Careers · My Future Role
What could your next role actually be?
Most people can name the job they have and the job they want. The hard part is everything in between: whether the jump is realistic, what already carries across, and what a hiring manager will look for that you cannot yet evidence.
My Future Role sits in your AFQY member area. Pick where you are now and where you are heading, and it maps the two against a levelled map of 49 New Zealand tech roles across every track: engineering, data, security, infrastructure, delivery and leadership. It is built on SFIA, the skills framework used across the industry, so the language matches what employers here actually recruit against.
The roles within reach
The roles one to two levels above where you sit today, in your track and in the ones next to it. Including the moves people rarely think to consider.
What you already bring
The skills from your current role that carry straight across, so you lead with them rather than leaving a recruiter to work it out.
The gap, named honestly
What is genuinely missing, and how to frame it as a development edge instead of hoping nobody asks.
See it before you sign in
This is the real tool, with a real example already filled in: a Senior Software Developer looking at Data Architect, two levels up and across into a different track. Everything below is exactly what members see. To run it on your own roles, sign in.
Preview · example only
Sign in to use your own rolesWhere you are, and where you're heading
Pick your current role and the role you're aiming for. Roles marked ▲ sit above your current level. Click any role name to see what it involves.
Likely next roles from Senior Software Developer(one to two levels up)
Senior Software Developer
Software Engineering · Level 4 of 7
Technical anchor of a delivery team: leads design of significant pieces, raises the bar on quality, and grows the developers around them.
Core skills: System design · Mentoring and code review leadership · Performance and security awareness · Refactoring legacy code · Cross-team collaboration · Pragmatic trade-off judgement
Full skill definitions on SFIA ↗Data Architect
Data & Analytics · Level 6 of 7
Designs how data flows and lives across the whole organisation: platforms, integration, governance and the roadmap to get there.
Core skills: Enterprise data architecture · Integration patterns · Governance and privacy by design · Cloud data ecosystems · Roadmapping · Influencing executives
Full skill definitions on SFIA ↗Senior Software Developer → Data Architect2 levels up
Skills and experience you bring
Little direct overlap on paper, which makes framing everything: your Software Engineering experience still carries judgement, delivery and credibility a job title can't show.
The gap to close or reframe
- ○ Enterprise data architecture
- ○ Integration patterns
- ○ Governance and privacy by design
- ○ Cloud data ecosystems
- ○ Roadmapping
- ○ Influencing executives
How to position what you have
You're crossing from Software Engineering into Data & Analytics. Lead with the bridge: the parts of your current work that already touch data & analytics , and frame the rest as proven ability to master a domain, because you've done exactly that once already. Don't hide the gaps; name them as your development edge and show what you're already doing about them. Then bring this to your AFQY CV review and we'll work the framing together.
Free with an AFQY account
My Future Role sits alongside CV review, where an AFQY reviewer works through your CV with you line by line, and the wider community of New Zealand tech people who have already made the move you are weighing up.
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