How we built the Figma Design team | Figma Blog

Figma grew its design team from one full-time product designer to eight designers in about a year. The company argues that thoughtful hiring requires clearly defining team needs, aligning on evaluation criteria, and continually evolving those criteria as circumstances change. By making the process collaborative and structured, Figma established a stronger design culture built around critiques, ownership, and transparency.

Building the Team

• Figma initially struggled to keep pace with its engineering team because design responsibilities were spread across one full-time designer and several part-time contributors.
• Because each hire significantly affects a small team’s culture and working style, the company prioritized deliberate growth rather than hiring quickly without a plan.
• Within a year, the team had grown to eight designers and developed:
  • Collaborative design critiques
  • Clearer objectives
  • Defined areas of ownership
  • A more established team culture

A Structured Hiring Process

Figma adopted a three-phase framework for building its hiring criteria:

• Learn: Study job descriptions and consult experienced design leaders to understand valuable skills and traits.
• Analyze: Create a broad skills list, then narrow it to capabilities the company needs, the Design team should own, and every designer must possess.
• Evolve: Revisit the criteria as team or company needs change, while developing existing employees when possible.

The designers independently outlined their expectations for a new teammate, then merged their ideas in Figma to reach consensus. This helped distinguish essential requirements from desirable but negotiable skills.

Reducing Interviewer Bias

• Figma created explicit criteria for both product-design capabilities and cultural alignment with its values: Be Bold, Be Inclusive, and Have Fun.
• The team used these criteria directly in Lever, its recruiting tool, to guide interview feedback.
• Structured prompts reduced vague assessments and made it harder for interviewers to unconsciously change standards to match personal biases.
• Existing team members evaluated themselves against the same criteria, revealing few surprises but ensuring they did not judge candidates on abilities they could not assess in themselves.

Recruiting as a Team Effort

• Defining the role did not eliminate the need for sourcing, networking, and extensive conversations with candidates.
• Figma embedded its recruiter, Korin, into the design team by having her attend critiques and team meetings.
• This gave her firsthand knowledge of the team’s work and helped her represent the role and identify suitable candidates more accurately.

The Designers’ Backgrounds

• The team included designers with varied experiences and strengths rather than identical profiles.
• Lucy brought motion and visual-design expertise, along with experience spanning agencies, websites, and hardware interfaces.
• Marcin contributed extensive UI experience from organizations including Google, Medium, and Code for America, as well as a strong attention to interaction and visual details.

Figma’s experience suggests that small design teams should define their needs collectively, use consistent interview criteria, actively guard against bias, and involve recruiters closely in the team’s daily work.