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
"People like innovation but hate change because change feels personal and threatening."
Ryan RumseyBusiness Influence Without Losing Your Soul
January 14, 2021
"Real estate is like the Wild West. It’s very mature but also very unstructured and full of freedom."
Ashley SewallExit Interview #5: Designing My Life After Tech
February 19, 2026
"Knowing your teammates personally helps in remote settings, especially for encouraging shy or quiet engineers to engage."
Iain McMaster IHan ChengDesign and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony
November 29, 2023
"Only 33% of businesses conduct research throughout the whole product lifecycle to inform product and business decisions."
Dr Chloe SharpUsing Evidence and Collaboration for Setting and Defending Priorities
November 29, 2023
"There aren't learned enough experts; we are still in that nebula trying to figure out how to become a star."
Dave Malouf Meredith Black Farid SabitovThe Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1)
February 17, 2022
"Cultural differences mean improv expectations vary widely—what works in the U.S. might not in Italy or Africa."
Cheryl PlatzMerging Improv with Design
March 7, 2019
"Empathy sticks with you; if I tell you an inspirational story about what a customer has done, you’ll remember it."
Ross SmithBreaking Barriers with Empathy
June 9, 2017
"I want to look at the discussion guides or listen to recordings to really get the emotional context."
Mike Oren Janice WiitalaDesign Research Strategy & Strategic Design Research
February 3, 2022
"2020 was challenging but joyful; it was a place where people could be authentic and talk about burnout and attrition."
Kristin SkinnerTheme 1 Intro
September 29, 2021
