Design at Karbon Framework v1

Design at Karbon

A career framework in six pillars and seven levels. Built for performance conversations, growth, hiring, and self-assessment.

What Design does at Karbon

At Karbon, product definition is shared by all. Our partners in Product help us decide where to invest and which problems are worth solving. Engineers help us understand what's possible and bring the product to life in code. Design's contribution is the ability to make ideas visible and tangible, faster than anyone else on the team.

That's the superpower. When a problem is abstract, we prototype it into something people can feel. When a direction is contested, we show it rather than argue it. When a customer describes a pain point, we turn it into an interface they can touch and test. The result is that the whole team gets the clarity they need to rally behind, and the product takes shape faster and with better intuition than it otherwise would.

We work AI-native and at high velocity. AI is the environment our work happens in, from first concept to final detail. We use LLMs to pressure-test assumptions, spot edge cases, and draft briefs. We use AI tools to prototype at the speed of thought. We treat research as a velocity tool, not a gate. We refine in Figma or code until the work is ready for engineering to ship.

We take responsibility for the experience customers actually use. Every interaction, every pattern, every detail that shapes how people feel when they use Karbon.

The Skills of Craft

Craft is built from four skills, run iteratively. Every designer learns them. Seniority shows up in how well you run them, how fast, and how well you coach others to run them too.

Frame

Use AI to understand the problem, pressure-test assumptions, spot edge cases, and draft briefs. Get sharp on what we're solving before anything else.

Build

Use AI prototyping to turn abstract problems into tangible artefacts the team can react to. Prototyping is how we create shared understanding.

Validate

Talk directly with customers and teammates. Run quick tests. Treat research as a velocity tool, not a gate.

Refine

Take validated concepts to ship-ready in Figma or code. Complete state coverage, system alignment, accessibility.

The Ladder

Five levels. The first three are shared. After Senior, the path splits into Individual Contributor and Manager tracks. Both reach the same level of seniority, with different shapes of impact.

L1
Associate Product Designer
L2
Product Designer
L3
Senior Product Designer
L4 · IC
Staff Product Designer
L5 · IC
Principal Product Designer
L4 · Manager
Lead Product Designer
L5 · Manager
Product Design Manager

The Six Pillars

The framework is structured around six pillars. Each pillar is made up of skills that scale across the levels.

Strategy

Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.

Craft

AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.

Customer

Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.

Vision

Painting the future and rallying the team around a direction.

Culture

How we show up. Drive, collaboration, mentoring, hiring.

Measure

Knowing what success looks like and owning what happens after launch.

How to use this framework

  • Career Pathway The visual ladder. Use this to orient new hires, talk about progression, or show the IC and Manager tracks.
  • Pillars & Skills The framework's structure. Use this for a quick reference of what we measure designers on and what each skill covers.
  • Canvas The matrix view of all pillars across all levels. Use this for calibration, promotion conversations, and side-by-side comparisons.
  • Role Pages The full expectations per role. Use this for interview calibration, growth conversations, self-assessment, and JD creation.

Career Pathway

L1 to L5. The first three levels are shared. After Senior, the path splits into Individual Contributor and Manager tracks. Both reach the same level of seniority, with different shapes of impact.

L1
Associate Product Designer
Learning the craft, with support from seniors.
L2
Product Designer
Owning features end to end.
L3
Senior Product Designer
Running the full loop with the Triad as a peer.
L4 · IC
Staff Product Designer
Setting patterns for product areas.
L5 · IC
Principal Product Designer
Shaping the practice across multiple teams.
L4 · Manager
Lead Product Designer
Setting patterns and growing the team.
L5 · Manager
Product Design Manager
Owning the design function.

Pillars & Skills

Six pillars, each made up of skills that designers grow through their career. Together, the skills define what good design work looks like at every level.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
What you understand about customer, business, market, and product.
Framing
How you shape problems and opportunities. Briefs, problem statements, scope, risk maps.
Calls
The judgment to push for what's worth making, and against what isn't.
3 skills
Craft
AI-native design. Using prototypes to turn abstract problems into tangible artefacts.
Frame
Use AI to understand the problem, pressure-test assumptions, spot edge cases, draft briefs.
Build
Use AI prototyping to turn problems into tangible artefacts.
Validate
Talk directly with customers, run quick tests. Research as velocity, not gate.
Refine
Take validated concepts into Figma or code. Complete state coverage, ready to ship.
4 skills
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition. Grounded in real customer signal.
Listen
How you engage with customers directly. Conversations, observation, research.
Synthesise
How you make sense of what you hear. Pattern recognition, theme extraction.
Translate
How you carry that understanding into design decisions and team conversations.
3 skills
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become and rallying the team.
See
How you sense where the product, market, and customer are heading.
Show
How you make that future tangible through prototypes, narratives, and storytelling.
Lead
How you bring the team and the broader org along with you.
3 skills
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
How you contribute to team culture personally. Approachability, growth mindset, feedback.
Drive
How you carry work forward. Owning what you've taken on, closing loops without being chased. Caring about the outcome, not chasing volume.
Grow Others
How you mentor, coach, and develop other designers, including their design judgment and AI-native workflow.
Build the Practice
How you contribute to hiring, rituals, and programs that scale design culture.
4 skills
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship. Owning what happens after.
Define
How you set targets and success measures before shipping.
Learn
How you read signal after launch. Pattern extraction across feedback, usage, signal-from-noise.
Own
How you stay accountable for outcomes. Iteration after ship. Killing what isn't landing.
3 skills

Canvas

Six pillars, seven levels. Read across a row to see how a pillar scales. Read down a column to see what's expected at a level. Use this for calibration, promotion, and growth conversations.

Pillar
L1Associate PD
L2Product Designer
L3Senior PD
L4 · ICStaff PD
L4 · ManagerLead PD
L5 · ICPrincipal PD
L5 · ManagerDesign Manager
StrategyBringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
  • Builds problem context using AI
  • Seeks framing direction from the Triad
  • Forms early views on what makes a good design problem
  • Working understanding of Karbon's business
  • Partners with the Triad on shaping problems
  • Questions scope rather than taking it at face value
  • Strong understanding of Karbon's business and market
  • Independently shapes problems alongside the Triad
  • Connects design decisions to business outcomes
  • Conviction to name what isn't worth making
  • Deep across multiple product areas
  • Defines framing patterns for one or more areas
  • Coaches others on framing and AI thinking
  • Protects the team from building the wrong thing
  • Same strategic depth as Staff in own area
  • Translates strategy into team priorities
  • Brings strategic voice into the Triad and leadership conversations with weight
  • Recognised expert across pillars
  • Spots cross-product opportunities
  • Standing to say no to major initiatives
  • Builds programs that scale framing capability
  • Holds company-level strategic context
  • Translates company strategy into design priorities
  • Partners with execs on what Karbon should build next
  • Accountable for team not building low-impact work
CraftAI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
  • Building fluency with AI prototyping
  • Polished Figma designs for well-scoped features
  • Familiar with Gestalt, IA, colour, typography
  • Follows existing patterns
  • Routinely uses AI throughout the work
  • Owns features end to end with growing autonomy
  • Generates state variations, multi-step flows
  • Diverges from patterns responsibly
  • Runs Frame, Build, Validate, Refine with AI as default
  • Strong prompt engineering: context, constraints, iteration
  • Ship-ready work with complete state coverage
  • Knows when to ship and when to stop
  • Sets the prototyping bar for one or more areas
  • Encodes judgment into prompts and patterns the team uses
  • Raises the bar through own work and through coaching
  • Protects craft from AI-driven sameness
  • Same craft level as Staff
  • Ensures the team's craft hits the bar
  • Holds AI-generated work to the same quality bar as hand-crafted
  • Coaches the team on running the full set of skills well
  • Models and evolves AI-native design practice
  • Designs for the platform; encodes judgment into systems
  • Patterns become how Karbon evolves
  • Leads complex craft decisions across pillars
  • Personally fluent enough to coach
  • Ensures team has tools and rituals for AI-native work
  • Sets craft expectations across the function
  • Partners with Eng and Product on shared standards
CustomerDirect contact, research, and intuition.
  • Participates in customer conversations led by others
  • Uses AI to summarise research and signal
  • Curious about customers as people, not just users
  • Runs light customer conversations directly
  • Working understanding of the accounting firm context
  • Brings customer evidence into design conversations
  • Customer conversations are part of the work, not a separate phase
  • Strong intuition for the firm workflow Karbon sits inside
  • Brings customer voice into the Triad's debates with specificity
  • Deep across multiple customer segments
  • Coaches the team to run validation as velocity
  • Spots cross-segment patterns
  • Connects customer patterns to product strategy
  • Same customer depth as Staff
  • Holds the team to customer-grounded design rationale
  • Builds team customer rituals
  • Recognised customer expert across pillars
  • Builds programs that scale customer understanding
  • Defines how Karbon Design listens to customers
  • Ensures the team has structured access to customers
  • Partners with CS, Support, GTM leadership
  • Accountable for translating customer signal into product direction
VisionPainting the future. Rallying the team around it.
  • Aligns own work to vision communicated by senior Design and the Triad
  • Curious about where the product is heading
  • Forms views on where the product area could go
  • Contributes to vision work led by others
  • Communicates design intent in squad settings
  • Independently articulates a compelling future for the area
  • Uses storytelling and prototyping to rally the Triad
  • Influences scope through artefacts, not just argument
  • Sets vision for one or more product areas
  • Coaches others in vision and storytelling
  • Influences cross-functional roadmaps
  • Partners with GTM on how new experiences land
  • Same vision capability as Staff
  • Ensures the team is doing vision work, not only feature execution
  • Brings team vision into leadership conversations
  • Authors vision for major pillars or cross-pillar work
  • Recognised across the company as a strategic voice
  • Influences across Product, Eng, and GTM without direct authority
  • Holds company-level perspective on Karbon's direction
  • Partners with Principal ICs to author team vision
  • Represents team vision in executive and board conversations
CultureShow Up, Drive, Grow Others, Build the Practice.
  • Approachable, curious, open to feedback
  • Carries work forward, finishes what they start
  • Looks for ways to help in the squad
  • Shares useful workflows with peers
  • Models team values, gives specific feedback
  • Owns features end to end, closes loops without follow-up
  • Reliable on cadence; people know what to expect week to week
  • Begins shadowing interviews
  • Strong feedback giver and receiver across functions
  • Highly autonomous; drives projects through obstacles
  • Anticipates risks and addresses them before they bite
  • Mentors juniors actively; conducts interviews with calibration
  • Sets cultural bar in own area
  • Sets the tempo; models reliable forward motion the team adopts
  • Helps stuck team members without taking over
  • Coaches designers on judgment, taste, AI-native workflow
  • Conducts interviews independently
  • Same cultural standards plus people management
  • Directly accountable for designers' growth, hiring, retention
  • Models drive for direct reports
  • Defines hiring and onboarding standards in own area
  • Shapes Karbon Design culture through modelling and programs
  • Owns major initiatives at strategic scale; reliable when path is unclear
  • Strong external presence: talks, writing, community
  • Coaches lead-track designers through calibration
  • Owns Design function's health: hiring, retention, growth, culture
  • Holds team to drive standards while protecting from burnout
  • Personally reliable; doesn't drop balls
  • Performance management and succession across the team
  • Builds programs that make Design a great place to grow
MeasureKnowing what success looks like. Owning what happens after.
  • Understands what success looks like for own work
  • Observes what happens after features ship
  • Asks "did this actually work?"
  • Defines success measures with the Triad before shipping
  • Adjusts based on early data and customer feedback
  • Tells delivery from impact
  • Success measures are part of framing, not an afterthought
  • Stays engaged after launch; iterates on what shipped
  • Holds work to meaningful impact, not just delivery
  • Defines what good measurement looks like for product areas
  • Coaches the team on accountability beyond launch
  • Translates design decisions into measurable outcomes
  • Spots gaming of metrics and corrects course
  • Same measurement standards as Staff
  • Holds the team to outcome-level performance, not just delivery
  • Partners with Analytics and Product on instrumentation
  • Sets measurement at the function level
  • Builds systems that compound learning across the team
  • Spots company-level patterns across pillars
  • Influences what gets measured and how
  • Owns Design's contribution to company outcomes
  • Ensures the team learns from what ships and channels back to strategy
  • Defends team's outcome-level performance to executives

Role Pages

The full expectations per role across all six pillars. Use these for interviewing, calibration, growth conversations, and self-assessment.

L1 · Shared Track
Associate Product Designer

Learning the craft, with support from seniors.

An Associate Product Designer is just getting started in their craft at Karbon. The expectation is to build foundational skills, contribute to squad work with curiosity and energy, and develop fluency in AI-native design under guidance from the Triad and senior Design members. The work happens with support, but ownership of growth is on you.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
  • You build understanding of your problem area: what Karbon does, who uses it, how it makes money.
  • You use AI to compress context fast: summarising background, extracting patterns from support tickets, mapping the basic competitive landscape.
  • You show curiosity about the business beyond your immediate work, even when it isn't strictly required.
Framing
  • You seek direction from the Triad and senior Design members to understand the problem statement, project scope, and what success looks like.
  • You begin forming views on what makes a good design problem versus a poorly framed one.
Calls
  • You ask "is this the right problem to solve?" before getting deep into design.
  • You start recognising the difference between what could be built and what should be built.
Judgment markers
  • You ask questions about strategic context, not just visual or interaction details.
  • You don't just execute on what's handed to you. You try to understand why it's been handed to you.
Craft
AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
Frame
  • You use AI daily to build context: summarising background reading, exploring problem spaces, asking clarifying questions before jumping into design.
  • You can write a basic prompt that gives AI enough context to be useful: background, constraints, what you want, what you don't want.
  • You produce first-draft briefs and meeting summaries with AI assistance, and you bring them to senior Design members for review.
Build
  • You are building fluency with AI prototyping. You can produce a basic clickable prototype with AI assistance, then take it forward by hand.
  • You produce polished Figma designs for well-scoped features.
  • You follow Karbon's Design Principles and demonstrate familiarity with Gestalt, IA, colour, typography.
Validate
  • You participate in customer conversations led by others. You watch, listen, and take notes.
  • You use AI to summarise research transcripts and surface early signal from support and feedback.
Refine
  • You follow existing design patterns and deliver detailed Figma work with state coverage for simple problems.
Judgment markers
  • You recognise when an AI output is generic, and you ask better questions to improve it.
  • You ask "is this actually right?" before acting on AI-generated content.
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.
Listen
  • You participate in customer conversations led by others. You listen for what's said and what isn't.
  • You ask thoughtful clarifying questions when you have the chance.
Synthesise
  • You use AI to build customer context fast.
  • You start recognising patterns across conversations rather than treating each as isolated.
Translate
  • You ground design decisions in something customer-related, even if it's just "I noticed in research that customers struggle with this."
  • You ask the customer-perspective question when others in the room haven't.
Judgment markers
  • You're curious about customers as people, not just users of a feature.
  • You don't generalise from one customer to "the customer."
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become.
See
  • You build awareness of where your product area is heading. You ask senior Design and the Triad about the longer view.
  • You use AI to explore "what if" scenarios alongside executing day-to-day work.
Show
  • You contribute to vision artefacts led by others. You learn the patterns by watching and helping.
Lead
  • You align your work to the vision senior Design and the Triad communicate. When the connection isn't clear, you ask.
Judgment markers
  • You're curious about where the product is heading, not just what's in your sprint.
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
  • You're approachable, curious, and open to feedback. You actively solicit input and apply it.
  • You show a growth mindset: you learn visibly, you reflect, and you adapt.
  • You contribute to squad rituals and ask good questions in critique.
Drive
  • You carry your work forward without needing to be chased. You finish what you've started.
  • You look for ways to help in your squad's work, even before being asked.
Grow Others
  • You share what you learn with peers when you find something useful (a workflow, a prompt, a pattern, an article).
Build the Practice
  • You participate in team rituals and contribute energy to them.
Judgment markers
  • You take feedback as a gift, not a threat.
  • You're not defensive about gaps. You name them and ask for help closing them.
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship.
Define
  • You understand what success looks like for the work you contribute to.
Learn
  • You observe what happens after features ship: adoption, usage, feedback.
  • You use AI to summarise post-launch signal from support tickets, usage data, and customer feedback.
Own
  • You stay engaged with your work after it ships. You don't move on the moment something is delivered.
Judgment markers
  • You ask "did this actually work?" not just "did this ship?"
L2 · Shared Track
Product Designer

Owning features end to end.

A Product Designer owns features end to end with growing autonomy. The expectation is to run the full design loop on well-scoped work, bring AI fluency into every step, and start forming opinions on what the product needs. Senior Design members are still your fallback on the harder calls, but you're moving toward independence.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
  • You develop working understanding of Karbon's business: pricing, segments, growth motion, competitive position.
  • You use AI to deepen context: synthesising customer interviews, surfacing patterns in support data, mapping competitor moves.
  • You stay current on what's happening in your product area without being prompted.
Framing
  • You partner with the Triad on shaping problem statements and scope, still leaning on senior Design for the harder framing calls.
  • You question scope and requirements constructively rather than taking them at face value.
Calls
  • You begin pushing back when work feels misaligned with customer needs or business goals.
  • You start naming risks and trade-offs explicitly when discussing scope.
Judgment markers
  • You bring strategic context into design conversations, not just craft considerations.
  • You're learning to distinguish "what stakeholders are asking for" from "what would actually serve customers and the business."
  • You ground design decisions in something beyond personal preference.
Craft
AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
Frame
  • You use AI throughout framing, not just at the start: drafting briefs, pressure-testing your assumptions, surfacing edge cases, mapping risks.
  • You can prompt for diverse perspectives ("what would a sole-practitioner accountant think?") to expand your framing.
  • You compress raw context (research, support, interviews, competitor scans) into actionable briefs.
Build
  • You routinely use AI prototyping to explore a problem space more broadly than you could by hand.
  • You can put a clickable artefact in front of others within hours, not days.
  • You generate state variations (loading, empty, error, success) from a base design.
  • You demonstrate growing proficiency in interaction design and multi-step flows.
Validate
  • You run informal validation directly with customers and teammates.
  • You use AI to synthesise feedback and surface patterns across multiple sources.
Refine
  • You independently refine visual designs to production quality on your own features.
  • You deliver complete state coverage and system-aligned work for the features you own.
  • You flag where existing patterns break down for your work and seek senior support to diverge responsibly.
Judgment markers
  • You can tell when an AI suggestion is wrong, generic, or hallucinating product context.
  • You can name what part of your work AI is doing well and what part still needs your hand.
  • You don't ship AI-generated work without first applying your judgment and aligning it to Karbon's design direction.
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.
Listen
  • You run light customer conversations directly: clarifying questions, quick validation calls, follow-up sessions.
  • You can run a basic customer call without it falling apart.
Synthesise
  • You use AI to synthesise customer feedback across multiple sources: support tickets, transcripts, surveys, sales calls.
  • You build working understanding of the accounting firm context Karbon serves.
Translate
  • You bring customer evidence into design conversations rather than relying on personal preference.
  • You can describe a real customer (not an abstract persona) when justifying a design decision.
Judgment markers
  • You distinguish "what one customer said" from "what's true across customers."
  • You notice when AI synthesis is missing signal that a human would have caught.
  • You don't ship work that's grounded only in stakeholder opinion.
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become.
See
  • You begin forming views on where your product area could go next.
  • You use AI to explore future-state possibilities: speculative prototypes, "what would this look like if we did the opposite?"
Show
  • You contribute to vision work led by others, and you can produce a basic future-state artefact when the work calls for it.
  • You communicate design intent clearly in squad settings.
Lead
  • You bring vision-level thinking into squad conversations, not just feature-level details.
Judgment markers
  • You don't just react to what's on the roadmap. You ask what should be on it.
  • You can tell the difference between vision and fantasy.
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
  • You practise giving direct, specific feedback in critique and design reviews.
  • You model the values and principles of the Design team.
  • You participate actively in team rituals: planning, critique, retros.
Drive
  • You own features end to end. You close loops on the work you've taken on without follow-up reminders.
  • You anticipate obvious next steps and act on them, instead of waiting to be asked.
  • You're reliable on cadence. People know what to expect from your work week to week.
Grow Others
  • You share AI workflows, prompts, and patterns you've learned with peers, and you make those shareable so others can pick them up.
Build the Practice
  • You begin shadowing interviews and portfolio reviews to develop calibration.
Judgment markers
  • You give feedback others can actually act on. Not "make it better" but "this label is doing two things, it should split."
  • You can name the difference between criticism and craft-level observation.
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship.
Define
  • You define success measures for your features with the Triad before shipping, not after.
  • You distinguish between leading indicators and lagging indicators.
Learn
  • You monitor post-launch signals and surface learnings to your Triad.
  • You use AI to compress feedback from multiple sources into actionable themes.
Own
  • You adjust design decisions based on early data and customer feedback. You're willing to revise.
Judgment markers
  • You can tell the difference between feature delivery and meaningful impact.
  • You don't claim victory on shipping alone.
L3 · Shared Track
Senior Product Designer

Running the full loop with the Triad as a peer.

A Senior Product Designer is mastering the craft. The expectation is to run the full design loop independently, partner deeply with the Triad on shaping the product, and bring conviction to what's worth making and what isn't. Senior is where the design loop becomes second nature. It's also where designers start influencing direction beyond their immediate work.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
  • You hold strong understanding of Karbon's business: how the product makes money, where the growth comes from, which segments matter most.
  • You use AI as a context partner: pressure-testing assumptions, surfacing what you don't know, mapping the landscape before committing.
  • You stay current on customer signals, market shifts, and competitive moves. You bring those signals into the Triad and senior Design conversations.
Framing
  • You independently shape problem statements and scope alongside the Triad, including for ambiguous or contested work.
  • You connect design decisions to business outcomes with specificity: which customers, which workflows, which levers.
  • You frame problems in ways that surface real options, not predetermined solutions.
Calls
  • You have the conviction and clarity to name when something isn't worth making, and you do it early.
  • You make trade-off recommendations and explain them in terms a non-designer cares about.
  • You ask the strategic questions the Triad should be asking but isn't.
Judgment markers
  • You hold work to Karbon's strategic priorities, not just to what's in front of you.
  • You can tell when a problem is worth investing in and when it's a distraction.
  • You don't accept ambiguous briefs. You push for clarity before committing the team.
  • You recognise when the loudest stakeholder is right, and when they aren't.
Craft
AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
Frame
  • You run the Frame stage with AI as the default partner. Output: clear briefs, mapped edge cases, named risks, pressure-tested assumptions, sharp problem statements the Triad can act on.
  • You demonstrate strong prompt engineering: rich context, clear constraints, structured iteration on outputs.
  • You build reusable AI workflows for repeated tasks (e.g., a problem-framing assistant loaded with Karbon context).
Build
  • You prototype at speed, picking the right output type for the task: visual exploration, clickable interactive prototypes, coded prototypes when warranted.
  • You use prototyping as the primary tool for shared understanding with the Triad. You ship a prototype before the alignment meeting.
  • You explore the solution space widely with AI and narrow through judgment and team feedback.
  • You let AI accelerate the generation while you guide structure, behaviour, and craft.
Validate
  • You run customer validation as a natural part of the work, not a separate phase. You use AI to keep validation low-overhead.
  • You treat research as velocity: ask the question, get the answer, adjust direction, all within the flow of the work.
  • You synthesise large volumes of customer signal and extract themes others miss.
Refine
  • You translate validated concepts into ship-ready designs with complete state coverage, system alignment, and accessibility considered throughout.
  • You suggest pattern evolutions and diverge responsibly. You document new patterns for the team.
  • You use AI to accelerate handoff documentation and developer specs without losing rigour.
Judgment markers
  • You critique AI output sharply: confident-sounding nonsense, recycled generic patterns, accurate but unhelpful.
  • You know when not to use AI: human empathy, genuine novelty, sensitive judgment.
  • You hold the work to Karbon's design direction and quality bar, without tipping into perfectionism.
  • You can name when something isn't ready, and when something is being over-engineered.
  • You can teach a junior designer one specific AI workflow they don't already know.
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.
Listen
  • You run customer conversations as a natural part of the work. Research is a velocity tool, not a gate.
  • You use AI to keep customer engagement low-overhead.
  • Output: clear customer signal the Triad can act on, with named themes, tensions, and open questions.
Synthesise
  • You hold strong intuition for the accounting firm workflow Karbon sits inside.
  • You use AI to scale customer understanding: large volumes of feedback, pattern identification, surfacing insights others miss.
  • You move between specific customer instances and general patterns fluently.
Translate
  • You bring customer voice into the Triad's debates with specificity. You name the customer, the workflow, the moment, the friction.
  • You frame design problems in customer terms before getting to design solutions.
  • You push back on the team when the work has drifted from real customer need.
Judgment markers
  • You can tell when customer evidence is being cherry-picked, including when you're the one doing it.
  • You hold the team to evidence-based design decisions, not opinion-led ones.
  • You know when to listen to customers and when to lead them.
  • You can name Karbon's core customer with specificity. Not "the customer" in the abstract.
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become.
See
  • You spot opportunities for your product area that aren't on anyone's roadmap yet. You bring them in with evidence and a clear "why now."
  • You use AI as a vision partner: stress-testing scenarios, exploring divergent futures, surfacing implications.
Show
  • You independently articulate a compelling future for your product area through prototypes, narratives, and storytelling.
  • You use storytelling and prototyping to rally the Triad around a direction. The artefact does the persuasion, not the argument.
  • Output: future-state artefacts that designers, PMs, engineers, and customers can all react to.
Lead
  • You influence scope and direction through design artefacts, not only through verbal argument.
  • You partner with Product and Engineering as a core contributor to what gets built next.
  • You bring vision-level thinking into the Triad's debates with conviction.
Judgment markers
  • You can articulate a compelling future without overclaiming. Visions land because they're grounded.
  • You hold visions to Karbon's design direction and strategic priorities.
  • You know when to invest in vision work and when to focus on near-term execution.
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
  • You're strong at giving and receiving feedback across Design, Product, and Engineering. You can disagree without making it personal.
  • You lead by example on AI-native habits. You show how you use AI tools, share prompts, document patterns. Other designers copy your approach.
Drive
  • You're highly autonomous. You drive projects forward through obstacles without relying on others to clear them.
  • You anticipate risks and address them before they bite, instead of escalating after the fact.
  • You set a personal rhythm of consistent, meaningful output. Your team can rely on you to deliver, not just to be busy.
Grow Others
  • You actively mentor junior designers on both their work and their growth, including their AI-native practice.
  • You onboard new hires and help them get traction quickly.
  • You give regular, specific, and impactful feedback throughout the year.
Build the Practice
  • You conduct interviews with confidence and give timely, well-calibrated candidate feedback.
  • You contribute to team rituals (planning, critique, review) and you make them better when you participate.
Judgment markers
  • You can coach a junior on what they don't know they don't know.
  • You hold the team's culture to the standard that's been set, including pushing back on yourself when you drift.
  • You distinguish "being supportive" from "doing the work for them."
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship.
Define
  • You define success measures as part of framing, not as an afterthought. The measures shape the work.
  • Output: success criteria the Triad can hold itself to, with leading indicators, target outcomes, and a clear "what would change" articulation.
Learn
  • You use post-launch signal to iterate on the work and drive improvements after ship.
  • You use AI to scale learning: pattern extraction, usage analysis, signal-from-noise filtering.
Own
  • You take responsibility for the experience landing, not just for it shipping.
  • You hold yourself and your Triad to meaningful impact, not just delivery.
Judgment markers
  • You hold work to Karbon's strategic priorities, not just to local team metrics.
  • You can make the case for killing or reshaping work that isn't landing, based on real signal.
  • You don't accept "we shipped it" as success when the data says otherwise.
L4 · IC Track
Staff Product Designer

Setting patterns for product areas.

A Staff Product Designer leads through depth, not direct reports. The expectation is to set patterns that scale across the team, encode design judgment into systems, and protect the team from building the wrong thing. Staff is where craft starts to compound. You go first, you set direction, others build on it.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
  • You hold deep understanding of multiple product areas, customer segments, and the business strategy that connects them.
  • You're the person the Triad consults when they need to understand what's actually happening with customers or the market.
  • You build patterns for context-keeping that scale to the team.
Framing
  • You define how problems get framed for one or more product areas. You lead, the team follows.
  • You partner with Product and Design leadership to surface opportunities before they become defined projects.
  • You coach others on framing, commercial thinking, and using AI to sharpen strategic thinking early.
Calls
  • You protect the team from building the wrong thing, including under stakeholder pressure.
  • You make the case for killing or reshaping work that isn't going to land, even when it's already in motion.
  • You bring Design's strategic voice into roadmap and prioritisation discussions with weight. People listen because your judgment has earned trust.
Judgment markers
  • You know the difference between "what's loud" and "what's important."
  • You can hold the line against stakeholder pressure when right, and yield when wrong.
  • You define what "aligned with Karbon's strategy" means in your area.
  • You can spot when a brief has the wrong shape before the work starts.
Craft
AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
Frame
  • You define the framing patterns for one or more product areas. You lead, the team follows.
  • You build prompts and AI workflows that scale framing capability across the team.
  • You coach others on prompt engineering and AI thinking.
Build
  • You run all four Craft skills together as a default mode and you help the team run them faster and better.
  • You set the prototyping bar: what good looks like, what level of fidelity is right for the question.
  • You evolve design principles and patterns through your own work and through what you ask the team to make. You go first, you set direction, others build on it.
  • You begin encoding judgment into AI-readable artefacts: prompt libraries, system docs written for AI, internal tools that scale Karbon's design direction across the team.
Validate
  • You integrate validation deeply into the team's rhythm and coach others on research-as-velocity.
  • You build customer intuition across the team through shared research, AI-summarised feedback loops, and storytelling.
Refine
  • You set the quality bar through your own work and raise the bar of others' through coaching and critique.
  • You flag cross-feature collisions and plan resolution.
  • You ensure AI-generated work meets the same quality bar as hand-crafted. You don't let "AI did it" become an excuse for lower quality.
Judgment markers
  • You know which AI workflows the team should reach for and which to avoid.
  • You make decisions on when to invest in custom AI workflows versus use what's available.
  • You protect Karbon's design direction from AI-driven sameness.
  • You know when AI is making the team faster but worse, and you adjust.
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.
Listen
  • You define the standard for customer engagement across the team. You lead, the team follows.
  • You build patterns for customer engagement that scale: shared customer panels, AI research workflows, validation rituals.
Synthesise
  • You hold deep understanding of multiple customer segments and the underlying jobs customers are trying to get done.
  • You build customer intuition across the team through shared research and storytelling that makes signal stick.
  • You spot patterns across customer segments that aren't visible from inside a single Triad's perspective.
Translate
  • You connect customer patterns to product strategy and bring those connections into the Triad and leadership conversations with weight.
  • You coach others on bringing customer voice into design conversations with specificity.
  • You set the bar for customer-grounded design rationale. You don't accept "I think customers would like this" without evidence.
Judgment markers
  • You define what "customer-led" means in your area and you hold the team to it.
  • You can spot when the team's customer model is drifting and you correct it.
  • You know when customer signal should override stakeholder pressure.
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become.
See
  • You set vision for one or more product areas, shaping what Karbon should build over multiple quarters.
  • You spot cross-product opportunities and bring them into strategic conversations.
  • You use AI to extend vision capability: exploring possibilities at scale, modelling second-order effects.
Show
  • You define the team's vision artefacts: what they look like, when we make them, who they're for.
  • You coach others in vision articulation and storytelling.
  • You produce vision work that becomes the reference for what Karbon's headed toward in your area.
Lead
  • You represent the design perspective in cross-functional strategic conversations and you influence roadmaps.
  • You partner with GTM (Sales, Customer Success, Marketing) on how new experiences land with customers.
  • You bring leadership into vision conversations early. You don't reveal vision work after the fact, you co-author the direction.
Judgment markers
  • You define what good vision work looks like in your area.
  • You can tell when a vision is exciting but premature, and when it's right but mistimed.
  • You protect Karbon's design direction from vision drift toward whatever's loudest.
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
  • You set the bar for team culture in one or more squads. You run rituals that strengthen collaboration. You lead, the team follows.
  • You build external presence: community talks, writing, local events.
Drive
  • You set the tempo for one or more product areas. You model reliable forward motion that the team adopts.
  • You help team members who are stuck without taking the work over from them.
  • You hold yourself accountable for momentum on the things you've taken on, including the hard or ambiguous ones.
Grow Others
  • You coach designers on developing design judgment, taste, and AI-native workflow. You're growing future seniors, not just executing on craft.
  • You're accountable for the growth trajectory of the designers around you.
  • You flag successes and concerns to Design leadership to support designers' growth.
Build the Practice
  • You conduct interviews independently and help improve the Design interview process.
  • You define the standards for how we hire, onboard, and grow designers in your area.
  • You build hiring and onboarding patterns that scale.
Judgment markers
  • You can tell when a designer has plateaued and you intervene early.
  • You hold the team's culture to Karbon's design direction, not just to "what's nice."
  • You make hiring calls based on long-term fit and where the bar should sit.
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship.
Define
  • You define what good measurement looks like for one or more product areas.
  • You ensure the team has the instrumentation, signal, and rhythm they need to learn from what they ship.
Learn
  • You build measurement and learning patterns that scale across the team.
  • You spot patterns across multiple shipments that aren't visible from inside any single one.
Own
  • You're accountable for outcomes of the work in your product areas, not just delivery.
  • You translate design decisions into measurable customer and business outcomes.
  • You partner with Product and Analytics on instrumentation and iteration rhythm.
Judgment markers
  • You define what "good measurement" means for the team and hold the team to it.
  • You can spot when the team is gaming metrics or when metrics are pointing the wrong way.
  • You make the case for killing initiatives that aren't landing, even when delivery is on track.
L4 · Manager Track
Lead Product Designer

Setting patterns and growing the team.

A Lead Product Designer leads through people. The expectation is to do everything a Staff designer does on craft and strategy, plus take direct accountability for designers' growth, hiring, and the team's culture. Lead is the entry point into design management at Karbon. You're a player-coach: still hands-on with craft, but increasingly responsible for building a high-performing team around you.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
  • You hold deep understanding of multiple product areas, customer segments, and the business strategy that connects them.
  • You ensure your team has the strategic context they need to do good work.
Framing
  • You define how problems get framed for the team's product areas. You lead, the team follows.
  • You partner with Product and Design leadership to surface opportunities before they become defined projects.
  • You coach team members on framing, commercial thinking, and using AI to sharpen strategic thinking.
Calls
  • You protect the team from building the wrong thing, including under stakeholder pressure or organisational momentum.
  • You translate strategy into team priorities and hold the team to them.
  • You bring Design's strategic voice into roadmap and prioritisation discussions with weight on behalf of your team.
Judgment markers
  • You know the difference between "what's loud" and "what's important" in the prioritisation conversation.
  • You can hold the line against stakeholder pressure when it's the right call, and yield when it isn't.
  • You define what "aligned with Karbon's strategy" means for your team.
Craft
AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
Frame
  • You define framing patterns for the team's product areas and ensure adoption.
  • You build prompts and AI workflows that scale framing capability across your team.
  • You coach team members on prompt engineering and AI thinking.
Build
  • You run the full set of Craft skills as a default mode and you help your team run them faster and better.
  • You set the prototyping bar for the team: what good looks like, what fidelity to use when.
  • You evolve design principles and patterns through your own work and through what you ask the team to make.
  • You ensure the team's craft produces patterns and prompts that scale, not just one-off output.
Validate
  • You integrate validation deeply into the team's rhythm and coach designers on research-as-velocity.
  • You build customer intuition across the team through shared rituals and storytelling.
Refine
  • You set the quality bar through your own work and through what you accept and ship from the team.
  • You flag cross-feature collisions and plan resolution.
  • You hold AI-generated work to the same quality bar as hand-crafted. You don't let "AI did it" be an excuse for lower quality on your team.
Judgment markers
  • You know which AI workflows your team should reach for and which to avoid.
  • You make calls on when to invest in custom AI workflows versus use what's available.
  • You protect Karbon's design direction from AI-driven sameness on your team.
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.
Listen
  • You define the standard for customer engagement on your team.
  • You ensure the team has the access, time, and patterns to engage customers regularly.
Synthesise
  • You hold deep understanding of the customer segments your team serves.
  • You build customer intuition across your team through shared research and storytelling.
Translate
  • You connect customer patterns to product strategy and bring those connections into Triad and leadership conversations on behalf of the team.
  • You hold the team to customer-grounded design rationale.
  • You set the bar: you don't accept "I think customers would like this" without evidence.
Judgment markers
  • You define what "customer-led" means for your team and hold the team to it.
  • You can spot when the team's customer model is drifting from reality.
  • You know when customer signal should override stakeholder pressure.
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become.
See
  • You set vision for the team's product areas, shaping what Karbon should build over multiple quarters.
  • You ensure your team is doing vision work, not just feature execution.
Show
  • You define the team's vision artefacts: what they look like, when we make them, who they're for.
  • You coach others in vision articulation and storytelling.
  • You produce or steward vision work that becomes the reference for what Karbon's headed toward in your area.
Lead
  • You represent the design perspective in cross-functional strategic conversations on behalf of the team.
  • You partner with GTM (Sales, Customer Success, Marketing) on how new experiences land.
  • You bring team vision into leadership conversations early.
Judgment markers
  • You define what good vision work looks like for your team.
  • You can tell when a vision is exciting but premature, and when it's right but mistimed.
  • You protect Karbon's design direction from vision drift toward whatever's loudest.
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
  • You set the bar for team culture across your team. You run rituals that strengthen collaboration.
  • You build external presence: community talks, writing, local events.
Drive
  • You set the tempo for the team. You model reliable forward motion that designers adopt.
  • You help team members who are stuck without taking the work over.
  • You hold direct reports accountable for momentum on the things they've taken on.
Grow Others
  • You're directly accountable for designers' growth, hiring, and retention.
  • You coach designers on design judgment, taste, and AI-native workflow, not just craft output.
  • You give regular feedback, run growth conversations, and partner with leadership on calibration.
Build the Practice
  • You own hiring and onboarding for your team.
  • You define standards for how we hire, onboard, and grow designers in your area.
  • You build hiring and onboarding patterns that scale.
Judgment markers
  • You can tell when a designer has plateaued and you intervene early.
  • You hold team culture to Karbon's design direction, not just to "what's nice."
  • You make hiring calls based on long-term fit and where the bar should sit.
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship.
Define
  • You define what good measurement looks like for the team's product areas.
  • You ensure the team has the instrumentation, signal, and rhythm they need to learn from what they ship.
Learn
  • You build measurement and learning patterns that scale across your team.
  • You spot patterns across multiple shipments that aren't visible from inside any single one.
Own
  • You hold the team to outcome-level performance, not just delivery.
  • You translate design decisions into measurable customer and business outcomes.
  • You partner with Product and Analytics on instrumentation and iteration rhythm.
Judgment markers
  • You define what "good measurement" means for your team and you hold the team to it.
  • You make the case for killing initiatives that aren't landing.
  • You can spot when metrics are gaming the team or when they're pointing the wrong way.
L5 · IC Track
Principal Product Designer

Shaping the practice across multiple teams.

A Principal Product Designer shapes Karbon's design direction. The expectation is to spot what others miss, build systems that compound craft and culture, and influence across the company through judgment that's been earned. Principal is the most senior IC role in Design. The patterns you set become the patterns Karbon evolves with.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
  • You're a recognised expert on Karbon's strategic context across multiple pillars. You hold the picture nobody else sees end to end.
  • You spot patterns and opportunities not visible from inside any single Triad or pillar.
  • You build the team's strategic intelligence: knowledge bases, AI workflows, rituals that compound understanding over time.
Framing
  • You shape strategy across multiple product areas. The patterns you set for how problems get framed become the patterns Karbon uses.
  • You spot cross-product opportunities and gaps in the market that Design is uniquely positioned to surface.
  • You build programs that scale problem-framing capability across the Design team.
Calls
  • You have standing to say no to major initiatives on behalf of customers or craft. Your judgment carries weight with executive leadership.
  • You influence strategic direction through your views on what Karbon should and shouldn't build over the next year and beyond.
  • You use AI at the strategy layer: modelling outcomes, pressure-testing major bets, surfacing second-order effects.
Judgment markers
  • You define what good strategic thinking looks like at the Design function level.
  • You can hold a contrarian view against organisational momentum when the customer evidence and business logic support it.
  • You see strategic mistakes early and you make the case to correct course.
  • You know when to push and when to wait. Strategic credibility comes from being right, not from being loud.
Craft
AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
Frame
  • You lead the way on how the Design team frames problems. The patterns you define become the patterns Karbon adopts and evolves.
  • You build the systems that scale framing capability across Karbon Design: shared prompt libraries, reusable AI workflows, internal tools that compound the team's intelligence over time.
Build
  • You lead the team forward on AI-native design practice. You define what's next before others see it coming, and you bring the team with you.
  • You design for the platform. You move complexity under the hood so experiences feel effortless, and you encode design judgment into principles, patterns, prompts, and systems that let craft compound over time.
  • You raise the bar for Karbon's design craft through your own work and through the systems you build around it. The patterns you define become the patterns Karbon evolves with.
Validate
  • You establish validation standards and rituals that compound learning across the team.
Refine
  • You lead complex craft decisions that cross pillars.
  • You are trusted to make the final call on quality trade-offs.
Judgment markers
  • You define what Karbon's design direction looks like now and where it heads next. Other designers look to you to know what good looks like.
  • You see ahead of the AI tooling curve and direct the team's investment in new workflows.
  • You recognise the gap between AI hype and AI utility and help the team navigate it without falling for either trap.
  • You can identify when an emerging AI capability deserves serious investment, and when it's a distraction.
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.
Listen
  • You're a recognised expert on Karbon's customers across multiple product areas.
  • You set the standard for customer engagement at the function level.
  • You build the systems that compound customer intelligence over time.
Synthesise
  • You spot cross-segment, cross-product, cross-time patterns that aren't visible from inside any single Triad or pillar.
  • You translate raw customer signal into strategic insight: where Karbon's market is heading, what customers will need next.
Translate
  • You influence product strategy with customer-grounded evidence at the pillar and company level.
  • You build programs that scale customer understanding across Design and beyond.
  • You define how Karbon Design listens to and learns from customers.
Judgment markers
  • You define what good customer understanding looks like at the function level.
  • You can hold a customer-evidence-based view against organisational momentum when the data supports it.
  • You see customer reality shifts before others do.
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become.
See
  • You hold vision across major product pillars or cross-pillar initiatives.
  • You spot strategic opportunities at the company level that originate from design observation.
  • You use AI at the vision layer: modelling long-horizon scenarios, pressure-testing strategic bets.
Show
  • You author vision for major pillars or cross-pillar initiatives. Your artefacts become the reference points for where Karbon is going.
  • You build the systems that scale vision-setting across the Design team.
Lead
  • You influence across Product, Engineering, and GTM without direct authority. Your seat at the table is earned through the quality of your judgment.
  • You're recognised across the company as a design-driven strategic voice.
  • You bring the team along with you. Your visions become the team's visions because you make space for others to contribute.
Judgment markers
  • You define what Karbon's product future looks like, alongside Product leadership.
  • You can hold a contrarian vision when customer evidence and craft logic support it.
  • You see strategic blind spots early and bring them into vision conversations before they cost the company.
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
  • You shape Karbon Design culture through modelling and through explicit program building.
  • You have a strong external presence: conference speaking, writing, community contribution.
Drive
  • You own major strategic initiatives at scale. You're reliable in conditions where the path forward isn't clear.
  • You move things forward across pillars when others would wait for permission or process.
  • You define what reliable forward motion looks like at the function level.
Grow Others
  • You run calibration sessions for performance reviews and coach designers growing into Lead and Staff roles.
  • You support succession planning by coaching and elevating others. You avoid becoming a single point of failure.
Build the Practice
  • You build programs that scale coaching and feedback capability across the team.
  • You define what good design culture looks like at Karbon, in artefacts the team can point to.
Judgment markers
  • You define what Karbon Design culture means now and where it heads next.
  • You can hold a culture-led view against organisational pressure.
  • You see culture problems early and make the case to address them.
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship.
Define
  • You define how measurement works at the Design function level.
  • You ensure measurement happens in a way that informs strategy, not just operations.
Learn
  • You build the systems that scale measurement and learning across the team.
  • You spot company-level patterns across multiple pillars and bring those patterns into strategic conversations.
Own
  • You're accountable for experience health and design impact across multiple pillars or initiatives.
  • You influence what gets measured and how, at the company level.
Judgment markers
  • You define what Karbon's design-impact measurement looks like now and where it heads next.
  • You can hold a measurement-led view against organisational momentum.
  • You see measurement gaps early and you make the case to close them.
L5 · Manager Track
Product Design Manager

Owning the design function.

A Product Design Manager owns the design function's health. The expectation is to hire, retain, and grow the team, hold them to outcomes, and partner with Principal-level ICs to evolve the practice. Manager is the most senior management role at the team level. The role isn't about being the deepest practitioner; it's about creating the conditions for excellent design work to happen, and holding the team accountable for it.

Strategy
Understanding the problem space and bringing Design's perspective on what's worth making.
Context
  • You hold company-level strategic context: where Karbon is going, what matters to executive leadership, how design investment maps to business priorities.
  • You ensure the team has the strategic context they need.
Framing
  • You partner with Principal-level ICs and Design leadership to set the team's design strategy.
  • You translate company strategy into design priorities across the team, and you hold the team to them.
Calls
  • You make the call on what the team will and won't take on. You absorb the political consequences when those calls aren't popular.
  • You partner with executive stakeholders (CPO, CTO, GTM leaders) on what Karbon should build next.
  • You are accountable for ensuring the team isn't building low-impact work.
Judgment markers
  • You can defend the team's strategic priorities to executive stakeholders.
  • You hold designers to "this should be aligned with Karbon's strategy" and coach them when their work isn't.
  • You partner with Principal ICs to evolve Karbon's strategic direction over time.
Craft
AI-native design. Frame, Build, Validate, Refine.
Practice
  • You are personally fluent enough to participate in design critique with AI-generated work and to direct prototyping conversations.
  • You partner with Principal-level ICs to shape Karbon's design direction and how it evolves.
  • You ensure the team has the AI workflows, tooling, and budgets they need to do AI-native work.
  • You set hiring expectations around AI fluency and you assess candidates against them.
  • You build the rituals that let AI-native practice spread across the team: lunch and learns, prompt sharing, workflow experiments, regular practice swaps.
  • You partner with Engineering and Product on shared AI tooling and standards across the company.
  • You hold the team accountable to AI-native practice. You don't tolerate "I didn't have time to use AI" as a reason work took longer than it should.
Judgment markers
  • You can recognise great craft when you see it, even if you don't produce it yourself daily.
  • You make calls on craft investment for the team.
Customer
Direct customer contact, research, and intuition.
Listen
  • You ensure the team has structured access to customers: budget, time, and partnerships with Customer Success, Support, and GTM that make ongoing customer engagement sustainable.
  • You partner with CS, Support, and GTM leadership to close the loop between what we ship and what customers experience.
Synthesise
  • You hold company-level understanding of customer segments and how design investment maps to customer value.
  • You ensure customer signal shapes investment decisions at the pillar and company level.
Translate
  • You are accountable for the team's overall customer understanding and how it translates into product direction.
  • You partner with executive stakeholders on what Karbon should build next, with customer evidence as part of the case.
Judgment markers
  • You can defend the team's customer-led decisions to executive stakeholders.
  • You hold the team to "this should be grounded in customer evidence" and coach them when it isn't.
  • You partner with Principal ICs to evolve how Karbon Design engages with customers as the practice matures.
Vision
Painting the future. Showing what the product could become.
See
  • You hold company-level perspective on where Karbon is heading and what design's role in that future is.
  • You ensure the team has the time and space to do vision work, not just feature execution.
Show
  • You partner with Principal-level ICs and Design leadership to author the team's design vision.
  • You ensure vision artefacts get made and used across the company, not buried.
Lead
  • You represent the team's vision in executive and board conversations.
  • You translate Karbon's company vision into design priorities and you hold the team to them.
  • You partner with executives (CPO, CTO, CEO) as a peer on where Karbon is going.
Judgment markers
  • You can defend the team's vision-led calls to executive stakeholders.
  • You hold designers to vision-level thinking, not just feature-level thinking.
  • You partner with Principal ICs to evolve Karbon's design vision as the company and product mature.
Culture
How we show up. Drive, collaboration, feedback, mentoring, hiring.
Show Up
  • You model and enforce the Design team's values at the organisational level. You hold the line when others drift.
Drive
  • You hold the team to drive standards while protecting them from burnout. You can tell the difference between a designer who lacks drive and a designer who's overwhelmed.
  • You coach designers who need to develop more drive, including the harder cases where it isn't a quick fix.
  • You're personally reliable for the team and the executive group. A Manager who doesn't drop balls.
Grow Others
  • You own performance management, calibration, and succession across the team.
  • You're accountable for the growth and retention of every designer on the team.
  • You partner with Principal-level ICs on coaching and elevating designers.
Build the Practice
  • You're responsible for the health of the Design function: hiring, retention, growth, and culture.
  • You build the programs that make Design a great place to grow a career.
  • You represent Design culture externally and contribute to Karbon's broader engineering and product culture.
Judgment markers
  • You hold the team to the cultural standard you've set, even when it's costly in the short term.
  • You make hiring, performance, and exit calls with a long view, including the calls that aren't comfortable.
  • You partner with Principal ICs to evolve the team's culture as it grows and matures.
Measure
Knowing what success looks like before you ship.
Define
  • You hold company-level perspective on what design impact should look like.
  • You ensure the team is accountable to outcome-level measurement, not just delivery-level.
Learn
  • You ensure the team learns from what ships and channels that learning back into strategy.
  • You partner with Product, Engineering, and Analytics leadership on shared measurement and learning practices.
Own
  • You own Design's contribution to company-level outcomes: adoption, retention, expansion, satisfaction.
  • You're responsible for the rhythm of measurement, iteration, and accountability across Design.
Judgment markers
  • You can defend the team's outcome-level performance to executive stakeholders.
  • You hold designers to "this should connect to a meaningful outcome" and coach them when their work doesn't.
  • You partner with Principal ICs to evolve measurement maturity as the team grows.
Karbon Design Career Framework · v1 · April 2026