Something has shifted in the design hiring market this year: Heads of Design and Design Leaders are choosing to go back to Founding, Staff and Principal level hands-on roles, and companies are welcoming them.
For most of my 20 years in tech recruitment, and the last 10 specialising in Product and Design, a Head of Design applying for an individual contributor role was treated with suspicion. Was it a step down? Had they been pushed out? Would they be bored in six months? That reaction has largely gone. For the first time, hiring teams are inviting these applications, and design leaders are asking for these roles.
Two things are driving it, and they pull in the same direction. One is what candidates want. The other is what clients want.
Candidates don't want to be passed by
Design leaders are worried about staying hands-off at the most critical moment the industry has seen in years. AI is changing how products get designed and built almost month by month. Prototyping in code, working alongside engineers in new ways and shipping faster are becoming part of the job, and the people closest to the work are learning fastest. Many leaders feel that every quarter spent in planning meetings and people management is a quarter of falling behind.
There is also a simpler reason. Most of these people are designers at heart. They moved into management because it was the route to career growth, and in a lot of companies the individual contributor path would have stalled well short of where they wanted to get to. Management was the way up, not necessarily what they wanted to do all day.
That is why the conversations I'm having right now sound so different from a few years ago.
Clients want the leadership skills, in a smaller team
On the hiring side, companies still want everything a Head of Design brings: strategic thinking, strong communication, and the credibility to make sure design very much has a seat at the table. What has changed is how they want to use it.
With AI, many companies are building smaller, cracked, talent-dense design teams. There's less room for layers, and more need for senior people who can do the work. So instead of hiring a leader to manage a large team, they want a Founding Designer or a Staff or Principal Designer who can lead by doing: setting the design direction, owning the craft and getting hands-on in the product.
For a former Head of Design, that is a role they can step into with confidence, with the part many of them were keen to drop taken out.
Where the two meet
The salaries on offer for hands-on roles are what tip it. Companies are paying base salaries of £120,000 to £180,000 for Super IC designers with real craft and product-thinking, and if you offer a design leader that kind of money to design and not manage people, they will bite your hand off. The thing that once pushed them into management, the need for career growth, no longer applies in the same way.
The old suspicion has gone for the same reason. A Head of Design returning to hands-on used to raise questions about why they'd left the top job. Now it reads as a deliberate, sensible move: a leader who has seen how a whole design organisation works, choosing to be close to the craft while the tools change faster than they ever have.
It works for both sides. The designer gets the work they love, the growth they wanted and the pay to match. The company gets a senior designer with the judgement of a Head of Design.
Thinking about going hands-on?
If you're a Head of Design or Design Leader considering a move into a Founding, Staff or Principal role, and you'd like to know what that could look like, please reach out. I'm happy to talk through the roles, the teams and the salaries on offer, with no pressure either way.
