This story was recorded in August, 2020. Learn more about Katie on her website, Linkedin, and Twitter.
Tell us a little about your current role: your title, the company you work at, and generally what sort of work does your team do?
I work at Etsy, which is the world’s leading online marketplace for sellers of handmade goods. We let sellers put their items up for sale and sell them to folks all around the world. We really focus on providing people with unique, special or handmade goods that are an alternative to kind of the facelessness of big box stores.

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Katie Sylor-Miller shares her journey as Frontend Architect at Etsy, explaining the distinction between tech leads and architects in staff engineering roles. She discusses how staff engineers identify cross-cutting problems, influence without authority, and create leverage through systems thinking. The interview covers practical advice on building reputation, networking across teams, and navigating the ambiguity that comes with senior technical roles. Key insights include the importance of user empathy in frontend work, measuring impact through documentation of daily contributions, and the reality that staff engineering involves more problem identification and influence than direct coding.

Katie Sylor-Miller - Frontend Architect at Etsy