5 UX Designer Career Paths: Stepping Up Your Design Career
Advancing your UX design career can mean becoming a manager, advancing within design, freelancing, consulting, or switching to a related UX role.
June 24, 2021
Article
As an advanced UX designer, you’ll take on more responsibilities and lead important strategic product decisions in your organization. The resources below can help you develop the right skills to advance in your UX design career.
Grow your UX design expertise
Skills you'll gain: User Experience, User Experience Design, User Research, Audit, Human Computer Interaction, Planning, Product Design, Product Development, Visual Design, Web Design, Web Development Tools
Build toward a degree
Beginner · Professional Certificate · 3 - 6 Months
Skills you'll gain: User Experience, User Experience Design, User Research, Product Development
Beginner · Course · 1 - 4 Weeks
Skills you'll gain: User Experience, Front-End Web Development, Human Computer Interaction, Interactive Design, Product Design, Web Design
Beginner · Course · 1 - 3 Months
Advanced UX designers deepen their expertise by designing for many products, at various stages of development. They ask good questions to reveal research gaps, deliver consistent work, and are experts at collaboration. They might also take on more leadership and management responsibilities.
Furthering your career in UX design tends to mean managing junior-level designers, into job titles like “UX Design Manager” and “Lead UX Designer.” Others prefer to advance as an individual contributor, from “Senior UX Designer” to “Staff” and then “Principal.” While it is not required, you might decide to pursue a graduate degree in human factors or engineering psychology to demonstrate your dedication to professional development.
Advance in your UX design career with these resources:
Senior UX designers make an average annual base salary of $120,728, according to Glassdoor. These roles typically require five years of experience. Salaries only go up as you advance, so a Principal UX designer makes an average base salary of $151,452**. Glassdoor. “Senior User Experience Designer Salaries, https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/senior-user-experience-designer-salary-SRCH_KO0,31.htm.” Accessed February 1, 2024. **Glassdoor. “Principal User Experience Designer Salaries, https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/principal-user-experience-designer-salary-SRCH_KO0,34.htm.” Accessed February 1, 2024.
UX designers at any stage of their career are responsible for customer’s satisfaction and interaction with everyday products and services. Senior UX designers are able to deliver consistent designs quickly and efficiently, while collaborating with product and cross-functional teams with ease. They may even take on managing junior-level designers or lead a team of designers to design experiences that align with strategic business goals.
To advance into senior UX designer roles, you’ll want to demonstrate strong skills in prototyping, wireframing, and mockups in ways that align with user needs and business strategy. Collaboration and communication with researchers, developers, and writers is critical to your work, so it is also beneficial to expand your knowledge of UX research methodologies, coding, and information architecture. Many who start in junior-level roles can advance into senior roles as they gain experience.