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Design Career Ladders

Our skill guide for design career ladders explains what a career ladder is, what the different levels in design are, how to make a career ladder for a design team, and 5 examples of design career ladders from Intercom, Zendesk, GitLab, and BuzzFeed.
  • What is the career progression for a product designer?

    These articles provide frameworks for how to think about product designer careers, and answer these questions: * What levels and titles are common across companies? What do they mean? * What are the skills and skill groups that exist specifically within product design?

    • Lex Roman Inc logo
    • Facebook logo
  • How to Make a Design Career Ladder

    The Design Career Index shows that 71% of design organizations don't have a career progression framework. Lack of clarity in career development has been shown to be a key reason designers leave their jobs. To address this challenge, Helena Sao explains her process, decisions, and learnings throughout the process of building a career framework at DoorDash. Todd Zaki Warfel provides an alternative perspective from his experience at Invision on how to create career ladders and assess competencies.

    • Workday logo
    • DoorDash logo
  • Design Career Ladders From Leading Companies

    These examples can help you compare and contrasts what different companies have developed for their product design career ladders.

    • Intercom logo
    • GitLab logo
    • Figma logo
    • Primary logo
    • Unacademy logo
  • Defunct Design Career Ladder Examples

    Some companies have outdated or ineffective design career ladders that fail to provide clear paths for advancement or reward the wrong behaviors.