How Figma hires—Who you hire shapes what you ship
Figma is known for many things, like powering the design systems of today’s most innovative companies. Or their product’s strong collaboration features. Or their passionate community of Makers and advocates. But while plenty of people want to work at Figma, their talent principles aren’t widely discussed like those of Spotify or Coinbase. We think they should be.
Figma’s hiring practices reveal a deep truth about building exceptional products: your talent strategy, starting from the way you evaluate talent, shapes the culture that shapes the product.
The company has created a hiring process that not only attracts and nurtures great talent but reinforces their core values at every step. Here are three key ways they’ve done this:
Collaborative interview process
Figma doesn’t do take-homes for many of their roles.
Instead, they prefer collaborative “jam sessions” during their interviews and onsites, to mirror real-life team interactions. This can include:
- Pair programming sessions: Instead of solo coding challenges, engineering candidates do pair programming interviews, working alongside a Figma engineer to solve problems. This allows interviewers to assesses not only technical skills, but also how an interviewee communicates and collaborates.
- Live design critiques or creative exercises: Design candidates and hiring managers will analyze an existing product or use case together, or go through a design exercise where the interviewee provides a design statement and solution to a problem.
- Real-world problem scenarios: Figma's technical question draw inspiration from actual challenges the company has faced. Candidates are encouraged to demonstrate their problem-solving skills in a context that's directly relevant to Figma's work.
- Cross-functional evaluation: Members of different teams assess candidates for their ability to work across disciplines. For example designers and product managers might be involved in the interview process for engineering roles.
Because Figma runs on Figma (even performance reviews are conducted on Figjam), much of the async interview process happens on the platform as well.
Of course, there are exceptions for positions where hiring managers have to assess craft without a portfolio (such as writing-heavy marketing roles). But for design or engineering candidates, the Figma team believes a collaborative interview and a portfolio should showcase everything a hiring manager needs to know.
This decision isn’t without controversy — reviewing a take-home is less resource-intensive than a collaborative interview with multiple stakeholders. But Figma’s approach can be seen as a micro work trail revealing how someone operates and solves problems within a team without demanding days, or even weeks of, candidate time.
Emphasis on creativity and design
Figma's approach to talent reflects their deeper philosophy about building great products. Much like how Notion’s product experience stems from the company’s collective commitment to craft, Figma’s goal of creating the world's most thoughtful design tool starts from their focus on creativity and collaboration during the hiring process.
This extends beyond design roles – technical candidates must demonstrate user-centered thinking alongside coding ability, and may be asked to approach technical problems with consideration for good UX. New hires receive copies of "The Design of Everyday Things", and attend Design 101 workshops led by design leadership, establishing design thinking as a company-wide competency.
And while craft matters deeply, Figma places an equal value on playfulness. The company believes spontaneous, unstructured exploration is where people find their best ideas. Their annual Maker Week exemplifies this; the company sets aside time once a year for all employees to pursue “wild, silly, and imaginative” ideas. Everyone is encouraged to work on anything that piques their curiosity, even if (and perhaps especially when) it falls outside their usual scope of work.
Carefully defining “craftsmanship”
Figma isn’t the only company that emphasizes craftsmanship as a a team value. But they’re one of the few who’ve taken great care to define what exactly craftsmanship means, operationally. As one of their core engineering values, craftsmanship involves having meticulous care for the work you produce.
Shipping fast isn’t enough at Figma; the team wants to “build for builders and try to make complex things feel simple”, and “ask why until we get to the core and continually focus on solving the right problem”.
Given Figma’s critical role in their users’ design processes, it makes sense that the team prioritizes stable, bug-free, thoughtfully-crafted experiences over rapid development. The term craftsmanship also entails:
- Sustainable problem-solving: Engineers strive to create solutions that are maintainable and extensible in the future.
- Continuous improvement: The team conducts retrospectives for all projects, aiming to learn from past mistakes and identify opportunities for improbement.
- Long-term thinking: Craftsmanship often reduces the complexity of ongoing development and new features in the long run.
In a Figma blog post, an engineering manager tells his team:
“When solving a problem, do so sustainably; always strive to improve our process and learn from missteps.”
This focus on craft over speed represents a conscious trade-off. But when you’re building a product that’s such an integral part of your customers’ daily work, each employee’s understanding of and commitment to this level of craftsmanship is the best way to ensure a high-quality experience for all users.
The big picture
A company that wants to embed collaboration, creativity, and craftsmanship in their team and product DNA should first prioritize the same qualities in their hiring process. Screening for and nurturing these traits creates a reinforcing cycle where these values become deeply embedded in Figma’s DNA.
Figma’s success demonstrates great products aren't built from vision alone – they’re built by teams who embody and amplify that vision.
Four questions to ask to refine your talent strategy, inspired by Figma
The goal isn't to copy Figma's process, but to apply its principles in ways that reinforce your own company's values. Instead of skipping straight to replacing all take-homes with interactive interviews, consider the following questions with your hiring team:
1. Why are you choosing to do take-homes for each role, over collaborative exercises or even work trials?
Take-home projects may be what the industry has converged on in a standard hiring playbook, but do they make sense the most sense for your hiring goals? Collaborative exercises could more closely mirror daily work. You could have candidates critique a product feature or brainstorm solutions to actual challenges your team has faced.
2. Do your interview panels accurately reflect daily workflows?
If not, include cross-functional teammates in interviews, even for specialized roles. A designer sitting in on an engineering interview can reveal how candidates think about user experience.
3. What specific behaviors and outputs demonstrate craft in your team's work?
Defining craftsmanship concretely for your context can help clarify your job requirements and bar for excellence. It will also make communicating your expectations to external recruiters and candidates much easier.
4. What are other ways you might assess culture fit, beyond standard behavioral interviews?
If innovation/exploration/experimentation is a value of yours, create space for play and experimentation in your interview process. Add an open-ended exercise where candidates can demonstrate creativity without strict constraints.
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