Become the Highest Paid Engineer at Your Company

Learn skills to operate at Staff+, from safe AI integration to crisis leadership now. This free course maps your path to impact engineering and nods to Educative’s meme, John, the top-paid engineer.

Intermediate

53 Lessons

Certificate of Completion

AI-POWERED

Code Feedback

Explanations

Prompt

AI-POWERED

Code Feedback

Explanations

This course includes

8 Playgrounds

5 Quizzes

This course includes

8 Playgrounds

5 Quizzes

Course Overview

Learn the essential skills to operate at a Staff+ level, from integrating AI safely to guiding teams through crises. This free course gives you a clear roadmap to high-impact engineering and delivers it with a wink to Educative’s viral meme: John, the top-paid engineer who’s never around.

What You'll Learn

Refactor and stabilize legacy codebases without breaking what’s already working.

Design and evolve complex systems with Staff+ level clarity.

Build and orchestrate AI-driven components that make your team faster.

Engineer reliability through observability, feature flags, and effective incident response.

Transform data pipelines into scalable product infrastructure.

Apply security practices that protect users and velocity at the same time.

Communicate like a leader and develop execution systems that scale your impact.

Craft a promotion packet and compensation strategy grounded in real business value.

What You'll Learn

Refactor and stabilize legacy codebases without breaking what’s already working.

Course Content

John 2.0

Understand the road ahead—and why your mission is to be better than John.

Introduction

Legacy Code Whisperer

Enhance incident response, ensure safe code changes, and strategize legacy migrations effectively.

Next Steps for Staff+ in Legacy Code

System Design Like a Staff+

Learn which System Design skills you need to break into engineering leadership.

ADR Document Patterns

AI System Design

Staff+ System Design Interviews

Next Steps for Staff+ System Design

AI Engineering

Leverage AI tools and strategies to enhance engineering productivity and career growth.

Introduction

Prompt Contracts

Retrieval Beats Hallucination

Build a Model Ecosystem

Agent Orchestration

Next Steps for Staff+ AI Engineering

Reliability Under Fire

Learn how to handle incidents and keep your team ready for anything (unlike John, whose team freezes every time he’s OOO).

Introduction

Observability

Incident Command

Runbooks and Game Days

Next Steps for Staff+ Reliability

Data Engineering for Product Impact

7 Lessons

Master data engineering skills to drive impactful decisions and enhance career growth.

Security Without Drama

7 Lessons

Learn essential security practices to safeguard systems effectively.

Product Sense

6 Lessons

Master essential skills for influencing product decisions.

Multiplier Habits and Systems

4 Lessons

Embrace strategies to enhance productivity, mentorship, and organizational impact.

10.

Bonus: Comp Strategy and Promotion Packets

3 Lessons

Prepare yourself to negotiate and get paid what you're worth.

11.

Congratulations, John 2.0

1 Lesson

Become the force multiplier, system expert, and AI commander you’re meant to be—minus the John drama.

Trusted by 1.4 million developers working at companies

Anthony Walker

@_webarchitect_

Emma Bostian 🐞

@EmmaBostian

Evan Dunbar

ML Engineer

Carlos Matias La Borde

Software Developer

Souvik Kundu

Front-end Developer

Vinay Krishnaiah

Software Developer

Eric Downs

Musician/Entrepeneur

Kenan Eyvazov

DevOps Engineer

Anthony Walker

@_webarchitect_

Emma Bostian 🐞

@EmmaBostian

Hands-on Learning Powered by AI

See how Educative uses AI to make your learning more immersive than ever before.

Instant Code Feedback

Evaluate and debug your code with the click of a button. Get real-time feedback on test cases, including time and space complexity of your solutions.

AI-Powered Mock Interviews

Put your skills to the test in a simulated interview setting. Receive personalized feedback based on your performance. Available in Premium & Premium Plus plans.

Adaptive Learning

At various checkpoints throughout Educative courses, you will be prompted to take a quick assessment. Receive a condensed curriculum tailored to your strengths and skill gaps.

Explain with AI

Select any text within any Educative course, and get an instant explanation — without ever leaving your browser.

AI Code Mentor

AI Code Mentor helps you quickly identify errors in your code, learn from your mistakes, and nudge you in the right direction — just like a 1:1 tutor!