How to Get Promoted from SMTS to LMTS Software Engineer at Salesforce
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You've been an SMTS at Salesforce for a few years. You own your team's technical direction, you mentor junior engineers, and your manager trusts you to handle anything thrown your way. But when you ask about LMTS, the answer is always some variation of "you need more cross-team impact" without anyone explaining what that actually means or how to get it.
The SMTS to LMTS transition is the hardest promotion on Salesforce's engineering ladder. SMTS is a terminal level where many engineers spend a decade or more. LMTS, Lead Member of Technical Staff, requires a fundamentally different kind of impact: cross-team, cross-cloud, and organizational. It's not a harder version of what you're doing now. It's a different job.
What Changes from SMTS to LMTS
| Dimension | SMTS (Senior MTS) | LMTS (Lead MTS) |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Medium-to-large projects within your team | Multi-quarter initiatives spanning multiple teams |
| Technical influence | Drives architectural decisions for your team | Sets technical direction across teams and influences cloud-level architecture |
| Impact boundary | Your team and adjacent teams | Cross-team and cross-cloud impact |
| Mentorship | Mentors AMTS/MTS engineers | Grows SMTS engineers into future leads |
| Problem identification | Identifies problems within your team | Identifies organizational gaps and proposes solutions nobody asked for |
| Visibility | Known to your team and manager | Known to engineering leadership in your cloud and adjacent organizations |
The fundamental shift: at SMTS, you're the strongest engineer on your team. At LMTS, your influence extends beyond your team's boundaries. The problems you solve are bigger than any single team can own, and you're getting buy-in from people who don't report to your manager.
Why This Promotion Is Different
AMTS to MTS and MTS to SMTS are both about growing within a team. The criteria are relatively clear: ship features, write design docs, mentor someone. Your manager can evaluate your readiness because they see your work every day.
LMTS is different for three reasons:
Cross-team impact is required, not optional. Your manager needs to show that your work affects teams beyond your own. If your contributions, however excellent, are entirely contained within your team's sprint board, you don't have an LMTS case.
Cross-cloud visibility matters at Salesforce specifically. Salesforce runs Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and more. The engineers who reach LMTS typically demonstrate impact that crosses cloud product boundaries. That might mean designing a shared service, leading a platform initiative, or solving a problem that affects multiple clouds.
Politics enter the picture. At SMTS, your promotion is mostly about the work. At LMTS, who knows about your work matters almost as much as the work itself. Leadership review of LMTS nominations involves people who have never seen your code. They're evaluating your reputation and your manager's narrative about you.
The promotion budget also tightened after Salesforce's 2023 layoffs, which reduced headcount by roughly 10%. Fewer LMTS slots are available in each cycle, and even qualified candidates sometimes wait.
How Long SMTS to LMTS Should Take
| Pace | Timeline | What's happening |
|---|---|---|
| Fast | 2-3 years | Strong cross-team projects, visible design leadership, clear cloud-level impact |
| Standard | 3-5 years | Building cross-team relationships and organizational influence gradually |
| Long (common) | 5+ years | Terminal level dynamics: many SMTS engineers stay here by choice or circumstance |
Median total compensation jumps from roughly $248K at SMTS to $314K at LMTS based on Levels.fyi. The increase reflects a larger base salary, bigger RSU packages, and the performance bonus target staying at 15%. One meaningful difference: at LMTS, stock refreshers no longer require an "Exceed Expectations" rating. Meeting expectations is enough to receive equity refreshes, which makes the long-term compensation trajectory much more favorable.
What Actually Gets You Promoted
Lead a project that spans multiple teams
This is the single most important proof point. Find or create a project that requires coordination across team boundaries. A shared library. A cross-cloud data pipeline. A platform service that multiple teams depend on. The project proves you can operate beyond your team's scope, influence engineers you don't work with daily, and deliver results across organizational boundaries.
If no such project exists, look for pain points that affect multiple teams. A reliability issue that shows up across services. A tooling gap that every team works around independently. Naming the problem and proposing a coordinated solution is itself an LMTS move.
Build relationships outside your team
LMTS requires that people beyond your immediate team know your work and vouch for your impact. This doesn't happen by accident. Attend architecture reviews for other teams. Contribute to RFCs that affect your cloud broadly. Offer to review design docs outside your area.
When other engineers have a hard technical problem in your domain, be the person they come to. Over time, this builds a reputation that supports your manager's nomination narrative.
Grow SMTS-level engineers
At SMTS, you mentor AMTS and MTS engineers. At LMTS, the mentorship expectation shifts upward: you're helping SMTS engineers develop their own technical leadership. This is a different kind of mentorship. It's less about code review and more about helping someone learn to identify scope, build influence, and drive technical decisions.
Your manager should be able to point to an SMTS engineer who grew significantly under your guidance. That's a concrete signal of LMTS-level leadership.
Get visibility with engineering leadership
Your manager can nominate you, but leadership reviews the nomination. If nobody at the director or VP level has heard of your work, the nomination is weaker. This doesn't mean you need to self-promote aggressively. It means you should present at internal tech talks, participate in cloud-wide architecture discussions, and make sure your cross-team work has executive visibility.
If your company hosts internal engineering summits or demo days, present your work. If there are forums where cloud-level technical decisions are discussed, participate. The goal is that when your manager says "this person is operating at LMTS," the leadership reviewers nod because they already know your name.
Mistakes That Keep Engineers at SMTS
Impact that never crosses team boundaries. This is the number one blocker. You might be the best engineer on your team, handling the most complex work, but if everything you do is scoped to your team's backlog, you're demonstrating excellence at SMTS, not readiness for LMTS.
Solving problems you're asked to solve instead of finding new ones. LMTS engineers create their own scope. They see organizational gaps, reliability risks, or architectural weaknesses that no one has named yet, and they propose solutions. If you're always reacting to assigned work, you're operating at SMTS scope.
Technical depth without organizational influence. Some SMTS engineers go deeper and deeper into a single technical domain. That's valuable, but it's not what LMTS requires. LMTS is about breadth of influence across teams, not depth of expertise in one area. You need both, but influence is the harder one to develop.
Weak manager relationship. LMTS promotions live or die on your manager's ability to advocate for you. If your manager doesn't understand your cross-team work, can't articulate your impact to leadership, or doesn't have the organizational capital to push a nomination through, your case stalls. Have direct conversations about LMTS readiness. If your manager can't or won't champion you, that's important information.
Not understanding the politics. Saying "I just want to write code and let the work speak for itself" is a perfectly valid career choice. It's also a choice to stay at SMTS. LMTS nominations are reviewed by people who have never read your code. They're evaluating your reputation, your manager's narrative, and the organizational need for someone at that level in your area. Understanding this isn't selling out. It's understanding how the system works.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to get promoted from SMTS to LMTS at Salesforce?
The typical timeline is 3-5 years at SMTS, with some engineers making it in 2-3 years with strong cross-team project leadership. Many engineers stay at SMTS for much longer, either by choice or because the cross-team impact requirement is genuinely hard to meet. SMTS is a terminal level and there's no organizational pressure to advance.
What's the difference between LMTS and a Staff Engineer at other companies?
LMTS at Salesforce maps roughly to Google L5 (Senior Software Engineer) or a borderline Staff level at mid-tier companies. The scope and expectations are similar: cross-team influence, architectural ownership, and mentoring senior engineers. The title convention (Lead Member of Technical Staff) is Salesforce-specific, inherited from Bell Labs tradition.
Do stock refreshers change at LMTS?
Yes, and this is one of the biggest compensation differences. Below LMTS, stock refreshers require an "Exceed Expectations" performance rating. At LMTS, you receive refreshers at "Meets Expectations." This makes the long-term equity trajectory significantly better and is one of the underappreciated financial benefits of reaching LMTS.
Is cross-cloud impact really required?
Not literally required for every LMTS promotion, but it's the strongest signal. Salesforce's multi-cloud architecture means the most visible cross-team work often spans cloud boundaries. If your cross-team impact is within a single cloud but spans multiple teams and has clear organizational value, that can be sufficient. But cross-cloud impact is the clearest version of "operating beyond your team."
CareerClimb tracks your wins, maps them to what Salesforce evaluates at each level, and tells you exactly what evidence you're missing. When the next nomination window opens, your case is already built. Download CareerClimb