Building a Content Design Team in a SaaS Scale-Up

How I approached building a small but mighty content design team at a SaaS scale-up

Image: Jono Hey, Sketchplanations

Building a content design team inside a fast-moving SaaS company isn’t a clean, linear process.

It reminds me of Reid Hoffman’s line about startups: “jumping off a cliff and assembling the plane on the way down.” That’s exactly what it feels like to build a team in a scale-up, too. You’re hiring, educating, documenting, and building processes — all while the product keeps shipping at full speed. And most likely, you’re still doing a lot of IC work while building everything else at the same time.

At Jisr, a Saudi HR and finance platform in its scale-up phase, my goal wasn’t to build a team; it was to build a foundation strong enough to scale without slowing down.

It’s still a work in progress, but here’s how I’ve approached it so far.

Step 1: Start with conversations, not assumptions Before diving into strategy, I spent my first couple of weeks meeting everyone — the CPO, product director, product leads, product managers, product designers, and the marketing and customer success teams.

I wanted to understand how people saw content design, what was already working, and where the biggest gaps were.

Those early conversations were some of the most valuable I’ve had at the company. They gave me context, clarity, and a few unexpected allies who became champions for content design across the organisation.

Step 2: Build a plan and align early Once I had a clearer picture, I built a plan of action — how we’d grow the team, scale our impact, and integrate into the product development process.

In a scale-up, alignment is everything. Sharing the plan early (and inviting feedback) meant people felt part of the process rather than surprised by it later.

There was — and honestly, still is — some pushback. No one loves change, but opening that conversation was a necessary first step.

Step 3: Make education part of the strategy From the start, I knew our content design team would always be small — that’s the reality in most companies.

So instead of trying to do everything ourselves, I made education a core part of our strategy.

We started simple: sharing quick tips in Slack, explaining why we made certain changes during reviews, having a strong presence in design critiques, and always sharing the reasoning behind our decisions.

The goal isn’t formal training; it’s awareness and understanding. When people understand how you can help them, they’re far more likely to invite you in.

Step 4: Hire the right people When it came to expanding the team, I focused on finding the right people — specifically for Jisr and the way the company operates today.

We needed senior bilingual content designers who could embed within tribes, work collaboratively, and hit the ground running. Hiring in a scale-up is about finding people who can thrive in ambiguity, influence without authority, and bring structure where there isn’t any yet.

I’ve opted for an embedded model — one content designer per two tribes. It keeps us close to the work and the people, helps us build context quickly, and allows us to become subject matter experts. The goal is to be just as close to the details as product managers and product designers.

Step 5: Build the foundations while keeping pace One of the hardest parts of working in a scale-up is balancing the need for documentation with the pace of releases.

You can’t stop day-to-day work to build systems, but you also can’t scale without them.

So we document as we go — creating just enough structure to make collaboration smoother without slowing anyone down.

Glossaries, tone guidance, and templates. All living, evolving resources that grow alongside the product.

It’s not glamorous, and it’s not ideal, but it’s what keeps the chaos from multiplying later.

Step 6: Use tools to scale impact (carefully) Early on, I built a custom GPT for UX writing to handle some of the surface-level work — quick rewrites, error messages, and first drafts — freeing up time for higher-impact projects.

It’s been a useful experiment, but like any tool, it comes with trade-offs.

Automation can speed things up, but it can also add noise if not managed carefully. Finding that balance between efficiency and craft is still a work in progress (and probably deserves its own article).

Just Getting Started Building a content design team in a scale-up isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress, clarity, and momentum.

The product won’t wait for you to catch up — so you learn to build while you go.

And if you do it right, the foundations you lay today will keep supporting the work long after you leave.

We’re just getting started, but I can already see the difference our work is making. There’s a long way to go — and it won’t always be easy — but that’s exactly what makes building in a scale-up so rewarding.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/@Henriettaward/building-a-content-design-team-in-a-saas-scale-up-911b85a01d3b