Career Mobility

Career Frameworks

Without structure, 'growth' is just a vague promise. Career frameworks show how jobs are organized and how people can grow within the company. I partner with Total Rewards to group similar roles into job families, define levels, and align them with fair pay ranges, giving employees clarity on how each role connects and how they can advance. It's built in six layers, from foundational purpose and philosophy at the center, out through job architecture, compensation, competencies, career pathways, and governance.

Purpose and Philosophy: Define the intent of the architecture and the principles that align people strategy with organizational goals
Job Architecture: Partner with Total Rewards to define job families, functions, roles, and levels that create a clear, consistent workforce structure
Compensation Alignment: Connect roles and levels to pay bands and salary ranges to support fairness, transparency, and internal equity
Competencies and Skills: Select a competency model that defines the skills, behaviors, and mindsets needed for success, creating consistency and guiding development
Career Pathways: Translate competencies into clear growth paths that show the skills, experiences, and milestones needed to progress across roles or functions
Governance: Establish processes to keep roles, skills, and levels aligned with evolving business needs

Job Architecture

I partner with Total Rewards to define job families, functions, roles, and levels that create a clear, consistent workforce structure. Everything else in a career framework, pay bands, competency mapping, career pathways, gets built on top of this.

Case Study

Job Leveling Framework

A job leveling framework defines how roles progress in scope, complexity, and impact, giving hiring, development, and pay a consistent, comparable standard. I build these around seven criteria, then use them to align job architecture, talent planning, career development, spans and layers, and mobility programs into one coherent system.

Scope: the breadth of responsibility, whether a role operates at the team, department, or organizational level.
Job Complexity: the variety, ambiguity, and difficulty of the work itself.
Autonomy: the level of independence in decision-making and direction.
Impact: the influence a role has on business outcomes, revenue, or people.
Knowledge and Skills: the technical and professional expertise the role requires.
Leadership and Influence: how the role leads people or shapes thinking, beyond direct reports.
Experience: the typical years or depth needed to perform the role effectively.

Competency Models

Employees can't hit a target they can't see. I help organizations choose or build the right competency model for the situation, a shared standard for the whole company, something specific to a function, leadership, a single job, or fully custom. Picking the right one, or combining several, sets the stage for career pathways that turn expectations into real, measurable development opportunities.

Organizational / Core Competency Model

The essential behaviors and values every employee is expected to demonstrate, regardless of role, used to align the whole company around shared culture and expectations.

Functional Competency Model

The technical and professional skills specific to a department or discipline, used to guide skill development, job design, and career pathways within that function.

Leadership Competency Model

The mindsets, behaviors, and capabilities leaders need to inspire teams and drive results, used for developing managers and executives and assessing succession readiness.

Job Competency Model

The skills, knowledge, and behaviors required for success in a specific role, often combining elements of the other models, used for job descriptions, performance goals, and tailored learning plans.

Custom Competency Model

A fully tailored framework built through interviews, workshops, and validation with leaders and employees, used when competencies need to connect directly to a company's unique strategy and culture.

Career Pathways

A competency model tells you what good looks like. A career pathway tells you how to get there. I build pathways connected to learning, performance, and opportunity, so employees can see whether they’re advancing in their current role, moving across functions, or heading in a new direction entirely, with the skills, experience, and milestones for each route made explicit. These pathways also feed directly into internal mobility programs, helping organizations promote from within and keep the talent they already have.

Titles, levels, and specific role names vary by company, industry, and org size. These examples illustrate the underlying career path logic, how progression, lateral movement, and dual tracks can work, rather than a fixed structure meant to apply everywhere as-is.

Vertical Career Paths (Upward Growth)

Provides a clear progression through increasing levels of responsibility, leadership, and impact. Employees advance within their function by demonstrating readiness for greater scope and accountability, creating a transparent path for growth and advancement.

Software Engineering

Progresses from technical execution to architecture and organizational leadership.

Chief Technology Officer
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VP of Technology
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Engineering Director
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Engineering Manager
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Senior Engineer
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Associate Developer

Human Resources

Moves from tactical support to strategic partnership and enterprise talent leadership.

Chief People Officer
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VP of HR
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HR Director
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HR Business Partner
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HR Generalist
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HR Coordinator

Operations

Builds mastery in systems, process optimization, and organizational execution.

Chief Operating Officer
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VP of Operations
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Operations Director
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Operations Manager
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Operations Analyst
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Operations Assistant

Customer Experience

Advances from hands-on service to experience design and customer strategy.

Chief Customer Officer
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VP of Customer Success
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Customer Success Director
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Customer Support Manager
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Senior Support Specialist
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Customer Support Rep

Horizontal Career Path (Lateral Growth)

Enables employees to grow by moving across roles or functions, expanding their skills, and gaining new perspectives. This approach builds versatility, strengthens collaboration, and prepares talent for broader future opportunities.

Software Engineering: Expands technical breadth and understanding of systems integration and infrastructure.
Backend Developer | DevOps Engineer | Data Engineer | Cloud Architect

Human Resources: Develops a 360° view of the employee lifecycle, building credibility as a future people leader.
Recruiter | HR Business Partner | Learning and Development Specialist | Total Rewards Analyst

Operations: Gains problem-solving depth across process, quality, and governance.
Operations Specialist | Process Improvement Analyst | Quality Assurance Lead | Risk & Compliance Specialist

Customer Experience: Transitions from direct service into enablement, systems, and relationship management.
Support Specialist | Training Coordinator | Knowledge Management Analyst | Customer Success Specialist

Dual Career Path

Gives employees a choice between advancing as a people leader or as a specialist, starting from their very first role. Both tracks offer equal opportunities for recognition, growth, and impact, so a junior employee or intern can choose the direction that best aligns with their strengths and aspirations, and switch later if their path changes.

Individual Contributor Path

Expert
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Distinguished Specialist
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Principal Specialist
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Staff Specialist
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Senior Specialist
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Specialist

Manager Path

Vice President
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Senior Director
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Director
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Senior Manager
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Manager
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Team Lead

↖️ ↗️
Junior/Intern

View the Career Paths & Internal Mobility case study →

Case Study

Mobility Programs

Internal mobility only works if the systems behind it actually talk to each other. I connect career pathways, competency models, and talent systems into one framework built around four core components, giving employees visibility into new opportunities, helping managers identify and prepare internal talent, and letting organizations fill roles faster with people who already understand the culture.

Here's how each piece supports that system:

Performance Reviews: clear, measurable criteria for skills, behaviors, and results, so feedback stays specific, consistent, and aligned with role expectations and organizational goals.
Calibrations: a shared language for evaluating performance and potential, so calibration discussions stay fair, transparent, and data-driven across roles and levels.
Talent Reviews: visibility into where employees stand in their development journey and what they need to grow, helping leaders identify high-potential talent and readiness for new roles.
Promotion Packets: clear progression milestones and defined competencies at each level, so promotion decisions are objective and employees can demonstrate readiness with evidence-based criteria.

I design every component that supports this system, including governance, processes, enabling systems, and culture.

Career Development Conversations and Development Planning

A good career conversation turns an aspiration into an actual plan. I design workshops, frameworks, and planning guides that, paired with performance data, help managers and employees identify strengths, skill gaps, and next steps together. Done well, this is what activates the whole career development ecosystem, linking frameworks, competencies, pathways, and mobility programs into one sustainable talent strategy instead of four disconnected initiatives.

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