What comes after Senior UX Designer? Manager or Super Senior Individual Contributor?
If you are a Senior UX Designer you probably asked yourself how you will progress in your career. A well known career path is becoming a manager. Another one is continuing to be an individual contributor (IC). For Crowdhouse I did research about this topic and want to share my findings here.
When should you become a manager and when should you continue on the individual contributor path?
Become a manager if you:
Love helping people grow in their careers.
Don’t need to do hands-on design work often (or ever again).
Are excited by the idea of designing and growing a team of people who are different from you.
Have the availability to take on emotional labor and want to spend energy making others’ lives better.
Source: Should you become a design manager? | by Catt Small | Asana Design
See also this description of What makes a great manager.
Continue on the individual contributor path if you:
Love the idea that you can have more impact by not directly designing but helping others to design better
Are excited to work on more strategic projects across teams directly together with higher executives
Don’t like the responsibilities that can come with being a manager like headcount, hiring, politics, managing up/down and across.
You can also be a manager and an individual contributor at the same time. There are principals which still have less than 10 senior direct reports below them.
What is the main difference between a Senior and higher IC-levels?
A Senior is focused on his product/team. To get to a higher level you need to show that your work has influence across products/teams. The higher up you go, the more impact your work should have on the wider organization.
Some examples how to scale your impact across products/teams:
Create tools that help people get insights without SQL-knowledge
Create documentation (e.g. checklists for workshops, so that others can also do them)
Work on a design system
Some sources also say that hard skills and soft skills should grow as you progress in the levels.
What are some of the IC-level names above Senior?
Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner call these levels above Senior “Super Senior Individual Contributor”. Typical level names are:
Staff
Lead
Senior Staff
Principal
When can it make sense to have a Super Senior Individual Contributor?
The size of the company does not really matter. There are small companies (20 to 50 employees) who have principals.
When the design manager finds that they’re spending all of their time focused on their people (managing down) or cross-functional relationships (managing across), and have little time left for strategic or creative leadership (typically the case when they have 10-20 reports). Source: Emerging role in design orgs: The Super Senior Individual Contributor (Principal Designer, Design Architect)
When the company sees that that strategic projects are not getting done, because they are side-projects and designers working in teams don’t find time for them
Interesting ressources/links about this topic
Leadership Without Management: Expanding our Product Design Career Path - Inside Intercom: Good overview of how intercom defines the levels:
https://staff.design: Good interviews with designers who went the individual contributor career path and links to more ressources.
Should you become a design manager? | by Catt Small | Asana Design | Oct, 2021 : Very helpful article that tells why you should become a manager or why not.
Emerging role in design orgs: The Super Senior Individual Contributor (Principal Designer, Design Architect): Good article by Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner
Individual contributor designers are cross-functional leaders | by Caio Braga: Principals use systems thinking to ensure their work can have far-reaching impact
Example level descriptions:
Product designer job levels at Intercom
Design Team Levels Framework by Peter Merholz (Originally for Snagajob Design)
A Product Design Career Guide for Individual Contributors
Designer Levels: The Individual Contributor and Manager Tracks – Marissa Louie
Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework - GOV.UK
From Where do IC designers go once they peak? — Tanner Christensen :
BuzzFeed product design roles
Basecamp titles for designers
Buffer level and step placement guide
GitLab product designer roles
Clearleft development framework
Gov.uk graphic designer roles
Zendesk Product Design Career Paths
From Staff Design · Resources :
Figma Product Design Ladder
Mixmax Product Design Leveling Matrix – 2020
Product Designer Kit
Design org at Unacademy · Hardik Pandya
Obvious Growth Rubric
Do you have questions or inputs? Write them in the comments below.












