Carving a Path for Early Career DesignOps Practitioners
Summary
DesignOps as a discipline offers career opportunities for people of many different backgrounds. This is true even for those who are just getting started and may have little to no professional experience. At Salesforce, we create unique opportunities to support, inspire, and guide new employees towards meaningful DesignOps careers. In this talk, we’ll share our experiences and best practices for newcomers, including a special look at our DesignOps internship program.
Key Insights
-
•
Design ops teams have grown 20-24% yearly, yet junior roles comprise only about 1%, indicating a gap in early-career hiring.
-
•
Most design ops practitioners come from related fields like project management or marketing, often with years of transferable experience.
-
•
Salesforce actively sources design ops interns and entry-level practitioners to diversify and grow its talent pool.
-
•
Junior design ops roles are financially more feasible and can help scale teams without large budget increases.
-
•
Entry-level design ops roles vary from interns to contractors to full-time junior hires, each with different expectations and commitments.
-
•
Interns Mariana and Liza successfully delivered projects spanning program management, meeting facilitation, internal communications, and event support.
-
•
Onboarding junior practitioners requires deliberate preparation: equipment, access, clear expectations, and introductions to key people.
-
•
Regular, honest communication and mentoring are crucial to uncover interests, build skills, and foster growth for new practitioners.
-
•
Building networks through cross-team one-on-ones and external communities accelerates new practitioners’ learning and career development.
-
•
Investing time in junior practitioners benefits managers too, offering fresh perspectives and opportunities for personal growth.
Notable Quotes
"Design Ops teams exist in nearly all industries and for all design functions, growing rapidly year over year."
"Junior roles represent only one percent of design ops roles, raising the question if we are missing opportunities to cultivate new talent."
"These brand new practitioners can bring fresh perspectives and new ways of thinking to hopefully see current problems in a new light."
"Investing in teaching from the ground up helps grow the design ops discipline for the future."
"Preparation is critical to set up new practitioners for success, including equipment, access, expectations, and introductions."
"Regular face time, honest conversations, and working sessions help keep connection and momentum with new practitioners."
"I don’t know what I don’t know – new practitioners may not even realize what questions to ask at first."
"Building a network early can create amazing opportunities further along the career path."
"Mentors from different teams provide valuable feedback, collaboration, and career guidance to new practitioners."
"It’s okay if these junior roles are short term; they help get started and expand the overall design ops talent pool."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"It’s about us, the design ops practitioners, and what we need today to be better at our jobs."
Bria AlexanderTheme Two Intro
October 3, 2023
"Survival can feel like a roller coaster with big energy spikes and drops, often leaving us completely depleted."
Ariba JahanTeam Resiliency Through a Pandemic
January 8, 2024
"While the majority of design happens in the lower half of this scale, we create gaps at the higher, systemic levels that we must address."
Cornelius RachieruHandling Complexity: Framing a Scale of Design
June 9, 2021
"Making accessibility a shared activity turns it into a team effort, involving co-workers, stakeholders, and customers."
Megan Clegg Michael Haggerty-Villa Alexis MorinSpace for Everyone: Reframing Accessibility Through a Wider Lens
June 10, 2021
"Map tours are my favorite thing—taking a new hire on a guided walk of the entire community."
Saara Kamppari-MillerCartography for Design Communities
September 10, 2025
"Design ideas come back around again and again, waiting for leadership or new contexts to take root."
Kara KaneTheme One Intro
November 16, 2022
"The system had catastrophically failed to live up to expert expectations and was underprepared for future challenges."
Natalia RadywylCo-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
November 16, 2022
"If you put garbage in, garbage comes out – AI reflects the biases in its training data."
Nancy DouyonWe'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex
June 15, 2018
"Building generative AI tools is not scary, it’s just very different from the last 20 years of building products."
Peter Van DijckBuilding the Rosenbot
June 4, 2024