Design career
framework

Supports the team by writing basic interface text, learning content standards, and improving writing skills under close guidance.

Owns end-to-end content for one feature or a small flow with moderate ambiguity. Scope is agreed with PM/design lead.

Owns content across a full user journey or a small product area, spanning multiple related features.

Owns content strategy for an entire product area (multiple journeys)

Owns content strategy for an entire product area (multiple journeys), including cross-team dependencies.

Operates at product or company level across multiple domains

Owns content scope and strategy across the whole team's product surface. Decides what the team should and shouldn't take on, balancing capacity against business needs.

Owns the design organization across the product or company

Apprentice, executor, hands-on. Performs simple tasks. Requires attention, mentoring, and double-checking. Creates additional workload for senior colleagues.

Junior, assistant, executor, hands-on. Performs simple and moderate tasks or part of a bigger task. Requires commitment and supervision. Creates additional workload for senior colleagues. Strives for development and independence.

Works almost always independently. Invites senior colleagues to reviews, demos, and when assistance is needed.

Works independently. Performs guideline and strategy level copy review as required.

Autonomous across multiple areas or company-wide initiatives. Defines problems before being asked to solve them.

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Autonomous in running the team and its strategy. Exercises judgment on what to escalate to their own manager versus decide themselves.

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Improves usability of individual screens/flows (e.g. error states, onboarding steps) with direct guidance. Impact is local and task-level.

- Delivers features as part of broader product initiatives - Contributes to improvements in UX metrics - Begins to understand how their work connects to product metrics

- Leads content for features or initiatives within a product area - Improves UX metrics within their scope - Aligns their work with product goals and team priorities - Begins to consider expected impact when making design decisions

- Drives content decisions that move product metrics (activation, retention, conversion) for a full journey, partnering with PM/research to validate impact. - Makes decisions based on expected impact - Can clearly demonstrate how their work affects product metrics

- Transforms business request into clearly defined product initiatives and scopes them independently - Shapes product strategy through content — surfaces user problems research alone might miss, and influences roadmap prioritization for a product area. - Identifies opportunities that influence key UX and product metrics - Prioritizes work based on expected business and user impact - Consistently delivers measurable improvements at scale

*Leads design initiatives end-to-end across product areas and platforms within a stream *Defines and drives local design strategy and backlog for their stream * Proposes and drives high-impact design initiatives * Ensures initiatives directly influence key product metrics * Can demonstrate measurable product impact from their initiatives * Aligns design initiatives with product and business strategy

- Ensures the team's collective work ties to business/product OKRs, represents content's impact to leadership, and prioritizes team effort toward the highest-impact work. - Ensures team initiatives are aligned with UX and product metrics - Proposes content initiatives that contribute to product metrics - Helps content designers define success metrics and evaluate outcomes

— Defines design strategy aligned with product and business goals — Ensures design initiatives contribute to key product metrics – Establishes a system where design impact is consistently tracked and evaluated — Aligns design, product, and business priorities at leadership level

Texts Writes copy for small product formats independently and sends it to a senior colleague for review. Guidelines - Follows the existing style guide and content guidelines. - Flags inconsistencies or gaps to a senior teammate. Localisation - Writes source text with basic localisation hygiene (avoids idioms, culture-specific references) with guidance. - Flags translation issues when spotted. - Works in Lokalise. - Merges branches with the help of a senior colleagues.

Texts - Can write any text for the product (errors, success screens, push notifications, SMS). Sends them to a senior colleague for review. - Can also write marketing or support copy. Guidelines - Suggests changes to guidelines. - Applies guidelines consistently across their own work. - Proposes small additions or clarifications (e.g. a copy pattern for a new component). Localisation - Writes source text that's straightforward to localise (avoids concatenation, accounts for pluralization and character limits). - Uses branching in Lokalise to prevent new keys from merging into the main project until they are 100% ready. - Manages localisation projects, creates tasks for translators, and reviews keys after analytics.

Texts - Writes all copy for the products they're responsible for. Text holds up under edge cases and localisation. - Improves information architecture for clarity. Guidelines - Gathers feedback, conducts research, and makes guideline changes. - Creates templates or small guides for team use. - Authors guidelines for a specific pattern or component (e.g. empty states, notifications) and drives adoption within their area. Localisation - Proactively designs content for localisation constraints (RTL, string-length variance, gendered language) across a journey. - Partners with localisation to resolve recurring issues.

Texts - Writes all copy for the product and other teams as needed. - Can independently write any text for the product, marketing, or other team. - Suggests and documents new content patterns Guidelines - Owns and maintains guidelines for a product area. - Identifies systemic gaps and drives updates that other writers rely on. Localisation - Works closely with the localisation manager to provide copy adapted for localisation - Resolves complex localisation issues and optimizes workflows within the Lokalise platform with the help of engineering.

Texts - Reviews copy for logic and compliance with principles. - Solves hard content problems (complex logic, sensitive topics) that others escalate to them - Reviews texts sent by juniors for logic, typography, and hygiene. - Defines how content contributes to product success. Guidelines - Owns cross-product guidelines and the voice & tone system. - Guidelines they create or approve become company standard. Localisation - Sets localisation-readiness standards for a product area.

Systems Thinking Defines and evolves system architecture for scalable design Creates frameworks enabling reuse across the organization Aligns teams around shared design principles UX & Interaction Defines principles and frameworks for interaction design Establishes standards for handling complexity and edge cases Drives consistency across the entire product ecosystem Visual Design Sets direction for visual systems and brand expression Defines scalable visual frameworks, tokens, and patterns Drives excellence in clarity, consistency, and craft at scale

Texts - Ensures teams use and contribute to shared design systems - Facilitates alignment on reusable solutions across teams - Helps teams avoid fragmentation and duplication -Immersed in the business, and understands the needs of the brand in developing existing systems and creating new ones. - Ensures the team's text output meets the quality bar through review and coaching rather than writing everything personally. Ensures all copy and content for critical, high-visibility launches meets the highest standard Guidelines - Ensures the team has, maintains, and follows a coherent guideline system. - Resolves guideline conflicts and represents content standards in company-wide design/brand governance. Localisation Ensures the team's output meets localisation standards at scale. Owns the relationship with localisation/i18n stakeholders and allocates team resources to localisation quality.

Systems Thinking Defines strategy for design systems and scalability Ensures consistency across products and domains Aligns teams around shared architectural principles UX & Interaction Sets standards for UX quality across the organization Ensures consistency across the full user journey Drives alignment on experience strategy Visual Design Defines vision for visual design at company level Ensures scalable and consistent brand expression Maintains high craft standards across all teams Craft Enablement Builds systems, tools, and processes for design at scale Establishes org-wide quality standards and rituals Enables teams to deliver consistent, high-quality design independently

No formal leadership expected. May share learnings or feedback with peers informally.

- Focuses on working on small tasks, but is responsible for the output - Can maintain text consistency for one scenario. - Works on ongoing tasks, more tactical. No strategy ownership.

- Responsible for the copy of the scenarios they work on. May also contribute to CX communications or marketing communications. - Ensures consistency across 1-2 scenarios. - Works on ongoing tasks, more tactical. - Shares knowledge and supports peers through feedback. - Contributes to team discussions and decision-making. - Helps improve team practices within their scope.

- Leads content design competency within their product team - Supports marketing teams as needed. - Maintains product consistency. - Contributes to hiring (interviews) and helps shape team-level strategy alongside the lead.

- Acts as the Content Design expert across content designers - Suggests ways to improve communications, focusing on long-term goals. Ensures alignment with the product strategy. - Considers product, marketing, and brand strategies when working on tasks.

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- Owns team strategy end-to-end, balancing people management with staying credible as a practitioner. - Acts as a leader for the team and ensures strong content design and localisation direction - Builds and develops a high-performing team - Provides clear direction, feedback, and support to direct reports - Establishes strong team practices and ways of working - Ensures consistent content design and localisation quality across the team - Creates an environment where teammembers can grow and succeed

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- Delivers reliable, on-time, on-voice content for assigned tasks, with growing independence and craft quality. - Completed a part or all of the task without constant supervision.

- Successfully delivers small features end-to-end. - Contributes small improvements to team practices. - Improves usability and UX quality within their scope. - Contributes to team delivery with minimal rework.

- Delivers features or small initiatives with clear improvements in UX metrics. - Produces solutions that are consistent and reusable within their product area. - Contributes to measurable improvements at feature level. Seen as a dependable senior-track contributor.

- Delivers initiatives with measurable impact on UX and product metrics. - Can demonstrate how their work improved product performance. Recognized cross-functionally as a go-to expert.

- Delivers large initiatives with significant impact across product areas. - Consistently drives measurable improvements in key product metrics. - Achieves outcomes that scale across teams or domains. Recognized as a top-tier IC

* Delivers high-impact initiatives that influence product strategy * Drives measurable outcomes at product or company level * Creates impact through initiatives adopted across the organization

- Team consistently ships high-quality, high-impact content. - Team initiatives contribute to UX and product metrics. - Content designers in the team grow in ownership, impact, and quality. - Team operates effectively with clear processes and alignment. - Content design is represented effectively in company strategy and planning.

* Design organization delivers consistent impact on product metrics * Design initiatives contribute to company-level product goals * Strong design culture and quality are visible across teams * Organization operates effectively at scale