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Creating a career ladder at Doddle

One of the most critical yet overlooked design leadership challenges is ensuring your team has clarity on how to grow. At Doddle, during a pivotal moment of company expansion, I developed our design career and development ladder from scratch, not as a checkbox exercise, but as a tool to retain talent, scale mindfully, and align our team with the business direction.

In this article, I’ll share why we needed a ladder, how I created it, and what we ended up with—a lightweight yet intentional framework that helped us hire better, grow stronger, and lead with purpose.

Our career ladder has been an essential tool in growing the team from 1 to 7 members and building a design team that met product expectations, ultimately creating a SaaS tool that was acquired by Blue Yonder, the world's largest supply chain company.

Growth without structure is chaos

Messy floor covered in toys
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

When I joined Doddle, I was the only permanent designer. The company was relying on contractors to complete tasks, which is an effective approach for a startup looking to move quickly. However, this model isn’t sustainable for several reasons: contractors often serve mainly as builders and may lack a strategic perspective. As the product develops, it becomes crucial to have more consistency and speed, which can only be provided by an in-house design team.

So, we decided to grow the product team, and I worked hard to mature the perception of design at the executive level beyond just “getting things done.” But we lacked a formal structure to guide that growth.

Designers always have questions:

“How do I progress?”

“What’s expected of me at the next level?”

“How do I know if I’m growing in the right direction?”

At the same time, we were hiring. Without a clear set of expectations and skill markers, interviews were inconsistent. We’d attract great people, but we lacked a common language for what "great" meant for us. We risked losing talent—not just by not hiring the right people, but also by not retaining the ones we already had.

Designing a ladder that fits where you are

Staircase shot from the bottom looking up at a skylight
Shot from the South East London Museum in Peckham

My goal wasn’t to create a 30-page matrix filled with boxes and jargon. I have spent years working with the HR team, and I have seen many documents fail, so I am well aware of what not to do. We weren’t a 10,000-person company, we were a nimble startup. I wanted to create something actionable, flexible, and grounded in reality. Something to support us for the next two years, not forever.

Step 1: Aligning with the business

Before even sketching a framework, I began by speaking with the business.

I asked:

  • Where are we going in the next 2 years?
  • What markets are we focusing on?
  • What kind of products are we aiming to build?
  • How does the design function support that growth?

These conversations helped me pin down what kind of design skills and mindsets we actually needed, not in theory, but in practice. For instance, if our strategy included expanding our B2B offerings, we needed more strategic thinkers who could work with complex systems and influence cross-functional decisions. We also needed to find product-market fit, and therefore, we identified research as a pivotal skill for designers to have, so that they could support product managers accordingly.

Step 2: Researching the landscape

I didn’t start from scratch entirely — there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. I drew inspiration from some fantastic work already out there:

I adapted these ladders to meet our needs, enabling me to establish a common language with the industry, structure, and confidence. However, every choice I made had to align with our culture and team.

Step 3: Making it collaborative

This ladder wasn’t just mine. I brought in the designers early on in 1:1s, group chats, and feedback sessions. I asked:

  • What do you need from a development ladder?
  • What confuses or frustrates you about typical frameworks?
  • What would help you feel more supported in your growth?

By doing this, the ladder wasn’t something done to them, but built with them. It led to better ideas and, crucially, buy-in.

Laying the foundation

Define the baseline principles

Before starting to create a ladder, I felt it was essential to establish a few ground rules to clarify my perspective on product design, its impact, and how it evolves beyond the walls of a design team. I found this to be essential to ensure designers could undertand why we have priorities for specific skills rather than others and how we see everyone progressing in the right direction.

  • Return to first principles
  • Evangelise and influence human-centred design beyond the design team
  • Lead end-to-end product initiatives, no silos
  • Set and drive the design strategy across the organisation

Some good readings that inspired me here:

Peeling back to first principles - Intercom

Why you need design - Mike Monteiro

Inside Figma: the product design team’s process - Noah Levin

Don’t be a gatekeeper - Julie Zhuo

How does systems thinking help design thinking - Santhosh Gandhi

Identify the right skill sets

The result was a career development ladder that provided structure without becoming heavy or prescriptive. It was something we could use for hiring, in 1:1s, and in planning team growth.

We defined five key skill areas that every designer at Doddle, from junior to senior, would be expected to develop in:

1. Communication & Collaboration

Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We work closely with product, engineering, sales, and marketing to understand problems and deliver solutions. Clear, respectful, cross-functional communication is essential.

2. Problem Solving & Strategy

Design is problem solving — but it’s also about knowing which problems to solve. Designers must consider the business context, user needs, and product direction. Strategic thinking is non-negotiable.

3. Research, Data & Validation

Design decisions need to be informed. We work collaboratively to gather insights, conduct research, validate ideas, and iterate frequently. Research isn’t a “phase,” it is a continuous mindset.

4. Craft (UX)

Good design is intentional. We plan our work, use divergent and convergent thinking, and create artefacts that help the team align and move forward. Human-centred design is the baseline, not the goal.

5. Visual Design

We care about the details. We aim for pixel-perfect work, understand when to use established patterns, and know when it’s time to break them. Our visual identity evolves with the product and design system

The Final Framework: simple, streamlined, startup-sized

Using the ladder: not just theory

We immediately started using the ladder in practical ways:

  • Hiring: Every new role was tied to clear expectations. We could articulate what “good” looked like in interviews, not just in skills, but in mindset.
  • Development: Every designer had clarity on how to grow, with regular check-ins and discussions tied back to the framework.
  • Alignment: Product and engineering knew what to expect from design, and we had a shared language for collaboration.

Career ladders can feel daunting, and sometimes unnecessary, especially at a startup. However, I have found them to be a valuable strategic tool. They have helped me grow the team and, more importantly, they allow your people to feel seen, valued, and supported.

At Doddle, our ladder wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t meant to be. It was designed to serve us for the next two years — and it did. It provided us with a foundation for intentional growth while maintaining a light, transparent, and collaborative approach. This framework helped us build the right skills to develop the market's leading returns product, ultimately leading to our acquisition by Blue Yonder.