Job Roles and Job Architecture
A job architecture is the structured hierarchy of job families, levels, and roles that attaches to every role the skills it demands and the proficiency level expected for each.
By Samantha, SkillsDB|Published |Updated
What It Is
Job architecture is the framework an organization uses to describe its work in a consistent way: a small number of job families group related roles, a set of levels defines progression within each family, and each role at each level carries a profile of required skills with target proficiency levels. It replaces the sprawl of job titles, which are labels, with roles, which are definitions. The value of the architecture in a skills-based organization is that it connects two records that are usually kept apart: what a role requires and what a person can do. When both are expressed in the same skills library on the same proficiency scale, the gap between them can be computed for any person against any role, which is what makes internal mobility, succession slates, and workforce planning operate on evidence instead of on titles and tenure.
Key Facts
- Four layers: job family, level, role, and the required-skill profile attached to the role.
- Most organizations need 8 to 15 job families and 4 to 7 levels; more usually signals titles leaking back in.
- A role profile carries 6 to 12 required skills, each with a required proficiency level.
- Titles name people, positions fund seats, and roles define the work together with the skills it requires.
- Levels are defined by the required proficiency on the family's core skills, not by pay grade alone.
- The architecture is only operational when people are assessed against role profiles in the same library.
From Family to Skills: A Worked Example
| Job family | Level | Role | Example required skills (level) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical Facilities Operations | 1 | Facilities Technician I | Building management system monitoring (2), work order documentation (2), lockout-tagout (3) |
| Critical Facilities Operations | 2 | Facilities Technician II | Electrical distribution operations (3), generator load transfer (3), chiller plant operations (3) |
| Critical Facilities Operations | 3 | Shift Lead | Incident command and escalation (3), change control (3), technician coaching (3) |
| Critical Facilities Operations | 4 | Site Operations Manager | Capacity planning (3), vendor and contract management (3), audit and compliance evidence (4) |
How SkillsDB Models It
In SkillsDB a role is a Career in Library → Careers, a rung is a Level, and the family is a Job Family that groups Careers with similar requirements. A field service organization might hold a Technician career with Levels 1 to 3 and a Service Supervisor career, both in a Field Operations job family and tagged with the Career Type "Job Role". Each Career lists its required Skills in Sections with a benchmark grade per skill per Level: Hydraulic Systems at 3 for Technician Level 2, 4 for Level 3. A technician assigned at Level 2 sees her gaps against those benchmarks on her Skills Profile and at Profile → Career → Overview, and because one person can hold more than one Career at once, her manager can assign her to Service Supervisor as well and read her gap against that role in the Skills Matrix. A benchmark edited on the Career reaches every assigned person; nothing is copied per employee. See Job Architecture and Career Frameworks.
Related
Titles describe pay. Roles describe work.
See how SkillsDB builds roles from the skills they actually require.
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