Product · Skills taxonomy
A skills taxonomy people actually use
2,250 skills across 15 pillars, each with four defined levels, and 975 job titles that each say which skills the role needs. A shared vocabulary for what people can do, that a manager and an engineer can both point at and mean the same thing.
- Levels that describe behaviour
- Owned by your organisation
- Attached to real people
My skills
12 verified
My skills
12 verifiedSearch skills, e.g. SQL, coaching, product
My skills (16)All skills (2,250)
View all skills →
Levels that describe behaviour
Beginner to Expert, and each rung says what someone at that rung does differently. A level is a description you can check against, not a number somebody felt was about right.
Owned by your organisation
Start from the standard taxonomy and edit it. Rename, re-level, retire, add your own — every change is recorded, so the taxonomy has a history rather than just a current state.
Attached to real people
Skills sit on profiles, on development plans, on quests and on the leaderboard. Change a skill and everything pointing at it moves with it.
A shared vocabulary, not a list of job titles
Most skills data fails for the same reason: two people write down the same word and mean different things by it. A taxonomy is worth having only if a manager and an engineer can point at an entry and agree on what it describes.
The standard taxonomy is 2,250 skills across 15 pillars, each defined at four levels, from technology and finance to science, operations and industry know-how. It is a starting point rather than a rule, and the point of shipping one is that nobody has to invent a vocabulary from a blank page before they can measure anything.
Dashboard
Profile
Team
PDPs
Quests
Skills
Career Map
Badges
LeaderboardSkills
Skill treeFavouritesRecommended
+ 8 more pillars, from Design & Creative to Domain Expertise
Levels that describe behaviour
Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert, and each rung says what someone at that rung does differently. A level is a description you can check a person against, not a number somebody felt was about right on a Friday.
This is the difference between a skills matrix that survives contact with a performance conversation and one that gets quietly ignored. If two managers can read the same level definition and rate the same person differently, the definition is the problem.
Owned by your organisation
Start from the standard taxonomy and edit it. Rename entries that use your language rather than ours, re-level the ones pitched wrong for your industry, retire what does not apply, and add your own.
Every change is recorded, so the taxonomy has a history rather than only a current state. That matters the first time somebody asks why a skill moved, or whether last quarter's numbers were measured against the same definition as this quarter's.
Attached to real people, not stored beside them
Skills sit on profiles, on development plans, on quests and on the leaderboard. Change a skill and everything pointing at it moves with it. There is no second copy to reconcile and no export that goes stale the moment it is downloaded.
The practical test of a skills system is whether anybody looks at it a month after rollout. A taxonomy that only lives in an admin screen has already failed that test.
My skill shape
OverviewSkill treeRadarJob titles that say what the role needs
A skill is a thing someone can do. A level is how well. A competency framework, in most organisations, is those two things plus a decision about which combinations matter for which roles.
The catalogue makes that third decision a starting point too: 975 job titles across 44 disciplines, each listing the skills the role calls for and the level it expects of each. Keep them, rename them or rewrite them, because which skills a Senior Engineer needs is still a question about your company. What the product adds is the defensible part: a person's gap to a title is measured against levels they verified rather than claimed.
What it costs to keep honest
A taxonomy decays. People join, roles change, and a skill defined two years ago stops matching the work. The maintenance burden is real and worth naming rather than pretending away.
What reduces it here is that the taxonomy is edited in one place, changes are audited, and nothing else has to be updated to match. The alternative — a spreadsheet per department — decays just as fast and does it invisibly.
Frequently asked questions
View all FAQs →
Frequently asked questionsHow do assessments verify skill levels?
Someone answers five questions written for one specific proficiency level, and four correct verifies it. The questions are timed, the pass mark is the same for everyone in every company, and you are tested at the level you claim. Once that level is verified, the next assessment is the rung above, and climbing pays only the difference in XP.
What does PDP Quest assess?
Skills from a taxonomy of 2,250 skills across 15 pillars, each defined at four levels from Beginner to Expert, alongside 975 job titles that each list the skills the role needs. Both ship as a starting point and your organisation edits them — rename, re-level, retire or add your own, with every change recorded.
Can we use our own skill framework?
Yes. The standard taxonomy is editable in full, and the assessment question bank works the same way — read it, retire questions that turn out to be weak, or import your own. An assessment written for a general audience will not measure what your organisation means by a skill.
Who writes the assessment questions?
Either the AI quiz maker, which you review, or you — questions import from CSV. Every question in the bank is labelled with which it was.
How long does an assessment take?
Five questions on a timer you set. Most people finish inside a few minutes, which is deliberate: an assessment nobody has time for gets nobody verified.
Can someone retake an assessment they failed?
Yes. A failed attempt verifies nothing and takes nothing away — a level someone has already proven stays proven — and they can try again. Every attempt, passed or failed, is kept, so a manager can see the history rather than only the result.