Last Updated: February 28, 2026

LinkedIn Just Named What We've Been Doing: The Rise of the Full Stack Builder

LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer Tomer Cohen has done something bold. He scrapped the traditional Associate Product Manager (APM) program, replaced it with an Associate Product Builder program, and created a formal "Full Stack Builder" title with its own career ladder. The message is clear: the era of hyper-specialised roles is ending. The future belongs to people who can take a product from idea to launch, combining coding, design, and product management into one person.

For those of us who have been building this way with AI tools for the past two years, this feels less like news and more like validation.

What Is LinkedIn's Full Stack Builder Role?

LinkedIn's Full Stack Builder is a new role created by CPO Tomer Cohen that combines product management, engineering, and design into a single position. Instead of requiring three to five specialists to ship a feature, one Full Stack Builder owns the entire product lifecycle from concept to launch. LinkedIn formally retired its Associate Product Manager program and replaced it with the Associate Product Builder program, complete with a dedicated career ladder. The role reflects LinkedIn's belief that process complexity had turned builders into "assembly-line workers," and that re-empowering individuals to own outcomes end-to-end produces better products faster.

Tomer Cohen laid this out in detail during a deep dive on Lenny's Podcast and in his LinkedIn article on bringing the Full Stack Builder to life. The core argument is straightforward: as organisations grow, they add layers of process. Handoffs multiply. Specialists multiply. And somewhere along the way, the people who actually built the product stop building and start coordinating.

Cohen's phrase for it is striking: "We moved from builders to assembly-line workers."

The Full Stack Builder role is LinkedIn's answer to that problem. Rather than optimising the assembly line, they are dismantling it. One person, empowered with the right tools and platforms, can do what used to require a team of five.

The Three Pillars: Platforms, Tooling, Culture

LinkedIn's approach to enabling Full Stack Builders rests on three pillars:

• Platforms: Building internal infrastructure that abstracts complexity. Instead of requiring deep backend expertise for every change, LinkedIn is investing in platforms that let builders ship without navigating legacy systems.
• Tooling: AI-native development tools, including Project Nile, LinkedIn's initiative to re-architect its codebase specifically for AI-assisted development. Off-the-shelf AI tools do not work well on enterprise code without significant customisation, so LinkedIn is building its own.
• Culture: Cohen identifies this as the most important pillar. If the org chart still rewards specialists and punishes generalists, no amount of tooling will change behaviour. LinkedIn has gone as far as adding AI proficiency to performance reviews.

That last point is worth sitting with. AI proficiency is now part of how LinkedIn evaluates its people. Not as an optional bonus. As a core competency.

Why Did LinkedIn Replace Product Managers with Builders?

LinkedIn replaced traditional product managers with Full Stack Builders because process complexity had become the bottleneck, not capability. As the organisation scaled, the number of handoffs between product managers, designers, and engineers multiplied. Each handoff introduced delays, miscommunication, and diluted ownership. By consolidating these roles into one builder who can code, design, and manage the product, LinkedIn eliminated the coordination overhead that was slowing down innovation. The shift also reflects the reality that AI tools now make it possible for one person to competently operate across disciplines that previously required years of specialised training.

The Assembly Line Problem

This is not just a LinkedIn problem. It is the default failure mode of every growing organisation.

You start with a small team of generalists who ship fast. Then you hire specialists because "we need someone who really knows X." Then you hire coordinators because the specialists need alignment. Then you hire project managers because the coordinators need coordination. Before long, you have 15 people involved in shipping a feature that one person built in a weekend two years ago.

Cohen saw this happening at LinkedIn and decided to reverse it. The Full Stack Builder role is not about asking one person to do the work of five. It is about removing the organisational complexity that made five people necessary in the first place.

The AI Acceleration

Here is where it gets interesting for every business, not just LinkedIn.

LinkedIn's internal data shows that top performers adopt AI tools fastest. This is not a levelling effect where AI brings everyone up to the same baseline. The people who were already strong are the ones who grab AI tools first and use them to extend their capabilities further. The gap between top performers and average performers is widening, not narrowing.

This has massive implications for hiring. If one AI-augmented builder can produce what previously required a team, the economics of talent change completely. You do not need five average specialists. You need one or two exceptional builders with the right AI toolkit.

How Does the Full Stack Builder Model Apply to Growing Businesses?

The Full Stack Builder model means growing businesses can achieve enterprise-level output by empowering one or two versatile builders with AI tools instead of hiring large specialist teams. A builder who can handle strategy, design, development, and deployment, augmented by AI for coding assistance, content generation, data analysis, and workflow automation, can ship products and solutions at a pace that previously required five to ten people. This approach dramatically reduces coordination overhead, cuts costs, and maintains the speed and agility that growing businesses need to compete. The key is investing in the right platforms, tools, and a culture that rewards end-to-end ownership rather than narrow specialisation.

At Flowtivity, this is not a theoretical framework. It is how we have operated from day one.

AJ Awan, Flowtivity's founder, spent six years at EY as a Manager in IT Advisory, delivering $15M in business benefits across clients like IAG, CBA, Westpac, and Genesis Care. He holds a TOGAF 9 enterprise architecture certification and has shipped over 200 product features. When he founded Flowtivity, he did not hire a team of specialists. He built the entire operation, from strategy to code to client delivery, as a single builder augmented by AI.

That is the Full Stack Builder model in practice. And it works.

What This Means for Your Business

If LinkedIn, a company with thousands of engineers, is betting on the Full Stack Builder approach, the implications for growing businesses are even more significant:

• You do not need a 10-person product team. One or two builders with AI tools can ship faster than a traditional team weighed down by coordination overhead.
• Hire for breadth, not just depth. Look for people who can move across disciplines. Coding plus design plus business acumen is the new superpower.
• Invest in platforms and tools, not headcount. The right AI toolkit is cheaper than another salary and scales infinitely.
• Make AI proficiency a core skill. If LinkedIn is putting it in performance reviews, your business should be evaluating it too.
• Kill unnecessary process. Every handoff is a delay. Every approval layer is friction. Audit your workflows and ask: does this step add value, or does it just add comfort?

What Human Skills Matter Most in the Age of AI Builders?

The human skills that matter most alongside AI tools are vision, empathy, communication, creativity, and judgment. AI can generate code, create designs, analyse data, and draft content. But it cannot set product direction, understand what customers actually need (versus what they say they need), communicate a compelling vision to stakeholders, think creatively about novel solutions, or make nuanced judgment calls when trade-offs are ambiguous. These are the skills that separate a builder who ships meaningful products from one who ships technically competent but strategically pointless features.

This is one of the most important takeaways from Cohen's framework. The Full Stack Builder is not just a "person who can do everything." It is a person who combines technical capability with human skills that AI cannot replicate.

The Skills Stack

Think of it as two layers:

Technical layer (increasingly AI-augmented):

• Writing and reviewing code
• Creating designs and prototypes
• Analysing data and running experiments
• Managing deployments and infrastructure

Human layer (irreplaceable):

• Setting vision and product direction
• Building empathy with users and customers
• Communicating across stakeholders and teams
• Creative problem-solving for novel challenges
• Exercising judgment when data is incomplete

The builders who thrive will be strong in both layers. AI handles the technical heavy lifting at increasing speed and quality. The human brings the direction, the taste, and the judgment.

This is why AJ's background in management consulting is so relevant to the builder model. Nine years of consulting teaches you to see the whole system, not just the code or the design. It teaches you to communicate with executives, understand business constraints, and make decisions with imperfect information. Those are exactly the human skills that the Full Stack Builder role demands.

How Can Businesses Start Building a Full Stack Builder Culture Today?

Businesses can start building a Full Stack Builder culture by taking five practical steps: audit current workflows for unnecessary handoffs, invest in AI tools that enable individual ownership, hire or develop people with cross-functional capabilities, restructure incentives to reward end-to-end delivery rather than specialist output, and start small with one builder on one project to prove the model before scaling. The most important step is cultural. Leadership must genuinely value and reward builders who ship complete solutions, not just people who excel in a narrow lane.

Here is a practical roadmap:

Step 1: Audit Your Coordination Overhead

Map out how a typical feature or project moves through your organisation. Count the handoffs. Count the meetings. Count the approval steps. If more than 30% of the elapsed time is spent on coordination rather than building, you have an assembly line problem.

Step 2: Invest in AI-Native Tooling

LinkedIn built Project Nile because off-the-shelf AI tools do not work well on enterprise codebases without customisation. Your business probably does not need to build its own AI platform, but you should be investing in:

• AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar)
• AI design tools (Figma AI, Midjourney for prototyping)
• AI workflow automation (Make.com, n8n, or custom integrations)
• AI content and communication tools

The goal is to give your builders superpowers, not just convenience.

Step 3: Hire Builders, Not Specialists

When you next hire, look for someone who has built things end-to-end. Ask candidates: "Tell me about something you took from idea to launch." If they can only talk about their slice of a larger project, they are a specialist. If they can walk you through the whole journey, from identifying the problem to shipping the solution, they are a builder.

Step 4: Restructure Incentives

If your performance reviews reward "depth of expertise" but not "breadth of impact," you are incentivising the assembly line. Add metrics for end-to-end delivery. Celebrate the person who shipped the whole feature, not just the person who wrote the cleanest component.

Step 5: Start Small and Prove It

Pick one project. Assign one builder. Give them the tools and autonomy to own it end-to-end. Measure the result against your traditional team approach. The data will speak for itself.

What Does 70% of Job Skills Changing by 2030 Mean for Your Team?

LinkedIn's own data indicates that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change by 2030. This means the roles you are hiring for today will look fundamentally different in four years. Businesses that cling to rigid job descriptions and narrow specialist roles will find themselves constantly re-hiring as skill requirements shift. Businesses that invest in adaptable builders, people who learn continuously and can shift across disciplines, will navigate these changes without missing a beat. The Full Stack Builder model is not just about efficiency today; it is about resilience for the decade ahead.

This statistic is staggering, but it makes sense when you look at the pace of AI advancement over the past two years alone.

Consider what has changed since early 2024:

• AI coding assistants went from novelty to essential
• AI image and video generation went from experimental to production-quality
• AI agents went from demos to shipping real work autonomously
• Entire categories of specialist work (data analysis, content drafting, basic design) became automatable

Now project that rate of change forward to 2030. The skills your team needs in four years will be dramatically different from what they need today. Hiring rigid specialists is a bet against adaptability.

The Full Stack Builder approach is inherently resilient because builders are defined by their ability to learn and adapt, not by their mastery of a specific tool or technique that might be obsolete in 18 months.

The Bottom Line: Builders Win

LinkedIn did not create the Full Stack Builder role because it is trendy. They created it because the traditional model of hyper-specialisation, layered process, and coordination-heavy teams was making them slower, not faster. Their solution, empowering individuals with platforms, AI tools, and a culture that rewards end-to-end ownership, is a blueprint that every growing business can adopt.

You do not need LinkedIn's budget. You do not need their engineering team. You need one or two people who think like builders, armed with AI tools that multiply their capabilities by 10x.

At Flowtivity, we help growing businesses make exactly this transition. From bloated processes to lean, builder-driven operations. From five specialists to one empowered builder. From slow and expensive to fast and effective.

The Full Stack Builder era is here. LinkedIn just gave it a name.

AJ Awan is the founder of Flowtivity, an AI consultancy helping growing businesses build faster with fewer people. With 9+ years of consulting experience including 6 years at EY, TOGAF 9 certification, and over $15M in delivered business benefits, AJ operates as a Full Stack Builder: strategy, design, code, and delivery in one person. Get in touch to explore how the builder model can transform your business.