SKILLS DEVELOPMENT | PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Nobody could agree on what good looked like. So we went and found out…
In a market where technical talent is the sharpest competitive edge, this Big 4 firm had a problem hiding in plain sight: no clear pathway for their engineers, designers, and AI specialists to grow. Before a single framework could be built, someone had to define what growth really meant. That’s where this story starts.
What the firm was really up against
Technical skills don’t stand still. In engineering, design, and AI, especially, the gap between what an organisation has and what the market demands can open faster than most talent strategies can respond.
This firm was feeling that pressure. They had talented specialists across Engineering, Design, and AI, but no structured career pathways to develop them, retain them, or signal to the market that this was a place where technical ambition could genuinely flourish. In a sector where the best technical minds have choices, that absence was a liability.
The risk wasn’t just losing people to competitors. It was losing the capability edge that differentiated the firm in the first place.
The Impact
platform engagement
skills progression
specialists reached across 9 craft pathways
The decision that changed everything
The firm came to Solvd with a genuine challenge and, unusually, without a predetermined answer. Stakeholders weren’t aligned on what good looked like, what a framework should contain, or how development conversations in technical disciplines should work differently from those across the wider business.
Rather than treat that ambiguity as a blocker, Solvd treated it as the starting point. If nobody was certain what was needed, the answer was to go and find out.
Digging deeper to design smarter
The research phase began inside the firm’s existing communities of practice – the informal networks where technical specialists already gathered, shared knowledge, and made sense of their roles.
What emerged was a clear and consistent picture: the technical specialist experience was deeply inconsistent. Career development conversations were happening unevenly, or not at all. The frameworks that existed elsewhere in the business didn’t translate to the specific demands and motivations of engineers, designers, and AI practitioners. Specialists were being managed through a lens that simply didn’t fit them.
Those insights shaped a strategic report that gave the firm something it hadn’t had before: a clear, evidence-based foundation for its skills and career development strategy across all four technical areas. Before a platform was built or a pathway designed, the firm understood what it was building toward and why.
What we built together
A bespoke technical skills and career development programme – Crafts – built from the ground up for engineers, designers, and AI specialists, with its own pathways, its own platform, and its own identity.
A framework grounded in audience-informed design
The skills and career development framework wasn’t drawn from a generic competency library. It was built from what the firm’s own technical specialists said they needed – the progressions that made sense to them, the development conversations that would actually land, and the distinctions between technical and leadership growth that off-the-shelf frameworks consistently flatten. The result was a structure specialists recognised as their own, because it had been shaped by them.
A platform built for progress
The framework needed a home – somewhere specialists could not only access their development pathways but track their progress through them over time. The bespoke digital platform gave technical specialists visibility of where they were, where they were heading, and what was required to get there. For managers, it provided the scaffolding for development conversations that were specific, meaningful, and grounded in the realities of technical careers rather than generic performance language.
A brand and launch that gave it presence
A framework and a platform are only as powerful as the appetite people have to engage with them. A distinct brand identity – its own visual language, its own name – gave the programme credibility and recognition from day one. Narrative films brought the framework to life through the stories of real technical specialists. A launch campaign ensured it arrived with momentum rather than a quiet internal rollout.
A manager conversation toolkit
The pointy end of a skills and career framework is the conversation between a manager and their team member. Based on insights from a further sprint of research, the team developed a how-to guide for managers for using the platform. How they could get the most from the framework, and turn it into useful and relevant conversations with technical specialists. It included checklists, podcasts and demonstration videos.
The results, and the ripple beyond them
The platform launched across 9 craft pathways, reaching over 1,630 specialists – a meaningful scale for something built around the specific needs of technical disciplines.
57% of enrolled users actively engaged with the platform, rating themselves against the framework and beginning to map their own progression. Of those, 13% recorded a measurable level change. No just browsing – they were using the platform to grow and drive development.
For a programme that began without a clear definition of what good even looked like, that was a significant shift. Specialists who previously had no structured picture of where their career could go now have pathways, language, and a platform to track their progress. Managers who struggled to have meaningful development conversations in technical disciplines now have the scaffolding to do so.
Crafts didn’t just fill a gap in the firm’s talent strategy. It gave technical ambition somewhere to land.
