Design Team Career Matrix

Brand and Marketing Design Career Matrix

Explore

Product Design Career Matrix

Product Designers imagine, create, and iterate on products that solve users' problems and address specific needs in a given market.

Note: The expectations of each level are additive (i.e.: as a Product Designer, you are also expected to meet criteria for Assoc. Product Designer).

Name

Title

Associate Product Designer

Product Designer

Senior Product Designer

Staff Product Designer

Principal Product Designer

WHO YOU ARE

You are a designer early in your career supporting projects with direction.

You are a mid level designer supporting projects with minimal direction.

You are a senior designer, who can direct your own projects.

You are a design leader, directing your own projects, as well as starting to direct others.

You are an expert design leader, directing your own projects and leading others.

🔬SCOPE

Squad level, with guidance from another designer.

Squad level.

Spanning from Squad to Group level.

Group level and organizational level.

💫 STRATEGY AND VISION

You understand the 'why' behind your work. You are primarily focused on execution. You ask good questions to clarify objectives of the project. You understand basic project goals. You properly research the product landscape, and validate needs through our clients.

You regularly contribute to the team’s roadmap. You understand the voice of the customer, and leverage research to make well-informed product decisions. You justify ideas based on real evidence vs just intuition. You’re starting to understand and recognize industry patterns and trends.

You are a major contributor to team roadmap. You rapidly understand project requirements, frequently filling in gaps of understanding or accurately listing trade-offs You recognize if consensus isn't being reached, and able to help start guiding it and narrow in from diverging directions using a thorough product and customer understanding.

You are a contributor to group strategy and driver for the group vision. You deeply understand qualitative and quantitative reasonings and can apply them appropriately to help make product decisions. You not only help ensure your core group is working on the right thing, but can see opportunities in other product areas.

Major contributor to group and company strategy. Clear subject-matter expert on our product, and strong intuition on what’s needed to move objectives forward. You provide substantial input on project requirements, and possess excellent judgement on how the team could effectively spend their time. You are frequently looked to for guidance on strategic direction.

🚘 AUTONOMY

You are able to take on tasks with some amount of supervision. You collaborates closely with your team trifecta.

You are growing autonomy, guided as needed. You start to identify opportunities on your own, and bringing them to your team.

You are consistently able to “unblock” yourself so as to never be stalled or idle. No one feels they need to supervise your day-to-day.

You are completely trusted to identify what needs to get done on a day to day basis, and push forward on your own as needed .

You act as a force

multiplier

⁠

You are consistently trusted to get things done independently. You have excellent judgment on how to spend time in ways best for the business.

🏃 ACTION AND IMPACT

You meet project deadlines. You check in with your cross functional team mates to ensure you’re helping keep the project on track. You ask questions to understand the impact of your work once it's shipped.

With minimal guidance, you implement plans, manage your time and workload, and proactively engage with cross functional partners to solve problems. You help follow-up with your teams’ bugs regularly, actively unblocking your team. You ship work regularly, and you understand its impact on the business.

You are comfortable in solving complex problems. You implement plans, manage your time and workload, and proactively engage with cross functional partners to solve problems. You are consistent and reliable, always following through.

You set an example for producing work. People see you as a “doer”, and can depend on you for getting things done. You’re able to break down big problems into smaller achievable ones to make forward progress rather than getting stuck in the abstract. You work on highly impactful projects, and help encourage others to keep that same relentless focus on what's important.

Your impact is felt in multiple areas of the company. You are comfortable leading complex projects.

🎤 COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION

You share your work regularly (~1x a week) in design critique. You take feedback graciously. You are able to explain what the goals of your project are when presenting your work, keeping context clear.

You are comfortable presenting work to broader stakeholders with clear communication. You document your decision making in a way that’s clear and easy for others to understand. You demonstrate receiving feedback well.

You effectively set context for your work and communicate your decision-making rationale. You can comfortably engage any stakeholder and provide clear context on project status and rationale. You demonstrate you can drive strategic conversations and decision-making with no guidance.

You are able to delegate and supervise other designers with ease and comfort if a project requires it. You are a model recipient of feedback — not only handling it constructively, but actively modeling it to help others.

You actively promote company culture and values — you are seen as a role model for collaboration. You find ways to improve process and communication to optimize information sharing.

✨ DESIGN SKILLS

NOVICE

You are learning the basics of the design skill set.

COMPETENT

You use the basics of the skill effectively, with little to no supervision.

PROFICIENT

You are well established in a set of skills and push beyond basics into more advanced thinking and applications.

EXPERT

You have deep skills and develop new ways of applying them at a company (or even industry) level.

MASTERY

You are a subject matter expert in at least 2 areas of design (e.g.: research, interaction design, etc).

PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

not applicable

informal mentorship of associate designers/interns

Formal mentorship of designers.

Can transition to manager track.

Formal mentorship of associate designers.

Can transition to manager track.

There are no rows in this table

⁠

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.