Working in teams / Roles & skills

Roles & skills

BuilderLab is designed for cross-functional teams. Here's how roles and skills work on the platform.

Primary domains

BuilderLab focuses on three primary domains that appear in most data-driven products:

  • Software Engineering — backend, frontend, infrastructure, APIs
  • Data Science — ML modeling, analysis, experimentation
  • Data Analysis & Engineering — data pipelines, dashboards, analytics
  • Design & UX — product design, user research, prototyping
  • Product & Community — product strategy, community management, outreach

Skills

Skills are more granular than domains. When posting a project, list the specific skills you need — not just "developer." When building your profile, add the specific skills you actually have.

// Example: good role description Role: Data Scientist Skills needed: Python, scikit-learn, pandas Task: Build and evaluate a recommendation model

Level

BuilderLab has four levels: Junior, Mid, Senior, and Not sure. These aren't gating mechanisms — they help teams form with compatible expectations. A team of three juniors building together is great. A junior being mentored by a senior is also great. Just be honest.

Why cross-functional?

Real products don't get built by one person with one skill. BuilderLab projects are designed to mirror real team structures — which is why the most successful projects combine SWEs, data folks, and sometimes designers or product thinkers.