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Design leadership · Expert · Lesson 86 of 99 · 52 min video, then about 2 hours of practice
Operating as a staff or principal designer
After this you can describe how staff and principal designers create influence without authority, and identify the archetype of IC leadership that fits you.
Why it matters
Staff and principal designers lead without managing: they pick the problems that matter most across teams, set technical and design direction, unblock others, and represent design in rooms where decisions are made. The engineering world has written far more about this than design has, and its vocabulary (archetypes such as tech lead, architect, solver, right hand) transfers well. Focus on how the people in these videos chose what to work on and how they built trust. Trap: thinking staff means 'the best designer, doing more designing'. Most of the job is choosing, aligning and enabling.
How to use this resource
A long-form interview with a staff designer on how to influence and lead as an IC. One of the few free sources that describes the staff design role concretely from inside it.