The right hand archetype.
A staff engineer archetype, this uncommon role serves as a senior organizational operative to solve hard problems on other senior leaders’ plates. While not part of a team of individual contributors, they do not themselves have reports, and navigate the organization to fight fires under the authority of senior leadership, which requires them to be in lock step with what leaders care about. They don’t necessarily solve the problems directly, but may instead work with teams to solve issues on their approach.rL4