How I Scaled Agoda's Design Team from 40 to 80+ — and Made It Matter
How I grew Agoda's Product Design team from ~40 to 80+ designers — building the career infrastructure, leadership bench, and hiring engine to support that scale, while repositioning design as a driver of product strategy.
Designers scaled
Nationalities on the team
Design org NPS
Attrition
The Starting Point
Design was a service team, not a seat at the table.
When I stepped into this role, designers took PM-written stories, executed UI, and handed work off to engineering. There was no ownership of KPIs, no connection to business outcomes, and no presence in the rooms where product direction was set.
On the organizational side, there was no career progression framework, no consistent way to measure performance, and no structured approach to attrition, hiring, or long-term org design for leadership roles. Scaling under those conditions would have meant scaling the dysfunction.
No seat at the table
Design was absent from QBRs, SLT, and C-forum meetings, with no ownership of KPIs and no connection to business outcomes.
No leadership or career structure
No career levels or competency standards left promotion undefined, and no leadership layer meant every decision routed through one point of review.
No structured org design
Hiring was inconsistent and uncalibrated across markets, and headcount was treated as a reactive ask rather than a planned investment.
Building the Organizational Backbone
Before growing the team, I had to build the infrastructure to grow it well.
Four pillars turned headcount growth into a durable organization rather than a bigger version of the same problem.
Career Frameworks & Competency Matrix
Designed a career progression framework and competency matrix from the ground up — giving every level clarity on evaluation and growth, replacing a system where promotion was effectively undefined.
Building the Leadership Bench
Grew management from 2 to 8 Senior Design Managers, added a Director of Design, and created 13 hybrid Product Design Lead roles managing small pods. When that growth exposed a gap between PDL and Senior Manager, I designed a Senior Product Design Lead tier to bridge it — enabling real delegation and a full leadership ladder instead of one point of review.
Global, Calibrated Hiring
Redesigned the interview process for consistent competency assessment, built a genuinely global team spanning 35+ nationalities, and introduced calibration to keep hiring and review bars fair across a distributed org.
Headcount & Budget as Strategy
Built a headcount model tied directly to the product roadmap and investment priorities — treating design capacity as a planned business input, developed through leadership offsites, rather than a reactive ask.
The Framework, In Detail
Career ladder & competency model I designed
Seven levels from individual contributor to org leadership, evaluated against five consistent competency categories. What changes as designers move up isn't the categories — it's the weighting, the scope, and how much is expected in each one.
Product Designer
Designer L1
Designer L2
Senior Product Designer
No entry-level management track — the management path only opens up at the fork point below
Product Design Lead
Product Design Lead
Same title, two paths: this is the fork point. On the left, an IC path with no direct reports; on the right, first direct reports (up to 3). It's a deliberate transition role — designers get their first taste of managing a small pod before committing to a full people-management track, rather than jumping straight to Senior Design Manager.
Senior Product Design Lead
Senior Design Manager
Director of Product Design
Senior Director of Product Design
Product Design Competencies
The five categories every designer and manager was evaluated against, at every level on both tracks — only the weighting changes (see below).
Design Thinking
How well someone frames ambiguous problems, applies insight and data, and reaches sound design decisions.
Communication & Collaboration
How effectively someone builds alignment, gives and receives feedback, and moves work forward with stakeholders.
Delivery & Ownership
How consistently someone ships high-quality design and owns outcomes end-to-end, not just deliverables.
Agent of Change
How much someone shapes direction beyond their own scope — advocating for design and users at a broader level.
Building Effective Teams
How well a manager grows people, builds strong teams, and creates the conditions for others to do their best work.
The leveling principle: as designers move up the ladder, scope and complexity increase, the expected radius of influence extends beyond their immediate work, and the time horizon of their thinking stretches further into the future. Expectations compound — each level is expected to be even stronger at everything the level below required.
Design Thinking
Communication & Collaboration
Delivery & Ownership
Agent of Change
Building Effective Teams
30%
30%
30%
10%
—
25%
25%
25%
25%
—
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
Why a single “manager” tier wasn’t enough
Growing the bench from 2 to 8 Senior Design Managers plus a Director created a new problem: Product Design Leads had nowhere to go except a Senior Design Manager role that assumed roughly 7+ years of accumulated management experience (Lead, then DM, then Senior DM), while most PDLs had under 2. That gap left two groups stuck — managers with real promise who weren’t ready for a 6–10 report scope, and strong ICs whose influence had outgrown a single pod but who had no interest in a full people-management track.
Product Design Lead
Senior Product Design Lead
Senior Design Manager
Director of Product Design
Senior Director of Product Design
Single team, hands-on design
Larger team/domain, upward strategic influence
Multiple teams/domains
Departmental vision, cross-org influence
Org-wide, executive leadership
Up to 3 direct
4–6 direct
6–10 direct/indirect
Org-wide ownership
Manages Directors
Mgmt. Experience
1–2 yrs
2–5 yrs
5–9 yrs
8+ yrs
10+ yrs
The experience cliff
Jumping from a 1–2 year PDL straight into a role calibrated for 7+ years of management experience meant either promoting people before they were ready, or telling capable managers “not yet” with no visible next step in between.
The fix: an intermediate rung
Senior Product Design Lead sits between the two — a larger team or domain and real upward strategic influence, without requiring the full multi-team scope of a Senior Design Manager. It gave managers a role to grow into instead of a cliff to jump.
A pathway for ICs too
Because scope and influence — not headcount — define the level, strong ICs whose judgment already shaped decisions beyond their own pod could be recognized at Senior PDL without being forced into people management to keep advancing.
How Performance Was Scored
A shared scale, so "exceeds expectations" meant the same thing for everyone
Standard Workday ratings only have a few buckets. I added a more granular 1.0–5.0 scale underneath so managers could distinguish, for example, someone who often exceeds expectations (4.0) from a true role-model performer (5.0) — both of which Workday would otherwise group under "Superstar."
1.0–1.5
Does Not Meet
2.0–2.5
Significant / Some Gaps
3.0
Meets Expectations
3.5–4.0
Exceeds / Often Exceeds
4.5–5.0
Superstar / Role Model
Promotion philosophy
Two things have to line up: the person is already operating at (or very close to) the next level, and there's a genuine business need for that scope. Promotions were never time-based or checklist-driven — they had to be earned through consistent, demonstrated impact, not tenure.
When scores were low
A score in the 2.0–2.9 range triggered a clear, time-boxed improvement plan agreed between manager and designer — typically within 6 months, capped at 12. Below 2.0 required immediate action. The goal was always a documented path back to meeting the bar, not a surprise.
Calibrating Across the Org
Keeping ratings fair across a distributed, global team
One manager's score alone isn't enough at this scale — a generous manager and a tough manager can rate identical performance differently. Every review cycle, I ran a structured calibration session across managers to align ratings before anything was finalized.
What it is
A structured group discussion across managers to review the overall distribution and outliers, align on promotion cases with evidence — not just a number — and agree on final ratings together.
What it isn't
Not a forced or stack-ranking exercise, and not a way to overrule a manager's judgment without discussion. It's a support mechanism for making harder rating calls consistently, and it never replaces regular, direct feedback.
How a session ran
Context and ground rules first, then each manager presents promotion cases and flags superstars or lower performers per competency, working through meets-expectations edge cases — closing with agreement on final ratings before anything went into Workday.
What This Delivered
Infrastructure isn't the story. What it made possible is.
Clarity on scope & growth
Every designer could see exactly what their level required and what the next one looked like — replacing a system where progression was undefined.
More promotions
A documented, evidence-based case for advancement replaced an undefined process — and more designers moved up as a result.
Lower attrition
Attrition held under 5% through the scaling period — people stayed because they could see a real path forward, not just a bigger team around them.
A real path into management
The Product Design Lead (Manager) fork gave ICs a low-risk way to try managing 1–3 reports before committing to a full people-management track — instead of an all-or-nothing jump.
Global, Calibrated Hiring
The metrics I put in place to measure hiring health.
Hiring at this scale meant treating recruiting like a funnel with its own success metrics — not just "did we fill the role." These are the categories we tracked monthly across every open req.
Interview-to-Offer Conversion
Tracked at every funnel stage — screen, first interview, panel, offer — to catch drop-off early and calibrate whether we were targeting the right seniority.
Time-to-Hire
Time-to-Hire Measured from first interview to signed offer, with a standing target tied to how fast the roadmap needed new capacity.
Candidate Experience (CSAT)
Surveyed after every hiring loop, win or lose, to catch friction in the process itself rather than only optimizing for outcome.
Offer Acceptance Rate
Monitored on a rolling basis to flag early when compensation, role scope, or process speed needed to change.
Where We Hired From
A genuinely global team, not a global-sounding one.
35+ nationalities across the org — hiring wasn't concentrated in one or two markets. A sample of the countries our designers have called home:
Thailand
India
South Korea
Japan
China
Taiwan
Australia
USA
UK
Israel
Romania
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Pakistan
Italy
Indonesia
Malaysia
Myanmar
The org today, by the numbers.
40 → 80+
Designers scaled, 2021–2026, with the leadership and hiring infrastructure to sustain it
2 → 8
Senior Design Managers — a management layer built from near-scratch
13
Product Design Leads — a new hybrid IC/manager role created to scale ownership
35+
Nationalities represented across a genuinely global design team
75+
NPS within the design org
<5%
Attrition, sustained through the scaling period
Scaling a design org isn't a headcount problem — it's an infrastructure and trust problem. You earn the strategic seat by building the career paths, leadership bench, and data-backed partnerships that make design's judgment worth including before the roadmap is locked, not after.
— Deven Grover, Head of Design, Agoda
