The Path to Senior Product Designer

A practical guide to growing your UX design career

Knowing every Figma trick doesn’t get you promoted. Learn 12 skills that do, like presenting, mentoring, giving feedback, and improving processes.

An industry-backed approach to growth

Based on how more than 50 companies evaluate designers and employees, including Etsy, Medium, Dropbox, Square, Figma, Zendesk, Intercom, and Coursera.

Master the 12 skills by which top companies evaluate UX designers

• Set career goals within six design career paths
• Learn which skills top companies require designers to have at each level
• Build an actionable growth plan to reach your next level
• Improve 12 crucial design skills with actionable frameworks (mentoring, giving feedback, presenting, managing stakeholders, improving processes, etc.)
• Put the above into practice at work to get promoted faster

Get answers to these questions:

• What career options do I have as a designer?
• What career path is right for me?
• What are the steps to reach my career goal?
• How do companies evaluate designers?
• What are my skill levels?
• What competencies should I be working on?
• How do I get a promotion?
• How do I practically improve my skills?

What’s inside

• More than 60 concrete action items on growing your career
• Six templates and canvases for career planning
• Printable PDF canvas for your growth plan
• 14 recommendations for additional resources

Table of Contents

Part I. Set Your Career Goals

1. Design Career Paths

2. Setting Career Goals

3. Why Become a Senior Designer?

Part II. Understand the Career Path

4. Design Titles and Levels

5. Design Competencies

6. Levels of Competency

Part III. Build Your Growth Plan

7. Assess and Prioritize Competencies

8. Design Career Growth Canvas

Part IV. Act on Your Growth Plan

9. Growing Your Impact

10. Tools and Processes (Craft)

11. Communicating Design (Communication)

12. Feedback (Communication)

13. Written and Oral Communication (Communication)

14. Stakeholder Management (Collaboration)

15. Shipping (Ownership)

16. Independence (Ownership)

17. Strategy

18. Mentorship

19. Hiring (Leadership)

20. Culture (Community)

21. Advocacy (Community)

22. Getting Promoted

About the Author

Artiom is a product designer and author based in Berlin and Tel Aviv. For the past 14 years, he has led design at multiple startups, owned a small agency, and worked as a freelancer and consultant.

In the last five years, he has built his own products and published three books, including the Amazon bestseller Solving Product Design Exercises.

The products he built for the design community are used by tens of thousands of designers working at companies like Google, Meta, Airbnb, Netflix, and Boeing.