SFIA 8 - illustrative skills profiles
Generic mappings of SFIA 8 skills to recognised role families or career families. By looking across the industry, across different countries and users we can provide a useful starting point for creating a SFIA-based skills profile for common roles.
Download interactive pdf version of the skills profiles on this page.
The SFIA framework is flexible by design...
- it does not prescribe or define jobs, roles, organisation structures or career paths
- instead - SFIA describes the skills that roles, jobs or career steps require
- this enables organisations of different shapes and sizes to create their own – built on a robust and proven framework
However – and based on significant demand from SFIA’s users - we have collated a set of generic mappings of SFIA skills for the industry's most common role families...
- These provide a quick-start list of the most relevant SFIA skills for a selection of common roles.
- Your own skill mappings will be specific to your context. You should tailor the mappings on this page to reflect your needs.
- The mapping does not include SFIA levels. You will need to determine the level of responsibility of your own roles in order to assign SFIA skills and skill levels.
- This work has been ongoing for some time - and there is more to do – we are releasing this now to support SFIA 8 and to illustrate how the skills in SFIA 8 can be deployed in the workplace.
If you want to use these for your own organisation – here are some guidelines to help you...
- Do not use these off-the-shelf - they need to be tailored for your own use
- Take some time to learn about the SFIA framework and clarify what you are trying to achieve and the outcomes you want from skills profiles
- Your organisation's priorities and context will drive the skills and competency levels required
- You will need to look at the SFIA levels to determine the relevant competency levels for your own jobs/roles
- If you can't find what you are looking for try the SFIA views, the full framework view or the A to Z list
- Do not include too many SFIA skills per role - 5 to 7 skills is a pragmatic number to provide focus. Many roles need fewer.
- These generic roles do not imply an organisation or team design. SFIA is a great framework to support organisation design - but be aware that organisation design is a specialised activity.
- For example - larger organisations may have specialised jobs/roles - where smaller organisations may combine several roles into one job.
There is some basic guidance available on the website - see SFIA and skills management.
SFIA Partners and SFIA Consultants are available for advice and implementation support. Full details are available here.
We also recommend SFIA Accredited Training which can teach you how to map SFIA skills to your own roles.
The SFIA User Forum page is here and includes guidance on job architectures and skills-based job analysis.
What's in the table...
- Name and a brief description of the grouping, e.g. the Information and cyber security role family
- this may be sub-divided e.g. Security operations, Information security audit and compliance, Information security strategy and management
- Example job titles - this is illustrative only.
- Job titles vary considerably between industries, employers, countries
- Prefixes for career steps/job grades also vary (e.g. lead, senior, junior, principal, vice president, head of, director of)
- For these reasons - the SFIA framework does not specify job titles but does describe competency levels
- Look at these SFIA skills first group - these are skills that are frequently associated with the role or career family
- Other SFIA skills to consider - these skills that may be relevant for selected instances of the role
Data and analytics role family |
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Data science practitioners |
Roles responsible for using scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data. |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Data engineering practitioners |
Roles responsible for designing, building, testing and operationalising software and infrastructure components for data pipelines and data stores. |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Data operations practitioners |
Roles responsible for data and machine learning models in production. Automation of data extraction and data quality. Managing production performance and resolving production issues. |
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Example job titles... |
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Software engineering role family |
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Software engineering practitioners |
Roles responsible for the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software (i.e. the application of engineering to software). | |
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Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Software engineering practice management |
Roles responsible for leading, managing, developing and deploying software engineers and software engineering capabilities. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
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Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
DevOps role family |
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DevOps practitioners |
Roles responsible for building reliable and secure systems including application build, package, and deployment. |
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Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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DevOps practice management |
Roles responsible for leading, managing, developing and deploying DevOps practitioners and DevOps capabilities. | |
Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Business analysis role family |
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Business analysis practitioners |
Roles responsible for investigating operational issues, problems and new opportunities. Finding effective business solutions through improvements in aspects of business operations and business systems. |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Business analysis practice management |
Roles responsible for leading, managing, developing and deploying business analysts and business analysis capabilities. |
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Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Information and cyber security role family |
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Security operations |
Roles responsible for day to day execution of security policies and procedures. Using monitoring tools to identify threats and incidents. |
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Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Incident management practitioners |
Roles responsible for analysing, designing, managing and delivering the services required to minimise the negative impact of security incidents and restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible. | |
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Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Security risk management, audit and compliance |
Roles responsible for assessing risk and ensuring security systems and operations comply with organisational and regulatory requirements. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Security leadership, strategy and management |
Roles responsible for leading the development and execution of security strategies and policies. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Testing role family |
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Testing practitioners |
Roles responsible for the analysis of software and systems to reduce risk and prevent issues. |
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Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Testing practice management |
Roles responsible for leading, managing, developing and deploying testers and testing capabilities. |
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Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Project delivery role family |
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Project delivery practitioners |
Roles responsible for the delivery of projects, programmes and portfolios. |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Project delivery practice management |
Roles responsible for leading, managing, developing and deploying project delivery professionals and project delivery capabilities. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Agile delivery role family |
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Agile change agents |
Roles responsible for developing, implementing, supporting, guiding, nurturing and improving agile working practices. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Agile product management |
Roles responsible for using an adaptive approach to product planning and implementation. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Architecture role family |
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Enterprise architecture practitioners |
Roles responsible for developing, maintaining, communicating and governing Enterprise Architectures and roadmaps, ensuring alignment with corporate strategies, business goals and technology strategies and plans. | |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Solution architecture practitioners |
Roles responsible for developing, maintaining and ensuring the integrity of end to end technology solutions to address specific project / programme / product requirements and align to technology strategies, architectures and engineering standards. | |
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Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Architecture practice management |
Roles responsible for leading, managing, developing and deploying architects and architecture capabilities. | |
Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Experience design role family |
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User research practitioners |
Roles responsible for Identifying users' behaviours, needs and motivations using observational research methods. | |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Service design practitioners |
Roles responsible for designing experiences that reach people through many different touch-points, and that happen over time. See also a list of SFIA skills with examples of service design activities and artefacts. | |
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Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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User experience practitioners |
Roles responsible for creating desirable experiences for users. | |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Service management role family |
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Service strategy and architecture practitioners |
Roles for architecting and designing the different elements that make up how and organisation manages and operates its services and ensuring alignment with corporate strategies, business goals and technology strategies and plans. See also a mapping of SFIA 8 skills to ITIL® 4 practice areas and service management roles. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Service operations practitioners |
Roles responsible for managing, delivering and improving operational services. See also a mapping of SFIA 8 skills to ITIL® 4 practice areas and service management roles. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Incident management practitioners |
Roles responsible for analysing, designing, managing and delivering the services required to minimise the negative impact of incidents and restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible. See also a mapping of SFIA 8 skills to ITIL® 4 practice areas and service management roles. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Learning & development role family |
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Learning & development (L&D) practitioners |
Roles responsible for analysing, designing, delivering and managing activities to develop people's skills, knowledge, behaviours and competencies - typically to improve individual performance, contribution, impact and employability. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Teaching practitioners |
Roles responsible for teaching others in a formal education context, such as at schools, colleges or universities. | |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Technology infrastructure platform role family |
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Infrastructure platform management practitioners |
Roles responsible for managing the provision of a reliable and secure technology infrastructure to support current and future organisational needs. | |
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Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Infrastructure engineers |
Roles responsible for providing a reliable, flexible, scalable, secure and efficient IT infrastructure to meet current and future organisational needs. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Application platform role family |
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Application platform management practitioners |
Roles responsible for managing the provision of reliable secure software applications which support business capabilities and are easily re-used, maintained and updated to meet current and future organisational needs. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Application development practitioners |
Roles responsible for developing reliable, flexible, scalable and secure software applications to support organisational capabilities. | |
Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Application support practitioners |
Roles responsible for operational support for of software applications to support organisational capabilities. | |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Computational science role family |
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Computational science practitioners |
Roles responsible for understanding and solving complex problems using advanced computing capabilities. These roles can be found in many scientific disciplines which require the development of models and simulations to understand natural systems. |
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Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Digital product development, sales and marketing role family |
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Digital practitioners |
Roles responsible for developing, marketing, selling and supporting digital products. |
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Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Human resource and workforce management role family |
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Resource management practitioners |
Roles responsible for managing and delivering resource management and workforce planning. |
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Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Organisation design practitioners |
Roles responsible for define and organise the structure of organisations and teams, performing job analysis, designing jobs and allocating people in the right places to improve efficiency and increase productivity. |
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Change management |
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Change management practitioners |
Roles responsible for designing, managing, and implementing organisational change initiatives. These roles ensure that changes align with organisational goals, minimise disruption, and support the smooth transition of people, processes, and systems. |
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Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Finance and Procurement |
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Technology finance practitioners |
Roles responsible for managing and delivering financial leadership, management and operational support for technology organisations |
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Example job titles |
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Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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Technology procurement practitioners |
Roles responsible for managing and delivering procurement leadership, management and operational support for technology organisations. |
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Example job titles |
Look at these SFIA skills first… |
Other SFIA skills to consider.... |
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