In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, organizations must provide clearer guidance on career paths, required skills, and compensation structures. A well-designed system to support this is known as job architecture.
Employees today want non-linear career paths that reflect the realities of modern work: cross-functional collaboration, portfolio careers, hybrid roles, and meaningful development beyond promotions.
Let’s explore how to build a job architecture that works for both structure and freedom.
What is a Job Architecture?
Job architecture is the framework that organizes all the roles in your company. It typically includes:
- Job families (e.g., Marketing, Engineering, HR)
- Job levels (e.g., Analyst, Senior, Manager, Director)
- Titles, responsibilities, and skills
- Compensation bands
- Career paths—including non-linear options
Done well, job architecture creates clarity, supports equity, and empowers employees to grow without confusion or favoritism.
Why the Career Ladder Is No Longer Enough
In the 20th century, careers were built on linear progression. People moved up a ladder from junior to senior to executive. Today, that model feels restrictive and outdated.
“The career ladder is obsolete. Today’s most successful professionals think more like rock climbers than ladder climbers—making lateral moves, exploring new roles, and finding growth in unexpected places.”
— Reid Hoffman, Co-founder of LinkedIn, from his writings on “The Start-Up of You”
That’s why modern job architecture must account for non-linear career models, where employees grow by moving sideways, diagonally, or even cyclically, not just up.
A non-linear career model allows employees to:
- Move laterally into new roles or disciplines (e.g., Sales → Customer Success)
- Specialize deeply without becoming a manager (e.g., Engineer → Principal Engineer)
- Switch between projects or functions (e.g., Designer → Product Manager)
- Take breaks or sabbaticals without career penalties
- Create hybrid or portfolio roles (e.g., 50% People Ops, 50% DEI)
These paths embrace skills diversity, life changes, and cross-functional collaboration. Aspects which are critical in the Future of Work.
Job Architecture vs. Role Architecture: Key Differences
A future-ready organization designs job frameworks while allowing role fluidity. This supports both clarity and adaptability.
While you are hired for a job, you can have multiple roles in the organization, and these roles are dependent on the projects you are assigned to.
For instance, an HR Business Partner may have the following roles:
- Recruitment Coordinator
- Performance Cycle Facilitator
- Compensation Advisor
A Role architecture is useful when you want to:
- Reflect how people operate in context, not just what’s on paper
- Recognize dynamic, cross-functional responsibilities
- Track skills, temporary assignments, and emergent leadership
- Support agile, project-based, or non-linear organizations
- Enable more holistic performance reviews (e.g., including mentoring, project leadership)
| Concept | Job | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A job is a defined position within an organization with a specific title, description, and scope of work. | A role is the set of responsibilities or behaviors an individual assumes, often within or across jobs. |
| Structure | Jobs are formal and part of the organizational hierarchy. | Roles are more fluid and can vary depending on context, team, or project. |
| Examples | “Software Engineer II”, “HR Manager”, “Marketing Specialist” | “Scrum Master”, “Mentor”, “Project Lead”, “Change Agent” |
| Documentation | Jobs are typically defined in job architecture, with levels, salary bands, and job descriptions. | Roles may be informal and assigned based on skills, behaviors, or team needs, not necessarily written down. |
| Purpose | Used for hiring, compensation, performance review, and workforce planning. | Used to organize work, behaviors, and contributions beyond the job title. |
In Teammeter, we have chosen to use the role concept as it is better supporting agility in organizations. The job you are hired for is simply your initial role.
How to Build a Job Architecture That Supports Non-Linear Careers
1. Clarify Your Why
Start by defining your goals:
- Are you solving for title inflation?
- Do you want more internal mobility?
- Are you trying to scale without chaos?
Include voices from HR, executives, and employees who want better visibility into how they can grow.
2. Create Job Families and Job Functions
Group roles by discipline and sub-discipline. For example:
| Job Family | Sub-Function |
|---|---|
| Engineering | Frontend / Backend / QA |
| Product | Research / Strategy / Ops |
| Marketing | Content / Growth / Brand |
This structure helps identify alternative paths. A Content Manager could move into Product Storytelling. A QA Engineer might transition into Customer Experience. That’s non-linear growth in action.
3. Define Job Levels (Without Imposing a Ladder)
Establish job levels but make sure they apply across different tracks, not just management. For instance:
- Level 1: Associate
- Level 2: Individual Contributor
- Level 3: Senior Specialist OR Team Lead
- Level 4: Principal OR Manager
- Level 5: Director OR Staff Expert
This dual-track approach supports both individual excellence and people leadership.
📘 In her book “Multipliers,” Liz Wiseman notes:
“The best leaders aren’t geniuses—they’re genius-makers.”
Positive job architecture helps you retain and grow both.
4. Develop Flexible Job Descriptions
Use consistent structure, but leave room for evolution:
- Key responsibilities
- Required and optional skills
- Behavioral competencies
- Cross-functional opportunities
Add a “potential growth paths” section to each description:
- Vertical (e.g., Sr. Designer → Lead Designer)
- Lateral (e.g., Sr. Designer → Product Strategist)
- Exploratory (e.g., Sr. Designer → People Ops Collaborator)
This makes non-linear options visible and viable.
5. Map Compensation to Outcomes, Not Just Titles
Align roles to grade levels and salary bands based on responsibility scope, influence, and outcomes, not titles.
Example:
| Grade | Role Example | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| E3 | Senior Engineer | Leads projects, no reports |
| M3 | Engineering Manager | Manages team, owns delivery |
| T3 | Technical Fellow | No reports, org-wide influence |
In a non-linear compensation system, individual contributors (ICs) may have higher compensations than managers, depending on the demand of their expertise.
6. Integrate Skills with Your Job Architecture
A robust job architecture doesn’t stop at roles and levels. It must connect seamlessly with skill management. This helps:
- Identify gaps between current and required competencies
- Personalize employee development plans
- Enable skill-based mobility, not just title-based promotion
Tools like Teammeter’s Skill Management Software make it easy to map and track skills across teams, align them with job profiles, and foster both vertical and non-linear career growth.
Whether you’re managing a tech team or a cross-functional organization, integrating skill intelligence into your job framework is the next step toward a truly modern talent strategy.
🚨 Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Title inflation (“Let’s just call everyone a Lead”)
- Ignoring lateral growth (forcing great ICs into management)
- Assuming everyone wants the same path
- Failing to update architecture over time
A job framework should evolve—just like careers do.
💬 Final Thoughts
Modern careers aren’t ladders—they’re lattices. Or webs. Or even jungle gyms.
Your job architecture should reflect that.
When you build a job architecture with non-linear growth in mind, you don’t just add clarity about job opportunities, you unlock talent. You allow people to grow in the direction that’s meaningful to them, not just up. And that’s the kind of structure today’s agile organizations need.
📖To learn more
- AIHR – What Is Job Architecture?
A concise definition and explanation of job architecture, detailing how it structures roles, titles, and responsibilities to ensure consistency and fairness across an organization.
🔗 Read the article - Mercer – Career Framework and Job Architecture
Offers insights into how a structured career framework can help HR provide effective organizational models, especially post-mergers and acquisitions, focusing on optimal levels, skill clarity, and impactful career paths.
🔗 Learn more - SAP Community – Why Job Architecture is the Backbone of Modern HR
Explores how a structured job architecture connects critical HR elements like job hierarchies, competency profiles, and pay grades into a unified system, enhancing organizational effectiveness.
🔗 Read the blog post