Design Career Ladder Cheatsheet

Examples & frameworks from 10+ companies, including Figma, Amazon, LinkedIn and many more.

Hi, I’m Felix! Welcome to this week’s ADPList’s Newsletter; 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 weekly advice column. I write high-quality insights on designing products people love and leadership in tech. If you’re interested in sponsoring us, let’s chat!

🎁 Claim your 10% off annually (only $71/year) for our Premium Weekly Newsletter to contribute to our mission to help bring shared knowledge and inspiration to the world.

---

This week is brought to you by Future London Academy.

Discover the future of UX and Product Design in a 4-day journey through London’s leading product companies. Explore Product Design Strategy, Data Design, Gen AI, Product Branding during office visits, keynote presentations and workshops. 4 days. Only 30 spots. Sign up now.

---

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.

Takeaways from reviewing these career ladders