5 UX Designer Career Paths: Stepping Up Your Design Career

Working in user experience (UX) design can be creative, engaging, and lucrative. According to data from Glassdoor, the average annual US salary for UX designers is $82,683 [1]. If you’re wondering what options are available to advance in a UX design career, many paths exist for you to explore.

Learn more about beginning your UX designer career path, including which entry-level roles to start with and how to level up.

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

Those new to the 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 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. If you’re ready to start exploring, look at the Google UX Design Professional Certificate, designed to help you learn job-ready skills in six months or less.

Five UX designer career paths

As a UX designer, you may take 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 median base US salaries of related managerial roles:

• UX manager: $142,776 + $66,231 additional pay [2]

• UX director: $168,154 + $106,623 additional pay [3]

• Chief experience officer: $208,908 + $199,297 additional pay [4]

• Creative director: $140,638 + $55,811 additional pay [5]

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 median base US salaries for design roles:

• Senior UX designer: $124,653 + $69,199 additional pay [6]

• Lead UX designer: $111,647 + $47,014 additional pay [7]

• Principal UX designer: $157,928 + $91,238 additional pay [8]

Working 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.

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 a median base salary of $77,443 and $16,175 additional pay [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 a median base salary of $125,852 and $54,172 additional pay [10].

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 first good 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 median base US salaries for various roles in UX:

• UX researcher: $89,644 + $26,928 additional pay [11]

• UX writer: $71,021 + $6,172 additional pay [12]

• UX engineer: $108,901 + $35,019 additional pay [13]

Becoming a UX designer with Coursera

As a UX designer, you have many career paths to consider when deciding how to advance and progress. Whether you’re already in a UX design role and looking for your next step or just getting started, you may want to continue building the skills you need to progress in your career. If you’re new to UX, look at the Google UX Design Professional Certificate. In less than six months, you can learn the skills needed to transition to a UX design job.