User Experience Engineering
Career Ramp

Preface

The following are competencies that can be used to hire or as a planning guide for career advancement in an active organization. Having open conversations and investing in the careers of your team is one of the best ways to keep employees engaged.

If used as a career planning or feedback guide, set the stage that this is not a promotion checklist but a starting point for an ongoing conversation about what an individual contributor is doing and what they can do to meet their career goals.

Entry-level

This is someone with minimal experience although you could have some experience in a specific craft such as design or engineering.

Maturity and diplomacy

Even at entry level you should be able to develop positive, productive relationships in your company that encourage collaboration and discussion. What does this look like?

  • When collaborating, you consider and build on teammates’ ideas and suggestions.

  • On projects, you react to organizational changes with understanding and stay productive, constructive, and engaged.

  • You earn your teammates’ respect, you have positive interpersonal skills, and you take their working styles into account to achieve results.

  • You regularly consult with your team members about projects and processes. You investigate and learn from your team’s previous projects.

  • You can deal with stressful situations.

Problem solving and learning mentality

You craft quick, effective solutions to customer problems across various mediums, environments, and audiences.

  • You can distill a problem to its essence, then use well-defined systems and techniques to lead others to an appropriate solution.

  • Rather than jumping straight into solutions, you analyze a problem to its appropriate depth.

  • You can work cross-functionally with people in other disciplines

  • You are ready to learn and accept constructive criticism.

  • You listen effectively and ask thoughtful questions.

  • You seek out relevant training opportunities.

Communication skills

Building on maturity and diplomacy, communicating effectively with internal partners and vendors is key to building software as part of a team. Communicating effectively across organizational, technical and political boundaries will be key in any career, but especially cross-functional ones.

  • You are able to understand directions and give clear feedback.

  • You provide your team with clear updates on work, needs, and day-to-day matters as needed.

  • You can clearly and concisely articulate project criteria, content, and possible problems–with limited jargon.

  • You can communicate effectively and respectfully both in person and virtually.

  • You show good judgment on when to escalate issues to leadership.

  • You can communicate the appropriate information to your project partners that they need–at the level of detail that they need.

  • You can contribute to a shared presentation, collect stakeholder inputs, and deliver content for a particular presentation section.

  • You can tailor a message and style to an audience and tell a story effectively.

Relationship-building

Building software for an organization is primarily about people. You should value building relationships with other employees and your community.

  • You regularly express public and private gratitude and appreciation to those who help you and your team.

  • You are open to exploring challenging things, even when failure is possible. You can learn from your mistakes and share lessons learned.

  • You respond proactively to a challenge.

  • Your words and actions are consistent. You follow through on your commitments.

Standards and technology - Level One

You are familiar with the company’s technology stack and can contribute to features and fixes.

  • You know HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript fundamentals.

  • You can write clean semantic markup that follows web standards and best practices.

  • You understand cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device compatibility.

  • Can work out solutions to a problem with real code examples, while demonstrating both critical thinking and design thinking skills.

  • You have solid debugging skills and can use tools to quickly diagnose issues.

  • You can contribute to accessible interactions.

  • You can pair programs with other engineers to learn about concepts and best practices.

  • You regularly involve other engineers in code design decisions and validate them ahead of time

Senior-level

You have a fair number of years experience in a related field. You are primary expert/owner of at least one area of the solution. You are often seen as a tech lead for initiatives you are involved in.

Consulting

Gives project partners the guidance they need to deliver successful projects and programs.

  • You have a clear point of view and can communicate it well.

  • You demonstrate ownership and collaboration with partners to build, revise, or develop planning tools, such as project briefs or Objectives and Key Results (OKR), for short-term or long-term projects.

  • You proactively manage expectations and negotiate timeline and scope changes as needed.

  • You adjust your working style to match your project partners' needs and expectations as well as the working environment especially when collaborating virtually.

  • You can communicate project issues using clear terminology that everyone can understand.

  • As a team leader, you often help your partners understand your team's processes and how they relate to the larger organization's processes.

Problem Solving

You are a problem solver. You can distill and reframe a problem. You can define a framework for resolving it.

  • You can identify similarities in problems and draw on connections to craft effective solutions to them. You can distinguish between critical and minor issues. You can break down larger problems into manageable parts.

  • You can quickly produce multiple solutions and characterize their strengths and weaknesses.

  • You can creatively reframe questions to move towards solutions that meet larger business goals.

  • You seek out solutions to less well-defined problems, including some for which you have hardly any prior experience.

  • You work proactively with other groups to effect change. You can ramp up quickly when joining projects.

  • You can see the risks and limitations of proposed solutions. You can assess the magnitude of a risk and identify ways to deal with it.

Leadership

Effectively leads project work, ensuring on-time project delivery when working with both onsite and distributed team members.

  • To complete a project on time, you are able to define and manage deliverables, working with other team members.

  • You use project funds responsibly, including securing budget approval and tracking expenses accurately.

  • Is decisive when needed, with a bias toward action despite ambiguity.

  • Leads stakeholder discussions; shares knowledge and best practices.

  • Plans, runs, and manages an effective project kickoff event.

  • Strives to find novel applications for existing technologies.

Relationship-Building - Level One

You drive business and social value across the organization and build valued relationships with customers, employees, and your community.

  • You demonstrate empathy for partners, seeking to understand their needs and contextualize feedback from their points of view.

  • You build relationships that extend beyond project-driven interactions, using conversation and active listening to deepen connections with partners.

  • You consider worst-case scenarios, including how project or product decisions could cause unintended harm and exclude some stakeholders.

  • You actively work on team, organization, or company cultural initiatives. You celebrate group successes and share team knowledge.

Standards and Technology - Level Two

You have proven experience in program management at the product level. You can contribute to making software accessible at a product level.

  • You understand existing design patterns and conventions, and can articulate rationales for their use.

  • You understand web services consumption.

  • You understand responsive and adaptive layouts.

  • You can use object-oriented or functional JavaScript where appropriate and navigate most modern JavaScript render libraries.

Code Quality - Level Two

Has a thorough understanding of code quality standards and can write tests.

  • You contribute to ongoing discussions around code quality standards.

  • You contribute thoughtful feedback to code reviews. Is seen as a skilled and knowledgeable pair programming partner.

  • You can maintain existing code and diagnose issues.

  • You have a deep understanding of testing, including basic test suite organization and setup.

  • You understand the core concepts of web accessibility and how to write accessible interfaces.

Code Quality - Level Three

Produces high-quality code, with robust testing across devices and displays.

  • You leads code reviews in a group setting, if needed

  • You adjust your feedback style to match co-workers' knowledge and communication styles.

  • You regularly pair program and mentor other engineers on code quality best practices.

  • You can build and maintain any necessary team product or web services.

  • You can articulate relevant test rationales at the suite level.

Technical Influence & Outreach - Level One

You educate others within the company.

  • You respond quickly to incoming questions and answer or escalate as appropriate.

  • You can effectively prioritize both incoming requests and active sprint work.

  • Whatever the channel or audience, you display the company’s values in all communications.

  • You communicate across groups to find relevant posts, books, brown bags, and other learning opportunities.

  • You seek out internal and external learning opportunities for your teammates.

Lead / Staff

This is someone who is a key member of the staff and is an early strategist on new initiatives–if not generating them. This person can communicate effectively with any part of the organization and understand what other departments value.

Leadership

Demonstrates behavior, attitudes, actions, and judgment that inspire employees to follow you and other leaders to trust you.

  • You show initiative by projecting confidence and direction that inspires respect from your team.

  • Through active partnership and collaboration, you advocate for your team members.

  • You proactively coordinate brainstorming and ideation sessions and maximize the value of limited project time you and your partners have.

  • You show understanding of project sequencing and approach, including project management, reviews, and quality deliverables.

  • You facilitate growth opportunities for team members.

  • You propose improvements to existing processes that increase alignment and efficiency.

  • You invest in your own development and help team members develop through coaching, mentoring, and educational opportunities. You advocate for team goals.

Presentation

Crafts and delivers presentations that communicate clear ideas, persuade audiences, and influence senior leadership.

  • You deliver complex, well-thought-out presentations with clear, compelling storylines. Uses inclusive presentation resources.

  • With little preparation, you can accurately present existing presentations within their business unit or discipline, or those they have authored.

  • When presenting to an audience, you use body language, tone of voice, inflection, and pacing to convey the merits of an idea.

  • While tactically guiding focus to the brief, you embrace feedback and invite multiple perspectives.

Relationship Building - Level Two

You drive business and social value across the organization and build valued relationships with customers, employees, and your community.

  • You facilitate difficult conversations about worst-case scenarios and can question projects, processes, and assumptions that may harm others.

  • You strive beyond management expectations to lead team, organization, or company cultural initiatives. You share team knowledge with the larger organization. You promote and publicize group success.

Systems Thinking - Level One

You understand how multiple technologies compose systems, and how technology trade offs affect them.

  • You can make design decisions and determine which technologies are most appropriate to each project.

  • You can determine objectives and approaches to critical assignments with minimal guidance.

Technical Influence and Outreach - Level two

Demonstrates ownership of internal project education. Has expert knowledge of web standards; has delivered multiple projects following best practices and industry standards.

  • You know semantic markup and how to make accessible interfaces end-to-end.

  • You specialize in mobile-first web development.

  • You mentor other engineers in responsive mobile development.

  • You drive education initiatives such as brown bags, blog posts, and Slack updates.

  • You facilitate feedback, tactfully directing discussion back to business requirements and how well concepts meet the brief.

Problem Solving

You anticipate problems and initiates proactive resolutions. You steer projects to avoid problems, with actions based on clear reasoning.

  • Is involved in the early stages of projects, initiatives, and campaigns, acting as a trusted advisor and influencer.

Connecting the greater business

You see beyond tasks, code, and your immediate team in order to puts the collective good of the company first.

  • You regularly spur innovation, increasing efficiency or inspiring innovations in products, processes, or workflows.

  • You confidently convey the competitive value of the business, its solutions, and Systems Thinking - Level One

  • You understand how multiple technologies compose systems, and how technology tradeoffs affect them and differentiate them from competitors.

  • You understand the company’s product portfolio, including where user interaction patterns can be consolidated. You also understand the value of various product design teams or features being "greater than the sum of their parts" when paired together.

  • You can represent your team and convey the company's value to users, customers, research participants, and new hires.

  • You can bring in outside perspectives on thoughts, tools, and trends that add value to how we work at the company.

  • You understand internal processes and partner groups' values. You can engage with human resources, finance, procurement, marketing, and other teams.

Architect / Executive

This person has the vision and can execute on that vision and is known in the industry as a trusted leader.

Consulting

You provide partners and stakeholders with the guidance they need to deliver successful strategic initiatives.

  • You have established a leadership role and can assembles multiple stakeholders, aligns them around a goal or idea, and see the resulting project through to completion. You take initiative, seeking insight from beyond your direct working group. You can easily draw on relationships across lines of business.

  • You can overcomes obstacles to resolve problems, both within and outside established processes. You draw on tactical and strategic negotiation skills to work though differing perspectives and priorities from stakeholders.

  • You regularly publicizes successful projects and enhance stakeholders' careers and reputations. You share project learnings back to the business.

Vision

You have a clear vision of future possibilities, and can communicate that vision effectively to others.

  • You have a perspective on how things "should be," and can communicate that perspective effectively to others.

  • You can generate big ideas—novel concepts that can be owned and implemented by your department or the greater business.

  • You bring ideas and opportunities together in ways beyond the obvious. You can communicate innovative approaches to a range of stakeholders from different disciplines.

  • You build and champion your discipline and the company’s long range plans. When an emerging business need arises, you help your team pivot and manage change appropriately.

Relationship Building - Level Three

You can champion the usability and accessibility by driving business and social value across the organization and building quality relationships with customers, employees, and your community.

  • You conduct focused discussions as conversations rather than lectures. You can employ tactical negotiation skills to work from different perspectives.

  • You challenge the organization to think and act optimistically, achieve desired outcomes, and approach unknowns and ill-defined challenges with confidence rather than defeat.

  • You can identify, communicate, and respond to unspoken needs within the organization.

  • You amplify ethical decisions and can push back on work that may be harmful to customers. 

  • You look beyond project-driven interactions to build meaningful ongoing relationships with external stakeholders.

  • You can build stakeholder trust by demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of project briefs and expectations.

  • You understand the unspoken needs of business stakeholders, using them to inform design projects that generate significant value.

  • You model giving and receiving constructive feedback and don’t avoid difficult conversations.

  • You can use your power within the organization to elevate others’ voices.

  • You serves employees, customers, and the community with minimal focus on ego or benefits to oneself.

Trusted Relationships

You demonstrate ownership, consistent communication, and the active listening needed to build strong, trusting relationships.

  • Manages engagement and expectations across internal and external partners and stakeholders.

  • Earns trust by demonstrating comprehensive understanding of project briefs and expectations.

  • Communicates clearly throughout a project. Responds quickly and intelligently to inquiries. Proactively communicates timeline and scope changes. Delivers on commitments.

  • Successfully manages conflict and communication challenges, using interpersonal skills to build trust in addition to professional channels.

  • Builds rapport with internal partners to deepen trust outside of typical transactional project communications.

  • Works with recruiting to identify and hire world-class candidates from diverse backgrounds, and to bring them on board smoothly and effectively.

Systems Thinking - Level Two

You expertly architect major products or solutions across multiple systems, meeting or exceeding all technical and business constraints and metrics.

  • Ensures that architecture is efficient, scalable, and integrated across systems.

  • Understands and takes into account how decisions will affect team technical strategy, cloud priority, and company success.

  • Partners with senior product managers to help shape the product roadmap.

  • Helps lead delivery of major products or technical solutions. Can anticipate and mitigate potential release blocks and customer issues.

Technical Influence & Outreach - Level Three

You have advanced competency with web technology stack used at the company; contributes to high-level technical decisions. You actively create learning opportunities for the business unit.

  • You set code quality standards and testing strategy for a business unit.

  • You understands both new and existing design patterns and conventions, and can articulate rationales for changes to them.

  • You can finds speakers, organizes book clubs, curates training, brings discussion topics, or in other ways creates group learning opportunities.

  • You engages with the external engineering community through activities such as social media interaction, blog posts, conference talks, and participation in external open-source projects.

  • Communicates rationales and evangelizes practices outside your business unit’s engineering teams.

  • Contributes or has contributed to a web standards body.

  • Has a deep knowledge of web technology, including full-stack concepts.

  • You bring external industry knowledge to bear internally. You distribute this knowledge appropriately and are the go-to person internally for some industry questions.

  • You represents the company in industry-wide discussions, online or at conferences. You serve on an industry working groups or standards committees. You are a core contributor to one or more open source projects.

Product Knowledge

Has a deep understanding of all products, the product landscape, the company's strategic roadmap - as well as the company’s competitors.

  • Thoroughly understands their business unit and its peripheral products and services, including all benefits, capabilities, and features.

  • Has a working knowledge of the competitive market, its dynamics and trends, and how the company competes in its market segment.

  • Can articulate product and sales strategies for their business unit and adjacent products, including how each product interacts with the rest of its suite.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to the DesignOps team at Salesforce for influencing this list of competencies.