If you're a backend or infra engineer trying to work out what "Staff-level" actually means, why your promo case keeps stalling, or what your job looks like when agents write most of the code - that's what I can tell you, from the inside. I am an engineer at an AI-native fintech in Bangalore. I sit on the other side of the table - I write the hiring bar, I sign off on Staff promotions, and I'm currently rolling agentic AI tooling into a 40-engineer org.