Have you heard of this new role—Super IC? Sounds cool, right? Like a superhero, but for Figma. You get to make high-impact work and skip the politics of people management? Sign me up.
But, let’s slow down. Because “Super IC” isn’t actually a title (it’s actually called: Staff, Senior Staff, Senior Lead, Principal)—it’s a growing genre of job description that reads less like a role and more like a dare.
“And how many hats shall we be wearing today?”
On paper, it’s a dream gig. You’re an individual contributor who’s trusted to lead without managing. You get to stay on the tools, shape strategy, influence direction, mentor others, and maybe even write a funny Slack post now and then that magically becomes company canon.
No direct reports, no hiring plans, no weekly 1:1s filled with awkward silence. Just you and your brilliance. Ahh.
But wait, the actual job requirements go a little something like this:
Production: Ship top-tier creative work on tight deadlines. Every week. Forever.
Strategy: Make sure you also know the business goals, shape the narrative, preempt executive asks, and back it all up with data.
Project Management: Whoops, there’s no producer. So you’ll need to track your timelines, unblock your own dependencies, and navigate five cross-functional threads without losing your mind.
Stakeholder Management: Be in every meeting, translate vague feedback into action, and help your stakeholders feel like they’re geniuses.
Self-Management: There’s no roadmap. You are the roadmap. Good luck!
Company Culture: Facilitate rituals, keep morale high, and model emotional intelligence at scale.
Mentorship: You’re not a manager, but you are expected to coach other designers, onboard newbies, and generally be the person everyone Slacks when they’re stuck.
It’s basically a director-level role with none of the perks. No assistant. No buffer. No dedicated Slack channel called “#what-do-you-need-from-me.” Just you—walking the line between empowerment and mild professional chaos.
And yes, there are still annual reviews—but they’re conducted by stakeholders who’ve only seen a fraction of your workload, your impact, or the fifty quiet fires you put out in the background. Your work is strategic, emotional, invisible. Your reviewers? Often just...visible
This job might be perfect for a former manager who’s returned to the IC path for sanity or passion or politics. They’ll already know how to coach, how to lead a room, how to make a Notion doc look official. But if you’re a pure IC, someone who dreams of focusing on creative excellence with a team of collaborators? The Super IC role will likely feel less like a promotion and more like a trap door.
This isn’t just a job. It’s a solo agency embedded inside a company.
You’ll have lots of autonomy but very little support. You’ll “own your schedule,” which really means you’ll juggle your calendar like a one-person circus. You’ll “lead without managing,” which really means answering every single question from every direction with no clear boundaries. You’ll “scale your impact,” but you won’t have any resourcing to back it up.
So yes, you get creative control. Yes, you get to skip the middle-manager trainings and team culture meetings. But you also get to run your own ops, strategy, project planning, stakeholder comms, and mood management. Alone.
The Super IC truly is the role of the moment.
It’s powerful, flexible, and full of potential. But it’s also undefined, unsustainable, and, at times, deeply lonely. You own your own schedule—but operate at your own risk.
Have you found yourself in this role? Are you living it right now? I’d love to hear how it’s playing out for you—what’s working, what’s draining you, and what you wish your org actually recognized. I’m planning to share more stories like this (not just my own), so if you’ve got a Super IC experience worth telling—or know someone quietly holding it all together—send it my way or pass this along.