Meta Staff Engineer: What the Best Engineers Do Differently

About this episode

Meta Staff Engineer Sajal Rustagi reveals what Staff Engineers do that most don't and what the best engineers do differently to reach the top. While foundational behaviors like proactivity and ownership still separate growing engineers from stuck ones, leveling up today requires a completely new set of staff skills built around agents. In this video, we cover: • The behavioral shift from IC4 and IC5 (Senior) to IC6 (Staff Engineer) at Meta • How top engineers treat on-call firefighting as a system-wide ownership opportunity • Why rotating between Engineering Manager (EM) and Staff IC sharpens your business and technical influence • Transitioning from Developer Experience (DX) to Agent Experience (AX) using MCP, Claude, and markdown context This conversation is for software engineers, senior ICs, and tech leads who want to learn the new staff skills required to multiply their impact and get promoted now. This episode was recorded at TechLead Conference, a conference for engineering leaders on adopting AI. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - The New Staff Engineer Skills 00:00:44 - 2 Behaviors That Separate Mediocre and Staff Engineers 00:02:16 - How the Best Engineers Build an Ownership Mind