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
"Sometimes we have to murder our darlings—let go of favorite parts to let the story or design grow."
Emily EagleCan't Rewind: Radio and Retail
June 3, 2019
"Radically adaptive experiences bend to your current wants and needs, creating unique, unpredictable journeys."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)
January 15, 2025
"Concept maps are the best tool for managing complex webs of objects and relationships in a system."
Robert ReimannTaming Design Complexity with UX Models
June 8, 2017
"We just have kind of a top of the funnel problem, you know, there’s not nearly enough people going into the field because not that many people know it exists."
Bob BaxleyLeading with Design Operations Past and Present
December 19, 2019
"How do we as designers connect more deeply with the policy world? That’s still a developing thing."
Alexandra SchmidtWhy Ethics Can't Save Tech
November 18, 2022
"The seventh generation principle calls for long-term decision making that transcends self-interest."
Jayne Engle Tanya Chung-Tiam-FookCivic Design for the Next Seven Generations—A Discussion on Sacred Civics
August 25, 2022
"We should feel okay to throw away old assumptions and tooling and invent new techniques for this new world."
Peter Van DijckBuilding the Rosenbot
June 4, 2024
"Even offering an 'other' category in gender questions implies the participant deviates from a presumed norm."
Matt Bernius Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Aditi Joshi Alba VillamilLearnings from Applying Trauma-Informed Principles to the Research Process
March 10, 2022
"The only form of ethical persuasion that exists is when the goals of the persuader are aligned with the goals of the persuading."
Craig VillamorDesign Systems for Ethical Design
January 26, 2023
