The rise of the full stack builder

As design process and roles change and evolve one company has gone all in and create a new role. Enter the Rise of the Full-Stack Builder…

I listened to Lenny’s podcast with Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn’s CPO), Tomer has made a bold move in using AI to reshape product work. Not in theory, but on the ground, inside one of the biggest product organisations in the world.

A few things stood out

Work is transforming faster than anyone expected:

Tomer described what he’s seeing as a dramatic shift, rather than an evolution through LinkedIn’s analytics:

• Some roles will see 90–95% of their tasks impacted by AI
• 70% of the fastest-growing jobs today didn’t exist last year
• Entire functions—engineering, marketing, sales, recruiting—are being redefined
• Meanwhile, professions rooted in physical human care (like nursing) will feel less impact

Tomer sees this as rewriting the structure of work and at LinkedIn he’s turned theory into practice and made a bet on a new role, the full stack builder.

The Full-Stack Builder:

LinkedIn is reorganising around a new kind of product contributor:

“A builder who can take an idea from zero to launched—regardless of their place in the stack.”

Key characteristics of this model:

• Cross-domain capability (no more “that’s engineering” or “that’s design”)
• Human + machine acting in a continuous loop
• Ownership of the entire lifecycle: idea → prototype → build → validate → launch
• Focus on mission-based, outcome-driven pods—not bloated teams

This isn’t about replacing roles.

It’s about collapsing the boundaries between them.

The irreplaceable human traits:

If almost everything can be automated, what still matters?

According to Tomer:

• Vision — seeing the future before others do
• Empathy — understanding unmet needs
• Communication — aligning and rallying teams
• Creativity — exploring what others can’t yet see
• Judgment — making smart decisions in ambiguity, the most important

Everything else becomes leverage points for AI.

These are exactly the muscles designers, PMs, and engineers will need to strengthen if they want to operate as full-stack builders.

Teams are shrinking—on purpose:

One of the most interesting operational changes:

• Small, cross-trained “pods,” modeled after Navy SEALs
• Reassembled every quarter around a new mission
• More adaptive, more resilient, more accountable
• A response to the fact that the old operating model is now “broken” due to the pace of change

This is the new organisational physics.

Most companies aren’t ready:

Startups can operate this way from day one.

But established companies face three major hurdles:

1. Platform — systems need re-architecting so AI can reason over code
2. Tools & agents — off-the-shelf doesn’t integrate cleanly (at least from LinkedIn’s perspective, they tried, it failed)
3. Culture — still the hardest part

The fact LinkedIn is building bespoke AI agents for trust, growth, and research shows how deep this shift goes.

Why this resonated with me:

Everything Tomer described is exactly the world I’ve been preparing designers for:

• Teams that based their ides on evidence, not opinion
• Designers who can prototype behaviours, not just screens
• Cross-functional builders who move from idea → interaction → working model in hours
• Teams who adopt AI not as a gimmick, but as an operating system
• Organisations that need design-led change management to shift how they work

This is the foundation for my Designing with AI programme* — helping product teams adopt full-stack builder practices and build the internal capability to deliver faster, smarter, and with more creativity.

The future belongs to the builders who can see across the stack.

And AI is finally making that possible.

*If you would like to find out more about the designing with AI programme contact me here on LinkedIn or email darren@sparq-creative.co.uk