How do you differentiate between mid-level and senior roles?

The roles of mid-level and senior developers in Java development can be distinguished by several key aspects:

• Depth of knowledge and experience: Mid-level developers confidently solve tasks of medium complexity, know basic patterns and technologies, while seniors have a deep understanding of architecture, optimizations, JVM intricacies, and can work with complex systems.

• Independence: Mid-level developers require some supervision and support, whereas seniors are capable of making architectural decisions independently and taking responsibility for the results.

• Code and quality: Mid-level developers write functional code, while seniors produce code that is easy to maintain, extend, and test, paying attention to cleanliness and readability.

• Mentorship: Seniors actively help and train the team, while mid-level developers mainly focus on completing their tasks.

• Project vision: Seniors understand business goals and can suggest improvements, while mid-level developers focus on technical implementation.

Thus, a senior is not just an experienced programmer but a technical leader capable of influencing the quality and development of the product as a whole.