staffed#
The ladders say how a person grows. This says how they combine on real work, and it is the same shape every time.
Every project runs on a pair: one PM and one lead engineer. Both report to the Fractional CTO on that project. A designer joins where the work needs one, usually shared across projects rather than dedicated to one.
| Who | Owns on the project | Consulting parallel |
|---|---|---|
| PM | The entirety of the product operations: the problems, the calls on what to build, shipped and measured, the client conversations. Sets strategy and direction with the FCTO. | Associate |
| Lead engineer | The technical execution: architecture, the bar for done-right, and the team’s throughput and quality. | Associate |
| Fractional CTO | The client relationship and the direction, across several projects at once. | Partner |
| APM / intern | The analyst work under the PM or lead: research, data, first drafts, quality passes. Not the call. | Analyst |
A Lead PM does not appear in this diagram, and that is the point of the rung: they have stepped off client projects to own a product or platform of ours, like Glide (or Lore, now retired). See Product Manager for what that rung is.
Why the pair matters. A project that has a PM and a lead engineer who can genuinely run it does not need the FCTO in its detail. That is what lets one FCTO carry several projects instead of one, and it is why the PM apprenticeship and PE apprenticeship are built to hand over the whole operation by day 180, not a slice of it.
Around the roles#
- Hiring is how we bring people into the framework: the non-negotiables and the interview loop, shared across roles.
- Leading People is how we grow them once they are in: the 1:1 runs on the report’s profile, and what to delegate at each level.
The role docs: Product Engineer · Product Manager · Product Designer
The apprenticeships: PE Apprenticeship · PM Apprenticeship · PD Apprenticeship