Staff-level is an expectation of responsibility. A staff engineer is a technical leader who has had significant influence beyond their immediate team. It is not Senior Senior Software Engineer.

A simple test I have used in trad tech hiring is, "Were you in the room when the decisions were made?"

how do you get invited into that room 

or do you just push your way in

prev: /nook, protocol @ opensea, co-author seaport & stuff.
professional @slokh and @0xalexander fanboy

A little bit of both in my experience!

You can join teams that are super close to the product/user, then you naturally get promoted to represent the team.

Or your director/VP fights to pick up stretch projects and puts your name down to lead.

Been in both situations.