How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All
Summary
DesignOps takes the lead to author our internal career matrix, so we can objectively and uniformly refresh each discipline, and establish org-wide skills echoed throughout each role. DesignOps at Salesforce is also included within these Career Competencies, allowing for our team to hold more consistent career discussions, and unifying promotions by leveraging the same language when discussing each DesignOps employee. Plus, since DesignOps is seen as a fairly "new" discipline, having it paired alongside more "well-known" disciplines (Designer, UX Engineer), elevates the understanding of our role and skills, and provides a baseline paired alongside our peer's disciplines. There’s great power in language, and the words we choose to use makes an impact. Making conscious efforts on our word choices and communications with one another can affect change at both the individual level as well as team-wide.
Key Insights
-
•
Salesforce’s UX career ladder includes about 180 unique skill attributes for design roles spanning six levels.
-
•
The team deliberately replaced vague terms like soft skills with clear, actionable language such as active listening.
-
•
Removing gender-coded language helped create more equitable and appealing career progression criteria.
-
•
Relationship design, a new DEI skill category, was added for all UX disciplines to highlight how work is done, not just what is done.
-
•
Relationship design consists of four interconnected mindsets: courage, compassion, intention, and reciprocity.
-
•
Senior UX employees are expected to hold difficult conversations, mentor others, and recognize power dynamics as part of relationship design.
-
•
The career competencies are tools for conversation, not strict checklists for promotion or scoring.
-
•
The competency updates were achieved over three years through an iterative and collaborative process involving volunteers across disciplines.
-
•
Education and adoption relied on resource guides, live walkthroughs, manager panels, and repeated organizational communication.
-
•
Salesforce’s UX career competencies map to broader company-wide competencies but remain tailored for UX-specific roles.
Notable Quotes
"Soft skills doesn’t always represent active listening, so we updated to be more specific."
"We wanted to be aware of extraversion, so words like energy were changed to initiative to not favor personality types."
"Gender-coded words influence someone’s decision to apply and feel they belong even within internal career ladders."
"Relationship design is not just what you do but how you do it, focusing on building relationships with customers, employees, and community."
"For early career UXers, compassion could be as simple as expressing gratitude for help."
"Senior employees should hold difficult conversations questioning processes that may be harmful to others."
"This is not a checklist or promotion tool; you don’t have to excel in everything to grow."
"If something was unclear or uncomfortable to even one person, it was a sign it needed editing."
"The competencies allow managers to celebrate individualism while maintaining consistency across teams."
"Adding inclusivity to the career ladder took three years and this is still a living document with room for change."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Retrofitting accessibility at a later date is difficult, costly, and demoralizing."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
September 8, 2022
"Many organizations have output-based performance plans but are not incentivized to achieve outcomes."
Shreya Dhawan Victor Udoewa Xènia Viladas Florian VollmerMaking service tangible: the fastest path to higher performance
November 19, 2025
"Unlike a human operator, AI cannot get tired or struggle to maintain the illusion of automation."
Daniel Korczynski Justyna ParmeeFrom generic to contextual research insights with AI | Live Q&A
March 11, 2026
"You can’t just break apart these components and type; instead, you change their properties to adjust labels, colors, or icons."
Jack BeharHow to Build Prototypes that Behave like an End-Product
December 6, 2022
"Collaboration is much more than creating a meeting or structure; if there’s no trust and respect, people won’t show up."
Jemma Ahmed Subhasree Chatterjee Robert Fabricant Alexandra Jayeun Lee Ben RobinsCollaboration: learning from other fields beyond our own [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
August 7, 2024
"Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging goals need to tie into annual reviews and bonuses—it's everybody’s work."
Lisanne NormanWhy I Left Research
March 27, 2023
"There are 500 plus people in the audience today, all deeply caring about their teams."
Kristin SkinnerTheme 2: Introduction and Provocation
January 8, 2024
"The term program manager in this field is used in two very different ways – managing a portfolio of products or managing a program initiative."
Abbey SmalleyToday’s Design Ops and Programs Landscape & Career Paths
October 4, 2023
"People who understand the problem best are set up to do the best work."
Sheryl CababaLiving in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset
June 6, 2023
