u/Phymon89

Looking for honest takes on whether I have a genuine case for a promotion, or if I'm getting ahead of myself.

A bit of background

I'm 36, based in Manchester, working fully remote for a UK finance software company. I retrained as a Frontend Dev at 33, before that I spent about a decade as a Building Physics Engineer and Energy Modeller. BSc in Architectural Technology, MSc in Architectural Engineering. I mention that because I think it's relevant to how I approach things.

I've been at the company for just under 2.5 years. Started as SE1 (junior) on £29k, got promoted to SE2 (junior/mid) after 18 months in July 2025, this came with a £3k raise. Got a £1k bump in November, effective January this year. Currently on £33k.

I've never asked for a pay rise. Both increases/promotion came to me.

My Dev team is small-ish only about 6 FE and 4 BE Devs. I'm the only SE2. Everyone else on the FE side is SE3 or above. SE3 is what most places would call a proper mid-level.

What I've been doing

A few weeks ago the VP and SVP of Engineering flagged a need for getting the company's 200+ repositories AI-ready against an internal standard (44 requirements covering docs, CI, validation, AI-readiness). No one else stepped forward, so I did and was given the space to run with it.

In just under two weeks, working independently and using Claude via GitHub Copilot, I built:

A 6-stage agentic pipeline. Each stage is a separate skill file with its own role. It scans a repo, assesses it against all 44 standards, plans the fixes, executes them (docs and config files only, no application code touched), generates interactive architecture diagrams as self-contained HTML files, then produces a report and Jira-ready tickets. It's resumable if a session drops mid-run.

A Node.js CLI which can run the full pipeline across all 200+ repos without someone sitting at a keyboard. Raises a PR on each repo for human review before anything merges. Also pushes remaining work to Jira as structured tickets. I built this fully but haven't been able to test it end to end yet. I'm waiting on an Anthropic API key and Jira board creation permissions, both of which are access issues rather than anything technical. I also wrote a full proposal doc for it, cost modelled it (£3.36/repo, estimates of about 188 hours of engineer time saved vs doing it manually), designed a tiered rollout, wrote up the safety model. Presented it to the VP and SVP.

A Unified Testing Agent, point it at any file, it works out what type it is (React component, API hook, service, etc.), loads the right testing conventions, generates the test, flags anything untested in the imports, and logs what it learned to a shared file so the whole team benefits next time.

A 5-stage thin agent to handle a prebuilt development pipeline that takes you from a Jira ticket through to implemented code. Interviews you about the work, reviews the spec, plans it, reviews the plan, then builds. Has crash recovery, review gates, and context window management. Only works with Claude (Copilot can't handle the context management it needs.)

Another 2 stage thin agent which is a lighter version of the above. Just the first two stages. Better for smaller, scoped changes. Outputs either direct implementation or a structured prompt you can paste into a new chat.

macOS/Linux and Windows scripts for installing the company's shared AI skills across Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and Gemini without needing Node.js. The broader shared repo was set up collaboratively with the SVP, the shell scripts were mine.

All of this has been demoed multiple times to my wider team of Mid to Principle engineers. I've done three announcements as things have progressed to an in house AI focused group made up of multiple disciplines across our company. I've also been helping other engineers on the team, some more senior than me, get set up with agents, prompts, and skill files in their GitHub Copilot.

I retrospectively wrote up Jira tickets with descriptions and ACs for all of it too, so it's all formally documented.

Being honest about the caveats

I'm not pretending this is all hand coded. The tooling was built using Claude (Sonnet / Opus), the architecture, the pipeline structure, the agent design, the product decisions are mine, but the skill files/code generation is the LLMs. I think that it's a legitimate and increasingly normal way to build things (When done right), but I want to be upfront about it.

This is also genuinely the first time I've had an opportunity like this. There's no longer track record of this kind of work because this kind of work hasn't come up before. Whether that matters or not, that's partly what I'm asking.

My manager is a Lead BE engineer. Not frontend, not AI. So the depth of what's been built isn't necessarily obvious to them without explanation.

Performance reviews are usually in November. I've never started a pay or promotion conversation before.

What I'm actually asking

My company has a formal SE2 to SE3 framework. The things it looks for include: owning features end to end independently, driving improvements, raising the team's quality bar, demonstrating commercial awareness, and supporting others' development.

I think I've hit most (if not all) of those, but in about two weeks, and for the first time. So I'm genuinely not sure if that's enough.

Specific questions:

1. Does this genuinely support a promotion case, or am I overreading two good weeks of very hard work?
2. How much does the short timeframe actually matter in practice? Does output quality offset it?
3. Is £38k–£40k a reasonable ask for SE3 in the Manchester area? (fully remote) (Currently £33k)
4. Would you push for this now or wait for the November review?
5. Anything in how I'm framing this that would land badly?

Not looking for validation, just want to know if there are gaps in this that need filling before I ping the "Have you got a minute?" to the big bosses.

Cheers!

Looking for honest takes on whether I have a genuine case for a promotion, or if I'm getting ahead of myself.

A bit of background

I'm 36, based in Manchester, working fully remote for a UK finance software company. I retrained as a Frontend Dev at 33, before that I spent about a decade as a Building Physics Engineer and Energy Modeller. BSc in Architectural Technology, MSc in Architectural Engineering. I mention that because I think it's relevant to how I approach things.

I've been at the company for just under 2.5 years. Started as SE1 (junior) on £29k, got promoted to SE2 (junior/mid) after 18 months in July 2025, this came with a £3k raise. Got a £1k bump in November, effective January this year. Currently on £33k.

I've never asked for a pay rise. Both increases/promotion came to me.

My Dev team is small-ish only about 6 FE and 4 BE Devs. I'm the only SE2. Everyone else on the FE side is SE3 or above. SE3 is what most places would call a proper mid-level.

What I've been doing

A few weeks ago the VP and SVP of Engineering flagged a need for getting the company's 200+ repositories AI-ready against an internal standard (44 requirements covering docs, CI, validation, AI-readiness). No one else stepped forward, so I did and was given the space to run with it.

In just under two weeks, working independently and using Claude via GitHub Copilot, I built:

A 6-stage agentic pipeline. Each stage is a separate skill file with its own role. It scans a repo, assesses it against all 44 standards, plans the fixes, executes them (docs and config files only, no application code touched), generates interactive architecture diagrams as self-contained HTML files, then produces a report and Jira-ready tickets. It's resumable if a session drops mid-run.

A Node.js CLI which can run the full pipeline across all 200+ repos without someone sitting at a keyboard. Raises a PR on each repo for human review before anything merges. Also pushes remaining work to Jira as structured tickets. I built this fully but haven't been able to test it end to end yet. I'm waiting on an Anthropic API key and Jira board creation permissions, both of which are access issues rather than anything technical. I also wrote a full proposal doc for it, cost modelled it (£3.36/repo, estimates of about 188 hours of engineer time saved vs doing it manually), designed a tiered rollout, wrote up the safety model. Presented it to the VP and SVP.

A Unified Testing Agent, point it at any file, it works out what type it is (React component, API hook, service, etc.), loads the right testing conventions, generates the test, flags anything untested in the imports, and logs what it learned to a shared file so the whole team benefits next time.

A 5-stage thin agent to handle a prebuilt development pipeline that takes you from a Jira ticket through to implemented code. Interviews you about the work, reviews the spec, plans it, reviews the plan, then builds. Has crash recovery, review gates, and context window management. Only works with Claude (Copilot can't handle the context management it needs.)

Another 2 stage thin agent which is a lighter version of the above. Just the first two stages. Better for smaller, scoped changes. Outputs either direct implementation or a structured prompt you can paste into a new chat.

macOS/Linux and Windows scripts for installing the company's shared AI skills across Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and Gemini without needing Node.js. The broader shared repo was set up collaboratively with the SVP, the shell scripts were mine.

All of this has been demoed multiple times to my wider team of Mid to Principle engineers. I've done three announcements as things have progressed to an in house AI focused group made up of multiple disciplines across our company. I've also been helping other engineers on the team, some more senior than me, get set up with agents, prompts, and skill files in their GitHub Copilot.

I retrospectively wrote up Jira tickets with descriptions and ACs for all of it too, so it's all formally documented.

Being honest about the caveats

I'm not pretending this is all hand coded. The tooling was built using Claude (Sonnet / Opus), the architecture, the pipeline structure, the agent design, the product decisions are mine, but the skill files/code generation is the LLMs. I think that it's a legitimate and increasingly normal way to build things (When done right), but I want to be upfront about it.

This is also genuinely the first time I've had an opportunity like this. There's no longer track record of this kind of work because this kind of work hasn't come up before. Whether that matters or not, that's partly what I'm asking.

My manager is a Lead BE engineer. Not frontend, not AI. So the depth of what's been built isn't necessarily obvious to them without explanation.

Performance reviews are usually in November. I've never started a pay or promotion conversation before.

What I'm actually asking

My company has a formal SE2 to SE3 framework. The things it looks for include: owning features end to end independently, driving improvements, raising the team's quality bar, demonstrating commercial awareness, and supporting others' development.

I think I've hit most (if not all) of those, but in about two weeks, and for the first time. So I'm genuinely not sure if that's enough.

Specific questions:

1. Does this genuinely support a promotion case, or am I overreading two good weeks of very hard work?
2. How much does the short timeframe actually matter in practice? Does output quality offset it?
3. Is £38k–£40k a reasonable ask for SE3 in the Manchester area? (fully remote) (Currently £33k)
4. Would you push for this now or wait for the November review?
5. Anything in how I'm framing this that would land badly?

Not looking for validation, just want to know if there are gaps in this that need filling before I ping the "Have you got a minute?" to the big bosses.

Cheers!

Looking for honest takes on whether I have a genuine case for a promotion, or if I'm getting ahead of myself.

A bit of background

I'm 36, based in Manchester, working fully remote for a UK finance software company. I retrained as a Frontend Dev at 33, before that I spent about a decade as a Building Physics Engineer and Energy Modeller. BSc in Architectural Technology, MSc in Architectural Engineering. I mention that because I think it's relevant to how I approach things.

I've been at the company for just under 2.5 years. Started as SE1 (junior) on £29k, got promoted to SE2 (junior/mid) after 18 months in July 2025, this came with a £3k raise. Got a £1k bump in November, effective January this year. Currently on £33k.

I've never asked for a pay rise. Both increases/promotion came to me.

My Dev team is small-ish only about 6 FE and 4 BE Devs. I'm the only SE2. Everyone else on the FE side is SE3 or above. SE3 is what most places would call a proper mid-level.

What I've been doing

A few weeks ago the VP and SVP of Engineering flagged a need for getting the company's 200+ repositories AI-ready against an internal standard (44 requirements covering docs, CI, validation, AI-readiness). No one else stepped forward, so I did and was given the space to run with it.

In just under two weeks, working independently and using Claude via GitHub Copilot, I built:

A 6-stage agentic pipeline. Each stage is a separate skill file with its own role. It scans a repo, assesses it against all 44 standards, plans the fixes, executes them (docs and config files only, no application code touched), generates interactive architecture diagrams as self-contained HTML files, then produces a report and Jira-ready tickets. It's resumable if a session drops mid-run.

A Node.js CLI which can run the full pipeline across all 200+ repos without someone sitting at a keyboard. Raises a PR on each repo for human review before anything merges. Also pushes remaining work to Jira as structured tickets. I built this fully but haven't been able to test it end to end yet. I'm waiting on an Anthropic API key and Jira board creation permissions, both of which are access issues rather than anything technical. I also wrote a full proposal doc for it, cost modelled it (£3.36/repo, estimates of about 188 hours of engineer time saved vs doing it manually), designed a tiered rollout, wrote up the safety model. Presented it to the VP and SVP.

A Unified Testing Agent, point it at any file, it works out what type it is (React component, API hook, service, etc.), loads the right testing conventions, generates the test, flags anything untested in the imports, and logs what it learned to a shared file so the whole team benefits next time.

A 5-stage thin agent to handle a prebuilt development pipeline that takes you from a Jira ticket through to implemented code. Interviews you about the work, reviews the spec, plans it, reviews the plan, then builds. Has crash recovery, review gates, and context window management. Only works with Claude (Copilot can't handle the context management it needs.)

Another 2 stage thin agent which is a lighter version of the above. Just the first two stages. Better for smaller, scoped changes. Outputs either direct implementation or a structured prompt you can paste into a new chat.

macOS/Linux and Windows scripts for installing the company's shared AI skills across Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and Gemini without needing Node.js. The broader shared repo was set up collaboratively with the SVP, the shell scripts were mine.

All of this has been demoed multiple times to my wider team of Mid to Principle engineers. I've done three announcements as things have progressed to an in house AI focused group made up of multiple disciplines across our company. I've also been helping other engineers on the team, some more senior than me, get set up with agents, prompts, and skill files in their GitHub Copilot.

I retrospectively wrote up Jira tickets with descriptions and ACs for all of it too, so it's all formally documented.

Being honest about the caveats

I'm not pretending this is all hand coded. The tooling was built using Claude (Sonnet / Opus), the architecture, the pipeline structure, the agent design, the product decisions are mine, but the skill files/code generation is the LLMs. I think that it's a legitimate and increasingly normal way to build things (When done right), but I want to be upfront about it.

This is also genuinely the first time I've had an opportunity like this. There's no longer track record of this kind of work because this kind of work hasn't come up before. Whether that matters or not, that's partly what I'm asking.

My manager is a Lead BE engineer. Not frontend, not AI. So the depth of what's been built isn't necessarily obvious to them without explanation.

Performance reviews are usually in November. I've never started a pay or promotion conversation before.

What I'm actually asking

My company has a formal SE2 to SE3 framework. The things it looks for include: owning features end to end independently, driving improvements, raising the team's quality bar, demonstrating commercial awareness, and supporting others' development.

I think I've hit most (if not all) of those, but in about two weeks, and for the first time. So I'm genuinely not sure if that's enough.

Specific questions:

1. Does this genuinely support a promotion case, or am I overreading two good weeks of very hard work?
2. How much does the short timeframe actually matter in practice? Does output quality offset it?
3. Is £38k–£40k a reasonable ask for SE3 in the Manchester area? (fully remote) (Currently £33k)
4. Would you push for this now or wait for the November review?
5. Anything in how I'm framing this that would land badly?

Not looking for validation, just want to know if there are gaps in this that need filling before I ping the "Have you got a minute?" to the big bosses.

Cheers!

Looking for honest takes on whether I have a genuine case for a promotion, or if I'm getting ahead of myself.

A bit of background

I'm 36, based in Manchester, working fully remote for a UK finance software company. I retrained as a Frontend Dev at 33, before that I spent about a decade as a Building Physics Engineer and Energy Modeller. BSc in Architectural Technology, MSc in Architectural Engineering. I mention that because I think it's relevant to how I approach things.

I've been at the company for just under 2.5 years. Started as SE1 (junior) on £29k, got promoted to SE2 (junior/mid) after 18 months in July 2025, this came with a £3k raise. Got a £1k bump in November, effective January this year. Currently on £33k.

I've never asked for a pay rise. Both increases/promotion came to me.

My Dev team is small-ish only about 6 FE and 4 BE Devs. I'm the only SE2. Everyone else on the FE side is SE3 or above. SE3 is what most places would call a proper mid-level.

What I've been doing

A few weeks ago the VP and SVP of Engineering flagged a need for getting the company's 200+ repositories AI-ready against an internal standard (44 requirements covering docs, CI, validation, AI-readiness). No one else stepped forward, so I did and was given the space to run with it.

In just under two weeks, working independently and using Claude via GitHub Copilot, I built:

A 6-stage agentic pipeline. Each stage is a separate skill file with its own role. It scans a repo, assesses it against all 44 standards, plans the fixes, executes them (docs and config files only, no application code touched), generates interactive architecture diagrams as self-contained HTML files, then produces a report and Jira-ready tickets. It's resumable if a session drops mid-run.

A Node.js CLI which can run the full pipeline across all 200+ repos without someone sitting at a keyboard. Raises a PR on each repo for human review before anything merges. Also pushes remaining work to Jira as structured tickets. I built this fully but haven't been able to test it end to end yet. I'm waiting on an Anthropic API key and Jira board creation permissions, both of which are access issues rather than anything technical. I also wrote a full proposal doc for it, cost modelled it (£3.36/repo, estimates of about 188 hours of engineer time saved vs doing it manually), designed a tiered rollout, wrote up the safety model. Presented it to the VP and SVP.

A Unified Testing Agent, point it at any file, it works out what type it is (React component, API hook, service, etc.), loads the right testing conventions, generates the test, flags anything untested in the imports, and logs what it learned to a shared file so the whole team benefits next time.

A 5-stage thin agent to handle a prebuilt development pipeline that takes you from a Jira ticket through to implemented code. Interviews you about the work, reviews the spec, plans it, reviews the plan, then builds. Has crash recovery, review gates, and context window management. Only works with Claude (Copilot can't handle the context management it needs.)

Another 2 stage thin agent which is a lighter version of the above. Just the first two stages. Better for smaller, scoped changes. Outputs either direct implementation or a structured prompt you can paste into a new chat.

macOS/Linux and Windows scripts for installing the company's shared AI skills across Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and Gemini without needing Node.js. The broader shared repo was set up collaboratively with the SVP, the shell scripts were mine.

All of this has been demoed multiple times to my wider team of Mid to Principle engineers. I've done three announcements as things have progressed to an in house AI focused group made up of multiple disciplines across our company. I've also been helping other engineers on the team, some more senior than me, get set up with agents, prompts, and skill files in their GitHub Copilot.

I retrospectively wrote up Jira tickets with descriptions and ACs for all of it too, so it's all formally documented.

Being honest about the caveats

I'm not pretending this is all hand coded. The tooling was built using Claude (Sonnet / Opus), the architecture, the pipeline structure, the agent design, the product decisions are mine, but the skill files/code generation is the LLMs. I think that it's a legitimate and increasingly normal way to build things (When done right), but I want to be upfront about it.

This is also genuinely the first time I've had an opportunity like this. There's no longer track record of this kind of work because this kind of work hasn't come up before. Whether that matters or not, that's partly what I'm asking.

My manager is a Lead BE engineer. Not frontend, not AI. So the depth of what's been built isn't necessarily obvious to them without explanation.

Performance reviews are usually in November. I've never started a pay or promotion conversation before.

What I'm actually asking

My company has a formal SE2 to SE3 framework. The things it looks for include: owning features end to end independently, driving improvements, raising the team's quality bar, demonstrating commercial awareness, and supporting others' development.

I think I've hit most (if not all) of those, but in about two weeks, and for the first time. So I'm genuinely not sure if that's enough.

Specific questions:

1. Does this genuinely support a promotion case, or am I overreading two good weeks of very hard work?
2. How much does the short timeframe actually matter in practice? Does output quality offset it?
3. Is £38k–£40k a reasonable ask for SE3 in the Manchester area? (fully remote) (Currently £33k)
4. Would you push for this now or wait for the November review?
5. Anything in how I'm framing this that would land badly?

Not looking for validation, just want to know if there are gaps in this that need filling before I ping the "Have you got a minute?" to the big bosses.

Cheers!