Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Summary
At some point in your career, you'll likely have to choose between Senior IC and Design Management roles. The manager's path is clear, and the tradeoffs have been well-considered. But what if you don't want to manage others? What if you'd rather continue as an individual contributor? Will you get bored and find your career stalling out? Or is there an IC role that will help you continue to grow? In this panel, we will hear from Staff and Principal Designers who've managed to stay on the IC track while growing their careers. We'll get into some of the day-to-day nitty-gritty of what it means to be a Staff Designer or Principal Designer, and how to make this role a reality within your organization.
Key Insights
-
•
IC design leadership paths are less formalized and often self-defined compared to management tracks.
-
•
Senior designers act as subject matter experts focusing on one area, while staff designers navigate ambiguity and influence cross-functional teams.
-
•
Principal designers take on broader business impact and strategic initiatives aligned with company goals.
-
•
Growth at senior IC levels requires balancing continued craft excellence with strategic leadership and influence.
-
•
Building influence is key and involves strong communication, relationship-building, and aligning design goals with business and user needs.
-
•
Advocating for new IC leadership roles involves collective action, clear problem statements, competitive research, and trial experiments.
-
•
Company size and maturity heavily impact role definitions and expectations between senior, staff, lead, principal, and management roles.
-
•
Effective staff/principal designers spend time shaping roadmaps, driving vision, and ensuring cross-functional buy-in beyond hands-on design.
-
•
Maintaining and evolving design skills (e.g., mastering Figma auto layout) is important even at senior IC levels to remain effective.
-
•
Creating evergreen documents and storytelling frameworks enables asynchronous influence that extends beyond in-person meetings.
Notable Quotes
"I kind of think of it one as like fields of influence — staff influences the team or pillar, principal influences organization-wide."
"If you’re sitting there thinking I need to build out this project and nobody else is saying the same thing, it means you have to do it, period."
"Levels can mean really different things at different companies, so ask a lot of questions about expectations for each level."
"Building influence has been such a challenging part of growing in my own career. It takes a lot of communication and understanding others’ goals."
"Propose new IC roles like a design problem: identify the need, gather research, and try it as an experiment with retrospectives."
"You don’t have to become a manager or director to advance; becoming a principal IC role is equally influential."
"Staff and principal designers need to balance zooming in on execution and zooming out to define strategic vision and minimize risk."
"Keeping your craft sharp, learning new tools like auto layout in Figma, and challenging yourself help maintain relevance."
"Creating evergreen documents enables asynchronous influence — it’s not about being in the room all the time, it’s about having your voice heard."
"The difference between director and principal often lies in whether you’re inspired more by leading people or focused on outputs and craft."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"During roadmapping time, let's bring our roadmaps together and discover synergies."
Brad Peters Anne MamaghaniShort Take #1: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
December 6, 2022
"We constantly collect feedback to improve our community and design practice because iteration is key to impact."
Lona MooreScaling Design Beyond Designers
June 11, 2021
"We can’t design for every possible outcome anymore. We have to anticipate fuzzy ranges of results and channel behavior accordingly."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)
January 15, 2025
"Stakeholders aren’t ready to write their own briefs or manage recruitment, so it ended up being a hybrid model initially."
Erin May Roberta Dombrowski Laura Oxenfeld Brooke HintonDistributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
March 10, 2022
"AI moderation, in short, is a large language model that runs a moderated interview session without a human researcher present."
Tara TresselInvestigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews
March 10, 2026
"If you can't get buy-in for collaboration between engineers and designers, start from the bottom and talk more early and often."
Charles Lee Jennie YipBuilding a New Home for the Atlassian Design System
October 22, 2020
"Data is not just numbers; it tells us the story of student learning."
Kristin SkinnerFive Years of DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"We can all become experts at stuff if we work hard enough – sometimes you have to fake it till you make it."
Megan BlockerGetting to the “So What?”: How Management Consulting Practices Can Transform Your Approach to Research
March 26, 2024
"Shared mental models serve as organizing frameworks that all players in the system can understand and make decisions within."
Shanti Mathew Natalie Sims Natalia RadywylCivic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
December 9, 2021
