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
"User research is interdisciplinary; only two thirds of people who do research describe their job as primarily research."
JP Allen Holly HoldenNavigating the UX Tools Landscape
October 1, 2021
"Hold your destination in mind. Have an intention to succeed. Break up the long tracks and brace for the hard parts."
John CalhounHave we Reached Our Peak? Spotting the Next Mountain For DesignOps to Climb
October 1, 2021
"The intellectually honest answer to most questions about information architecture is, I’m not sure, or it depends."
Sarah BarrettThe "How" of Enterprise Information Architecture
June 6, 2023
"Paradigm shifts depend on how a problem is described and who controls the narratives and beliefs."
Meghan BausoneSystems Thinking and Design Innovation: Working with Leverage Points in Rural Maternal Health Systems
April 17, 2026
"Information experience needs wayfinding so people can find and use data easily."
Sarah CoyleDesign and Analytics with Sarah Coyle
July 30, 2020
"Kristen wrote the book Design of Orgs for Design Orgs and her experience partly informed this canvas."
Dave GrayGroup Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps
November 7, 2017
"We have to make good data-informed decisions before plowing ahead with something just because it’s exciting."
World Usability Day Panel Discussion
November 10, 2022
"Cultural intelligence could be embedded as a core functionality in product development rather than static culture playbooks."
Sharon Banh Dave Hora Marieke McCloskey Alicia ZhongReimagining research: What does the field need to grow? [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
October 16, 2024
"Communicating as a proxy for a senior leader taught me how to tailor messages for different audiences."
Lisa GirondaOpener: Chief of Staff–An unexpected journey
January 8, 2024
