I'm looking for suggestions on creating a good developer career track at our company. Something more detailed than the typical "junior" and "senior" titles and, ideally, with descriptions and criteria. I haven't been able to find anything substantive "open-sourced".
Best thing you can do is make sure the developer track is separate from the management track. Then, it just depends on the size of the company. If you have a small team, then something like: Junior -> Senior -> Principal -> Distinguished
works quite well. No need to come up with something atypical, these roles / titles are tried and tested. If you have a larger team then you can just add I,II,and III to the above as well as having on the management side, eng manager, sr. eng manager, director, VP.