Succession Planning for Engineering Leaders

I got promoted to VP of Engineering on a Tuesday. By Thursday, the engineering team I'd been managing had no manager. It took 6 weeks to backfill my role, and during those 6 weeks, 2 engineers left, 3 projects stalled, and the team's deployment frequency dropped by 40%. That experience taught me something I've never forgotten: if you don't have a succession plan, every promotion is a crisis and every departure is a disaster.

In the 8 years since, I've built succession plans at 4 companies. The framework I'm sharing here has survived real-world tests including my own exits, unexpected departures, and rapid scaling scenarios where we needed to promote 3 managers in 90 days.

# Why Engineering Teams Ignore Succession Planning

There are three common objections, and they're all wrong.

"We're too small." If you have more than 6 engineers, you need succession planning. Not because someone's going to leave tomorrow, but because growth means you'll need new leaders, and you can't hire senior engineering managers overnight. The average time to hire an engineering manager is 67 days according to Greenhouse's 2025 hiring benchmark report. That's over 2 months of leadership vacuum if you're caught off guard.

"It signals distrust." This is the one I hear most. Leaders worry that creating a succession plan implies they're planning to leave or planning to fire someone. This is backwards. Succession planning is the most optimistic thing you can do. It means you're planning for growth, promotions, and expanded scope. It's a growth plan, not an exit plan.

"We don't have the bench." You definitely don't have the bench if you're not developing it. Succession planning isn't about having a replacement ready today. It's about identifying who could be ready in 6-12 months and investing in their development now.

# The 3-Tier Succession Framework

I structure succession planning across three tiers based on readiness timeline.

# Tier 1: Ready Now (0-3 months to step in)

These are people who could take over a leadership role tomorrow with minimal ramp-up. For every critical leadership position, you need at least one Tier 1 successor. If you don't have one, that's a single point of failure in your org design.

How to identify Tier 1 candidates:

• They already handle leadership responsibilities informally (running meetings, mentoring, making technical decisions)
• Other team members naturally go to them for guidance
• They've successfully led a project with 3+ engineers
• They can articulate the team's priorities, challenges, and strategy without prompting

What Tier 1 development looks like:

• Acting manager responsibilities during your PTO (not just "keep things running" but actual decision-making authority)
• Attending leadership meetings as your delegate at least quarterly
• Running at least one performance review cycle with your coaching
• Ownership of one cross-team initiative per half

# Tier 2: Ready Soon (3-12 months to step in)

These are high-potential ICs or junior managers who have the aptitude for leadership but need specific skill development.

How to identify Tier 2 candidates:

• Strong technical performers who show interest in people leadership
• Engineers who already mentor others without being asked
• People who think about team problems, not just individual tasks
• Engineers who can disagree constructively and change their mind based on evidence

What Tier 2 development looks like:

• Technical lead role on a significant project (managing scope, timelines, and 2-3 other engineers)
• Structured 1:1 coaching with a current manager (biweekly, focused on leadership scenarios)
• Book/course budget specifically for engineering management topics ($1,000-2,000/year)
• Attending one external leadership conference or workshop per year

# Tier 3: Future Potential (12-24 months to step in)

These are mid-level engineers who might become leaders with sustained investment. You're not grooming them for specific roles yet. You're giving them opportunities to discover whether leadership interests them.

How to identify Tier 3 candidates:

• Consistently delivers above their level
• Asks questions about why decisions are made, not just what to build
• Shows empathy for teammates' challenges
• Communicates clearly in written and verbal formats

What Tier 3 development looks like:

• Mentoring one junior engineer (with check-ins from you to coach their mentoring)
• Leading one sprint or project phase as an experiment
• Inclusion in occasional leadership discussions (with context about why they're invited)
• Regular career development conversations exploring the IC vs. management path

# The Contrarian Take

Most succession planning advice says to identify successors for every role. I think that's overkill and creates more problems than it solves. Here's my approach instead: only build formal succession plans for roles that would cause significant damage if vacant for 60+ days.

For an engineering org of 25-50 people, that's usually: the VP/Director of Engineering, each engineering manager, and any staff/principal engineers who are single points of failure on critical systems. That's typically 5-8 roles total, not every position in the org chart.

The reason: over-planning succession creates political dynamics. If you name a successor for every senior engineer, you've implicitly created a ranking system. People start comparing: "Why is she Tier 1 and I'm Tier 2?" It also creates an expectation of promotion that may not align with business needs.

For non-critical roles, I rely on general bench development (all the Tier 2 and Tier 3 activities) rather than role-specific succession plans. If a senior engineer leaves, any of the well-developed Tier 2 candidates can step up. You don't need a named successor for every seat.

# The Succession Planning Conversation

The most awkward part of succession planning is talking about it. Here's how I've learned to have these conversations.

With your successor candidates: Don't tell them "you're my succession plan." Instead say: "I want to invest in your leadership development. Here's what I'm thinking for the next 6 months. These are opportunities that will prepare you for the next level of your career, whether that's at this company or elsewhere."

Framing it as career development rather than succession planning removes the weird power dynamics and makes it about them, not about organizational risk management.

With your own manager: Be direct. "Here's my succession plan for my team. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, [Name] could step in immediately. [Name] and [Name] would be ready in 6 months. Here's what I'm doing to develop each of them."

With HR: Succession plans should be documented in your HR system, not just in your head. I maintain a simple spreadsheet:

Note that "EM, Product" has no Tier 1 candidate. That's a risk I'm actively managing by accelerating Sam's development.

# The Stealable Framework: 90-Day Succession Development Sprint

For any Tier 2 candidate you want to accelerate to Tier 1:

Days 1-30: Shadow and Observe

• Candidate attends all your leadership meetings as observer
• Weekly debrief: "Here's what happened in that meeting. Here's why I made the decisions I did."
• Candidate writes a reflection document: "What did I agree with? Disagree with? What would I have done differently?"

Days 31-60: Co-Lead

• Candidate co-runs team standups and 1:1s (you're present but they lead)
• Candidate drafts responses to escalations; you review before sending
• Candidate leads one cross-team discussion independently

Days 61-90: Solo with Safety Net

• Candidate runs the team for 2 weeks while you're "unavailable" (you're reachable for emergencies only)
• Candidate makes real decisions: sprint priorities, technical calls, people issues
• End of sprint: joint retrospective on what went well, what was hard, and what they need more development on

I've run this sprint 5 times. Four of the five candidates were successfully promoted to management roles within 6 months of completing it. The fifth decided they preferred the IC track, which is also a successful outcome because we learned it early rather than promoting them into a role they'd hate.

# The Annual Succession Audit

Every January, I run a succession audit:

1. List every critical role (the ones where a 60-day vacancy would cause real damage)
2. For each role, confirm the Tier 1, 2, and 3 candidates
3. Review: did anyone leave, get promoted, or change trajectory?
4. Identify gaps (roles with no Tier 1 candidate)
5. Create a development plan for each gap, with quarterly milestones
6. Present to senior leadership with an honest assessment of organizational risk

This audit takes me about 4 hours per year. It's the highest-ROI 4 hours I spend on organizational development. The teams I've led with active succession plans promoted 70% of managers internally. The industry average for internal promotion to engineering management is closer to 40%.

Build the bench before you need it. The time to develop your next generation of leaders is when things are stable, not when someone just gave notice.