Designing the apps, websites, games, and AI assistants people tap, swipe, and talk to every day.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Head of Product Design: Leads the teams that design apps and websites at a tech company. Typical pay $200k.
Principal Product Designer: The most senior hands-on designer, solving the hardest design problems across a whole product. Typical pay $175k.
Product Designer: Designs how apps and websites look and work, from user research to final screens. Typical pay $120k.
UX Researcher: Studies how people use products through interviews, tests, and data so designers build the right thing. Typical pay $125k.
Design Technologist: Bridges design and code, building working prototypes and design systems. Typical pay $125k.
Design Systems Designer: Builds and maintains the shared library of buttons, colors, and rules that keeps a company's apps and websites consistent. Typical pay $130k.
Design Program Manager: Keeps large design teams organized: schedules, tools, budgets, hiring, and how designers work with engineers. Typical pay $135k.
Automotive HMI Designer: Designs the touchscreens, dashboards, and voice controls drivers use inside cars. Typical pay $120k.
AI Interaction Designer: Designs how people use AI features: chat assistants, smart suggestions, and agents that act on a user's behalf. Typical pay $140k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
UX Designer: Designs digital products so they're easy and enjoyable to use. Typical pay $98k.
UX Writer: Writes the words inside apps and websites: buttons, error messages, onboarding screens. Typical pay $100k.
Interaction Designer: Designs how digital products respond to touches, swipes, and clicks, including animations and transitions. Typical pay $100k.
Digital Accessibility Specialist: Makes sure websites and apps can be used by people with disabilities, such as blind users with screen readers. Typical pay $95k.
Game UI/UX Designer: Designs the menus, health bars, inventory screens and controls in video games at game studios, testing them so players are never confused. Typical pay $90k.
AR/VR Experience Designer: Designs experiences for virtual reality headsets and augmented reality apps. Typical pay $105k.
Conversation Designer: Designs how voice assistants and AI chatbots talk with people. Typical pay $105k.
Information Architect: Organizes the structure of large websites and apps so people can find things. Typical pay $98k.
Web Designer: Designs and often builds websites for businesses and organizations. Typical pay $70k.
UX Research Operations Coordinator: Recruits participants, schedules sessions, and manages tools so UX researchers can run studies. Typical pay $55k.
Email Designer: Designs the marketing emails companies send, making them look good on every phone and inbox. Typical pay $62k.
UX Sound Designer: Creates the beeps, chimes, and alert sounds in phones, cars, apps, and appliances so they feel right and never annoy. Typical pay $95k.
Starter: fastest way in
Social Media Content Designer: Creates graphics, short videos, and templates for brands' social media. Typical pay $48k.
Web Content Coordinator: Updates and builds web pages using content management systems. Typical pay $50k.
E-commerce Store Designer: Designs and sets up online stores for small brands using platforms like Shopify. Typical pay $45k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.