The Great Role Shift: UX, PM, and Engineering Under Pressure

Across product organizations, market pressure is reshaping every discipline.  

Teams are leaner, expectations are higher, accountability is heavier, and things are changing rapidly in the age of AI.

In this session, Marijana Krstić (Senior Games User Researcher) and Lucija Sičenica (Senior Product Researcher) present findings from a cross-disciplinary benchmarking study comparing UX, engineering, and product roles across indicators of structural strain.

They examined:

• Stability of role boundaries

• Access to delegation and support

• Visibility of outputs in decision-making

• Sustainability of junior entry pathways

• The burden of ongoing value justification
  
  

Their quantitative data reveals meaningful divergences in how roles experience market pressure compared to adjacent disciplines.

Rather than framing this as burnout or maturity gaps, they analyze it as a question of organizational design.

You’ll leave with:

• Comparative insights across UX, engineering, and product

• A clear view of how market pressure is reshaping roles across UX, PM, and engineering

• A structural lens to assess role volatility in your own organization

• Practical ways to navigate blurred responsibilities without losing ownership

This talk is for UX, PM, and engineering practitioners dealing with unclear ownership, shifting expectations, and increasing pressure in product teams.

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