Design Career Ladder Cheatsheet
Examples & frameworks from 10+ companies, including Figma, Amazon, LinkedIn and many more.
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Q: I’m working on our product design career ladder, and I’m looking for examples of how other companies do it.
Product designer is one hell of a title to have.
The product could be iPhone or Skittles, the title product designer will always sound cool. And at least half of us don’t even know exactly what product designers do. Even more of us don’t know what a career can look like.
Career ladders (also called leveling frameworks, career tracks, competencies, etc.) have been a bit of a mystery for a while, and it's unclear why. Sharing these openly doesn't seem to give anyone a leg up, yet every new company appears to start from scratch. Why do we make things so hard for ourselves?
It's especially tough for designers, which already face inconsistent definitions and evaluations.
I’ve collected dozens of career ladders from big companies to startups, and I’m going to share the high-level frameworks of how 10+ companies structure their product design role:
Titles at each level
Attributes/competencies/skills they evaluate for
Where the IC and manager tracks split
A handful of public career ladders
And what it takes to be hired and promoted.
If you’d like to contribute to this effort by adding your company, or fix a mistake (I’m sure I got something wrong), please DM me or leave a comment.