Career ladder from junior to director — guidance for UX professionals
This is a cleaned-up version of career guidance I’ve written for the UX team at Outschool. The company was 200 people total, and the UX team consisted of 15 product designers, visual designers, user researchers, and UX writers. I hope this is a helpful data point for people looking to advance in their careers as well as people creating career ladders for their teams.
Outschool has 6 levels for non-executive employees, roughly corresponding to junior, mid-level, senior, lead, and director (Outschool doesn’t use these titles). There are parallel tracks for individual contributors and people managers starting at level 4. This guide is a companion to a more detailed“Leveling Rubric” Outschool has, which defines competencies x levels. The Leveling Rubric is referenced but not shared here.
Overview
A career ladder is a tool that helps the company attract and retain employees. It is also a progression framework that documents the path(s) an employee can take as they develop their career within the company. A career ladder can have one or more tracks on one dimension, and multiple levels on another dimension, and the tracks can split or merge on certain levels.
A leveling rubric describes expectations for different levels in the career ladder and provides detailed information to map out a path from one level to another. A leveling rubric is not meant to be a checklist that one can tick to unlock a promotion to the next level. Rather, it is meant to serve as a guide to employees and their managers regarding career progression within the company. It is a way to indicate areas that employees may need to improve in to move up to the next level. The leveling rubric should act as a compass rather than a GPS. A compass is a tool that gives one a general direction allowing someone to find their own way as opposed to a tool like a GPS that gives someone a specific route to follow.
An employee’s level is largely defined by the business impact that they produce (not just the skills they exhibit). Their impact is highly correlated to their levels. The larger the impact is, the higher their level is. However, in order to determine impact, we must first define what impact is.
What is Impact
Impact at any company can be described in terms of its mission and how much an employee contributes to achieving that mission. (What is a “mission” is a topic for another day, but a mission should differentiate one company from others — so it should be more unique and purposeful than “reach $10M in revenue”)
While impact is not always easily measured, we can consider it from 3 core pillars.
- Consistency: How is the employee delivering impact over time? Is the employee able to deliver their work (i.e features, projects, process improvements, etc) not just once or twice, but consistently?
- Velocity: What is the rate at which the employee is delivering impact? Is the employee able to deliver their work on time consistently?
- Value: What is the value of the impact that the employee is producing? What is the value in relation to the levels in our career progression framework? More senior levels are expected to deliver more value in their work.
How to Determine Impact
To determine the impact of an employee, a manager needs to view it in terms of the outcomes of the initiatives the employee contributed to, how the employee contributes their expertise and influence, and how those contributions map to the competencies in the Leveling Rubric. The answers to these questions will help the manager get a better understanding of the type of impact the employee is having in the organization.
Leveling Rubric
Overall, lower levels have a smaller area of focus and are more about demonstrating domain expertise, and higher levels have a larger area of focus and are more about demonstrating impact.
As the IC (Individual Contributor) and manager tracks split at L4, the start of leadership levels, different competencies are expected for different tracks, even at the same level. ICs are expected to demonstrate impact through the breadth and depth of their domain expertise, while managers are expected to demonstrate impact through leveraging their influence on different domain experts.
An L1–3 usually has a specific specialty within UX that they are focusing on, while L4–6 may either be experts in their specialty or generalists. Experts achieve impact through most effectively using their specialty, while generalists utilize a variety of specialties (either via their own skills or by leveraging other experts) to achieve impact.
Level 1: (e.g. Junior Designer, Junior Researcher, Associate Writer)
This level is considered entry-level. At this level, the employee is expected to know the basics of their UX specialty. They are able to solve tightly scoped tasks with some supervision from more experienced mentors within the same specialty. An area of focus is improving their craft and learning how to be a productive, self-reliant UX professional with little supervision from others. For example, they are learning how to create a page layout, how to conduct usability testing, or how their research questions contribute to delivering a better experience. The career progression of an employee at this level is expected to be faster. Typically, an L1 employee is expected to progress out of the L1 within a year or two.
Level 2: (e.g. Mid-Level Designer, Researcher, Writer, etc)
An employee at this level has a good understanding of the fundamentals of user experience. They are able to autonomously execute defined projects within their team’s areas of responsibility. They can independently define the right solutions to solve problems and execute from discovery to delivery. Although the focus is still on how to improve skills and knowledge in their specialty, they are beginning to expand their impact to others in the team through co-creation and feedback. They collaborate with others in their functional areas such as PMs, engineers, designers, data scientists, researchers, managers, and others to get the work done. Typically, an L2 is expected to progress to the next level within a couple of years.
Level 3: (e.g. Senior Designer, Senior Researcher, Senior Writer)
This level is the first inflection point where leadership is a defining requirement. An employee at this level is expected to lead projects within their team’s area of responsibility. They are able to define milestones for and deliver well-scoped projects. At this level, the employee is expected to demonstrate functional skills in common user experience concepts as well as mastery in their specialty, and knows when to seek advice from other specialties to create the best outcome.
For example, common user experience concepts include wireframing, user interviews, affinity diagramming, usability testing, user flows, competitive analysis, personas, etc. Specialty concepts for a Designer include color theory, rapid prototyping, responsive design, etc. Specialty skills for a Researcher include survey design, diary studies, meta-analysis, etc. Specialty skills for a writer include taxonomy, content guidelines, etc.
The employee may also be expected to lead and or mentor others in their specialty, and possibly manage a contractor to contribute to their projects. This is also the level where we expect employees to do more than merely completing the work that’s been assigned to them. They have a good understanding of the company and team goals and are able to connect those goals to the work that they are doing. They also keep the business needs in mind and leverage input from product stakeholders to determine the right solutions in order to deliver value.
Additionally, they are starting to create their own work by understanding the problems the team faces, implementing, and delivering the solutions to those problems. Typically, the progression of an employee in this level starts to slow down due to the amount of learning required for this level.
At this level, there is no longer a default expectation that they will eventually be promoted to the next level, so you can choose to stay at this level indefinitely.
This is also the level at which the employee starts to consider which of the two tracks to pursue. Either the employee will continue the IC track or switch over to the people management track.
Level 4
An employee at this level is setting a medium-to-long-term strategy for business-impacting projects. This level is an inflection point, where the employee is defining and leading complex work across teams, amplifying impact through other people, and proactively seeking and creating opportunities to be effective beyond their own team. Effectively, an employee at L4+ is “helping the manager do their job” more than “the manager helping the employee do their job”, and becomes a collaborator and thought partner to the manager. There is no expectation to move beyond this level.
Starting at this level, the IC and manager tracks differ in how they achieve these outcomes.
IC Track: (e.g. Design Lead, Research Lead, or Lead Writer)
The IC starts leading cross-functional projects that impact multiple teams. They initiate and successfully drive challenging initiatives that cut across multiple teams’ work, projects and processes. They are considered an expert in their part of the business or domain, a strong communicator, a mentor, and role model even to experienced UX professionals, a driver of best practices, and have delivered multiple projects that move the needs of their team. They actively keep customer needs in mind and leverage stakeholders in order to determine the appropriate solutions in order to deliver value.
The IC may also manage an intern seasonally, or manage 1 other employee during a transitional period as a path to the manager track.
Manager Track: (e.g. ___ Manager)
At this level, a manager is expected to be responsible for the impact of 2+ ICs working on similar, related areas. They empower their direct reports (DRs) to successfully deliver impact through coaching, being a conduit of information, and building trust and resolving conflict with the DRs’ stakeholders. A manager at this level is learning to shift their method of impact from “I can do this” to “I can teach my team to do this”. Their main focus is to conduct coaching, training, and hiring, only taking on direct hands-on work as a short-term solution to resource constraints or as a way to train their DRs.
The manager may manage various specialties in order to deliver impact for their area. While the manager isn’t expected to be an expert in all specialties they manage, they’re expected to have basic knowledge of each specialty and be aware of their blind spots and seek advice from leaders in other specialties when providing training, assigning work, or evaluating their DRs.
Level 5
At this level, the employee is expected to solve problems and deliver solutions that consistently impact the entire UX organization, and often multiple organizations in Outschool. They are essentially force-multipliers who amplify their impact through other teams by creating opportunities to be effective throughout the entire organization. There is no expectation to move beyond this level.
IC: (e.g. Principal ___, ___ Architect, ___ Strategist)
An IC at this level is increasingly influential on product decisions and scope, as well as determining the right tradeoffs to deliver customer value. They are able to align UX strategy for several projects that cut across groups of pods or functions. They demonstrate a high level of depth in a particular product category. They will often “hunt work” by identifying and formalizing the problem, devising a solution, getting leadership buy-in, leading its implementation, and disseminating information to others. They are often leading other ICs and contractors on their initiative, though that is not a requirement. They are expected to actively mentor others in the Design function. They are seen as a critical strategic partner by other functions.
Manager: (e.g. Senior Manager of ___ or Director of UX)
At this level, a manager is expected to handle increasingly complex organizational needs. They are responsible for multiple DRs working on areas that may not be related, potentially also managing other managers. They will develop strategies for systematic and scalable solutions that improve organizational efficacy, and iteratively execute on it. They will utilize a wide variety of management toolkits beyond individual coaching and troubleshooting. There is no expectation to move beyond this level.
Level 6
An employee at this level is amplifying their impact not only through the entire company but also beyond the company. They partner with cross-functional stakeholders to identify major new business opportunities unlocked by UX capabilities. They contribute to strategy on broader organizational design, and proactively consider team design and skills integration ahead of any hiring. They consider the economic impact of every product, process, and team decision as well as the cost/benefit analysis of those decisions. They are considered an expert by the industry beyond Outschool, and they utilize their reputation and network to increase the recruitment and retention of talent. There is no expectation to move beyond this level. The next promotion level of them is the executive level, if and only if the company has a need for an executive with this type of expertise.
IC: (e.g. UX Architect, UX Strategist)
An IC at this level aligns the UX strategy for high-risk high-reward projects across several groups to the broader initiatives of the company.
Manager: (e.g. Director of UX)
A manager at this level designs their organization to unlock different ways of working that allow ICs to pursue complex high-risk high-reward projects. They create effective and replicable systems that often also level up other organizations via influence and knowledge-sharing.
Moving Between Levels
While levels are presented as integers, the progression between levels is more of a continuum. For example, two employees could both be Level 2, while one of them is working toward consistently showing L2 competencies, the other one could be working toward showing more L3 competencies.
While L1 and L2 employees are expected to eventually reach L3 if they follow the guidance their managers have given, an L3 employee is not expected to move levels simply because they have followed their manager’s guidance. An L3 can stay a valuable member of the team without ever moving to L4. Employees who wish to work toward levels beyond L3 are expected to go above and beyond what is expected at their current level, proactively engaging in conversations with their manager about how they can grow beyond their current level.
Moving Up a Level
Promotions are expected to happen faster at lower levels and slower at higher levels because competencies at higher levels are more complex and take longer to demonstrate. An L1 can demonstrate enough competencies to be promoted to L2 in under 2 years, while an L5 could take many years to demonstrate enough competencies to be promoted to L6.
An employee can be recommended for promotion (moving to a higher level, let’s call it L+1) by their manager during a formal review cycle when their manager is confident the employee can consistently demonstrate the L+1’s competencies. This usually means the employee has already exhibited some L+1’s competencies consistently, and their rate of growth extrapolates to predict that they will master a solid set of L+1’s competencies within a year. While the official process to promote an employee is through manager recommendation during a review cycle, an employee who hopes to be promoted is expected to start a conversation with their manager before the review cycle begins. Ideally, the employee should start talking to their manager about how to demonstrate more L+1’s competencies a year before they hope to be promoted.
If a promotion adds significantly different responsibilities, the manager is expected to check with the employee if they desire those responsibilities. An employee can also decline a promotion that will add responsibilities.
Is this helpful information on how to grow to your next level? Does your company use a similar system for its promotion levels? How can this system be improved? I’d love to hear your suggestions and ideas!
