Be Promotable to a Lead Level UX Designer: Top skills to climb the ranks

Early in my career, I worked with a well-respected lead designer with the ears of senior design and product leaders. They distilled complex designs across the organization while keeping an eye on the details, masterfully coordinating different designers to ensure their designs aligned with the strategy.

I wondered, how can I be like this person? This was the first time I had seen a Lead IC (Individual Contributor, non-manager) lead design like this.

This experience was an example of what excellent design leadership looks like. They were the model I would use to grow my skills as a senior and lead IC. I learned quickly that growing your career isn't a checklist. You have to demonstrate mastery of skills over time.

Once you've mastered a skill, you'll be unconsciously competent; over time, you won't have to put in much effort executing that skill. When you've confidently mastered the critical senior-level skills, you are ready for higher levels of your craft.

To become a senior or lead individual contributor (IC), you'll need a mix of hard and soft skills.

What is a Senior Designer?

A senior designer usually has 5+ years of experience and is sometimes known as a mid-level designer. The skills required to be promoted from junior to senior vary from company to company. However, the senior designer usually needs to demonstrate the ability to run their projects with little oversight or management help and deliver the design on time.

What's a Lead Designer?

Lead designers typically take on larger projects with ambiguous scopes. They can work with a cross-functional team to align everyone toward the same vision. In addition, they have more influence over the design or product strategy. Depending on their role, they might lead other designers to take on parts of the design while they work on the overall framework.

For companies with an IC career path, lead-level designers can progress without managing people. They manage design at the full-time director level and guide the design rather than manage the designer's careers.

The Foundational UX Skills: Design Craft & Tools

Hard skills form the foundation of your craft and design approach. For designers, these include visual and interaction design, creating wireframes, sketches, prototyping, and using tools like Figma and Adobe. You must also understand usability, context, and human behavior.

Design fundamentals are the knowledge needed to conceptualize and execute design. The best way to ensure you're learning enough about design is to challenge yourself on different projects and continue to learn more. As technology changes, designers must learn more to keep up and design for emerging technology.

Critical foundational skills for Designer ICs include the following:

• A systematic approach to solving design problems
• Deep understanding of usability, design principles, and patterns
• Ability to produce high-quality work consistently
• Ability to communicate design to various stakeholders
• Good command of how to use research insights to validate design decisions

Hard skills are critical to master because, without the fundamentals of design, you'll have gaps in your knowledge, and it's tough to direct design at a higher level if you don't know design well, either. You won't be able to direct a team if you can't guide them to the correct answers.

If you've ever had a manager who struggled to help solve your design problems, you understand why mastering fundamentals matters.

You'll be shoring up the hard skills for the first part of your career and learning the core attributes of your craft to create the foundation for design. As you move up, you'll find that soft skills become more critical.

The Hard to Master Skills: Communication & Leadership

As you advance in your career, a shift occurs. While craft skills remain crucial, they become table stakes. What sets lead-level ICs apart is their ability to shape product direction through influence rather than authority. I learned this firsthand when leading a redesign of our core product features—technical skills got me to the table, but influence skills got my designs shipped.

Lead designers face unique challenges: larger, more ambiguous projects, higher-stakes decisions, and the need to align multiple stakeholders who often have competing priorities. Your audience expands beyond the design team to include product leaders, engineering directors, and executives – each speaking their language and caring about different aspects of the work.

In lead-level roles, you do more than design; you communicate it to multiple stakeholders, and your decisions and output can significantly impact metrics and revenue in your product area or organization.

Soft skills for lead IC designers are often similar to those in general organizational contexts. Working and collaborating with others are essential for anyone working in teams. For example, LinkedIn's top soft skills for 2024 include communication, leadership, and teamwork. The top skill in the blog is adaptability, which is also essential for designers.

The UX Professional's 7 Essential Skills

My experience across different companies and design contexts has identified seven core skills that consistently separate effective lead ICs from the rest. These aren't just nice-to-haves – they're requirements for success as a higher-level IC:

Strategic Skills:

1. Vision & Strategy

Lead designers shape product direction rather than just executing tasks. I once watched a designer transform a vague request for "better onboarding" into a comprehensive vision for user engagement that guided a year of product work. The key is learning to zoom out from pixel-perfect details to see broader patterns and opportunities.

2. Influence & Persuasion

Since we don't write the code for our designs, our success depends entirely on our ability to influence others. This isn't about being the loudest voice in the room – it's about building trust through:

• Demonstrating a deep understanding of business and technical constraints
• Backing design decisions with clear rationale and data
• Building strong relationships with cross-functional teams
• Knowing when to push and when to compromise

Communication Skills:

3. Storytelling

The best design means nothing if you can't sell it. I learned this lesson early when a superior design was rejected because I couldn't craft a compelling narrative around it. Strong storytelling means:

• Adapting your presentation style to your audience
• Making complex design decisions digestible
• Creating an emotional connection with your vision
• Building momentum through small wins

4. Communication

Lead designers must master different communication styles. When I present to engineering leaders, I focus on technical feasibility and implementation approaches. With product managers, I emphasize user value and business impact. With executives, I lead with metrics and strategic alignment. The key is speaking each stakeholder's language.

Execution Skills:

5. Alignment

The larger the project, the more critical alignment becomes. I've seen great designs fail simply because key stakeholders weren't aligned. Success requires:

• Identifying and addressing concerns early
• Facilitating productive disagreement
• Finding common ground between competing priorities
• Building consensus without compromising vision

6. Adaptability

Change is constant. You might start a project with one set of requirements and must pivot based entirely on new business priorities. The ability to adapt quickly – while keeping your team focused and motivated – is crucial.

7. Time Management

At lead levels, you're often juggling multiple high-priority projects. Success requires:

• Setting and managing realistic timelines
• Knowing when to go deep vs stay high-level
• Taking the time for strategic thinking
• Delivering consistently, even under pressure

Building your career skill map

These skills don't develop in isolation – they reinforce each other. Strong craft skills build credibility. Credibility creates opportunities to influence. Influence, combined with vision, lets you shape product direction. And communication skills help you bring others along on the journey.

Use this simple framework to build your skills:

The Skill > How you'll learn it > How you'll apply it (Goal) > How you'll demonstrate mastery

For example, if you want to learn the skill of storytelling, here's what that might look like:

The Skill: Storytelling

How you'll learn it: Training

How you'll apply it: Create a presentation deck for my design project

How you'll demonstrate mastery: Gain continuous feedback from my coworker who's good at this skill

To master any skill, you'll need practice and feedback and to hold yourself accountable to ensure you're truly growing in the skill.

Remember that designer I mentioned at the start? Looking back, I can see how they masterfully combined these skills. They weren't just good at design – they were good at making design happen through others. That's the true mark of a lead IC.