UX Designer Career Path: 5 Ways to Step Up Your Design Career

Key takeaways

As you embark on your UX designer career path, you may pursue roles in management, consulting, or within a specialty. 

• The base pay for a UX designer in the United States averages $84,000 [1].

• Advanced UX design positions include senior, lead, or principal UX designers. You may also explore creative director or UX manager jobs.

• You can improve your career options in UX by enhancing your programming skills, especially by learning JavaScript or CSS.

Learn more about beginning your UX designer career path, including which entry-level roles to start with and how to level up. Afterward, consider enrolling in Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate. In as little as six months, you can learn foundational UX concepts, like user-centered design, accessibility, and equity-focused design. Upon completion, you’ll receive a credential to add to your resume or portfolio.

What is the career path of a UX designer? How to begin with entry-level jobs in UX design

Those new to the user experience (UX) field may begin in entry-level UX design positions. It’s also common for people to start in related fields like graphic design or user interface (UI) design before transitioning to UX.

To start in the UX field, you’ll generally want the skills typically expected of a UX designer. This can include prototyping, wireframing, using design software, and conducting user research. 

Working in UX design can be creative, engaging, and lucrative. According to data from Glassdoor, the average base pay for UX designers is $84,000 per year [1]. If you’re wondering what options are available to advance in a UX design career, many paths exist for you to explore.

UX designer career path: 5 options to explore

As a UX designer, you may take certain paths in your career as you gain experience and grow your skills. These may include management, senior positions, freelancing, consulting, or becoming a UX specialist in a related field.

1. UX management

As UX designers gain experience, it’s common for responsibilities to expand and opportunities to be in charge of projects to increase. This may eventually lead to managerial positions like UX manager, UX director, creative director, and, further down the road, executive positions like chief experience officer, chief product officer, or vice president of UX.

As your UX career progresses, try taking on tasks that will give you more experience and responsibilities. Working on different types of projects will also expose you to new challenges and teach you how to respond to them. You’ll also want to be sure to have solid interpersonal and leadership skills, as managers oversee groups of people and can interact frequently with employees outside of their team.

Discover the annual average base salary of related managerial roles:

• UX manager: $146,000 [2]

• UX director: $144,000 [3]

• Chief experience officer: $189,000 [4]

• Creative director: $124,000 [5]

Read more: 13 Popular Leadership Skills to Develop

2. Advanced UX positions

UX designers may go on to become advanced professionals. This might mean continuing the hands-on work as a UX designer but expanding your capabilities and taking on more complex tasks. Eventually, this might lead you to roles like senior UX designer, lead UX designer, or principal UX designer. Senior designers have expanded responsibilities; lead and principal designers further lead projects and oversee larger decisions, generally while still participating in the hands-on design process.

To pursue this path, you’ll need a variety of UX skills, including user research, graphic design, and experience collaborating across various teams.

Explore the average annual base US salaries for design roles:

• Senior UX designer: $130,000 [6]

• Lead UX designer: $132,000 [7]

• Principal UX designer: $170,000 [8]

3. Freelancing 

Maybe you’re craving the freedom to partake in the UX design process while concentrating on projects that interest you. Maybe your personal life has changed, and you’re looking for work that’ll give you more flexibility. Whether it’s the ability to set your own hours or pick your own clients, you may have plenty of reasons to pursue the path of freelance work.

If you want to work as a freelance UX designer, you’ll want to prepare your portfolio. Ideally, you would also have a network of designers you can tap into to look for work and help refer you to projects. Building up a social media presence can be helpful. You might also find groups on networking and social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn to connect with other designers and find companies looking for freelancers.

Check job boards and contact your network to see what rates your target market typically pays.

Do freelance UX designers get paid well? A freelance UX designer makes an average annual base salary of $89,000 [9]. 

4. UX consulting

A UX consultant is a professional who helps improve an organization’s design and business strategy by offering solutions based on user experience principles. This might mean training clients in best UX practices, researching a client’s customers, or prototyping websites and other products. This would lead to an improved user experience for the customer and a more UX-minded approach to business by the client.

UX consultants often work as part of a UX consultancy company. They can also work as freelance or in-house consultants in a company. If you want to work as a UX consultant, you’ll want to have experience being closely involved with several projects from start to finish. Managerial experience and an understanding of underlying business practices may also be beneficial.

What can you expect to earn? UX consultants make an average annual base salary of $111,000 [10]. 

Is UX a lot of coding?

While UX design roles don’t typically require coding, you might have more career options by having some knowledge in this area. As a UX designer, some employers may prefer that you have experience with certain programming languages, such as JavaScript and cascading style sheets (CSS).

5. UX specialist

If you’re drawn to certain aspects of UX design, making a lateral switch to a related position can be an option worth considering. For example, if you’re intrigued by how engineers bring designs to life in a website or app, it might make sense to explore becoming a UX engineer. If, on the other hand, you’re fascinated by user behavior, you can think about switching to UX research.

You can switch by polishing the skills in the field you want to move into. Online courses, shadowing other professionals on your team, or taking on projects that give you more responsibilities in your target area can be a good first step. You might also tell your manager if you think they can help you gain the exposure you want in your current role.

The following represent average annual base US salaries for various roles in UX:

• UX researcher: $94,000 [11]

• UX writer: $74,000 [12]

• UX engineer: $113,000 [13]

UX designer position at an agency vs. in-house: What’s the difference?

UX designers can work at agencies and as in-house designers within a company. While no one career progression is better than the other, both have distinct benefits. Working in an agency typically means you’ll be working with different clients. This can expose you to a lot of different types of tasks and work. Since an agency will likely have several other designers on your team, you might also have an opportunity to learn from others.

Being an in-house designer, on the other hand, will mean you work for one company and focus solely on its products. If you like the idea of having more ownership over a product’s life cycle, being in-house may be more appealing to you. You might also get more exposure to more sides of a business, as you’ll likely be collaborating with other teams, like engineering and marketing.

Explore free UX design career resources

Prepare for a career in UX design by exploring free, digital resources from our Career Resource Hub. For example, you can:

• Take a quiz: Which UX Course Should You Take? Find Out in 1 Minute

• Stay up to date: Glossary of UX Terms and Definitions

• Hear from an insider: Yesha's Career Pivot to Google UX Design: Follow Your Passion

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