Survey Methodology
Job leveling
Also called: leveling, career level, job level framework
A framework that classifies jobs into consistent levels (e.g., entry, senior, principal, manager, director) for benchmarking and internal equity.
Job leveling is the system you use to classify jobs into consistent tiers. A typical IC framework runs from L1 (entry / associate) through L7 (principal / fellow); a typical management framework runs from M1 (manager) through M5 (SVP).
Leveling matters because survey data is reported by level. If your "Senior Engineer" is matched to a survey's "Engineer III" cut but your scope of work matches their "Engineer IV," your benchmarking will systematically underpay the role.
Major survey vendors (Mercer, Aon Radford, WTW) each have their own leveling framework. Most large employers either adopt one of those frameworks wholesale or build a hybrid that maps cleanly to two or three of them.