Unlike junior designers who can specialize, Staff and Principal designers must be ambidextrous. They are expected to operate at a strategic level—understanding ROI and influencing leadership—while simultaneously possessing the hands-on technical ability to build advanced prototypes that bring their vision to life.

Lovable is moving away from the specialist, cross-functional squad model popularized by companies like Spotify, believing it creates decision-making bottlenecks. Instead, they hire "high slope" generalists with broad skills and good judgment who can own projects from start to finish, using AI to fill gaps.

Designers who excel at product thinking but struggle with visual craft face a choice: commit to learning modern craft skills, which are now essential, or pivot to a product management role. Their design thinking background would make them highly effective PMs on a design-centric team, where they often earn more.

AI's productivity gains mean that on a lean, early-stage team, there is little room for purely specialized roles. According to founder Drew Wilson, every team member, including designers, must be able to contribute directly to the codebase. The traditional "design artifact" workflow is too slow.

Design leaders must rapidly switch between high-level strategy and deep, hands-on critique. If they're not a strong practitioner, they lose credibility and can't effectively course-correct work, leading to quality issues discovered too late in the process. Operational skill alone is insufficient.

A design leader's responsibility extends beyond quality and execution to co-owning strategy with product. By leading a generative research function that looks 'around the corner,' design ensures the company builds the right products for the future, not just polishes current ones.

The traditional tech team structure of separate product, engineering, and design roles is becoming obsolete. AI startups favor small teams of 'polymaths'—T-shaped builders who can contribute across disciplines. This shift values broad, hands-on capability over deep specialization for most early-stage roles.

To hire a founding designer, founders need a clear theory on how design will help the company beat its competition. This strategic framing is far more compelling than simply stating that design is important.

AI tools are collapsing the traditional moats around design, engineering, and product. As PMs and engineers gain design capabilities, designers must reciprocate by learning to code and, more importantly, taking on strategic business responsibilities to maintain their value and influence.