UX (user experience) design is all about controlling how users interact with digital products and services. Most often, this means things like websites and mobile apps, but UX design is used in everything that has a digital interface, including next-generation smart appliances. In 2023, with the rise of ecommerce and increasing demand for online capability, UX designers can expect to focus on building remote collaboration software, personalizing user experiences, simplifying micro-interactions, and moving into the realm of augmented reality.
A recent report from LinkedIn named UX design as one of the top 5 in-demand hard skills. While salaries vary according to years of experience, company, and location, the median salary for UX designers in the U.S. is between $85,000-$100,000, while entry-level UX designers can expect to earn upwards of $75,000. The good news is, you don’t need a specific background to become a UX designer — by learning key UX principles, completing a few projects or short online courses, and building a portfolio, you’ll be well-placed to land a position.
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A UX designer is a technically inclined and creative professional who designs products that are enjoyable for the end customer to use. The UX designer’s main responsibility is to create efficient, engaging and aesthetically pleasing interfaces. They may work in a variety of industries from cellular phones to web page development. A UX designer will design all customer-facing applications, optimize applications for better efficiency, and make design recommendations to software teams.
To land this role, you will need a college degree in graphic design, motion graphics, animation, or another similar field. This role requires a mix of artistic and technical skills. Hiring managers will look for someone with previous experience in roles such as illustrator, artist, or graphic designer. An ideal candidate will have considerable experience using key software tools such as Adobe Illustrator and InVision, as well as desired soft skills like color theory knowledge and creativity.
Though the UX designer is involved with the ‘front-end’ of an application, they must understand how design changes to the front end can change software requirements on the back end. Earning certifications in software engineering or computer sciences, and adding them to your resume, will show hiring managers you understand the crucial technical aspects of UX design.
Aesthetics are a key piece of any UX design. An application that is poorly organized or unpleasant to look at will not perform. For this reason, it’s important to showcase your artistic skills to land the role. You can make a portfolio of prior designs, or create some custom designs with the sole purpose of putting them in a portfolio.
UX designer is a role that blends visual design skills, writing, coding, and research. As a UX designer, you’ll be designing apps, building prototypes, and performing testing and analytics as well as collaborating with clients and other teams. A resume that emphasizes your hard skills and hands-on experience is your key to landing the perfect role.
Keep your resume focused on your most relevant work experience. Recruiters want to see your UX design experience, not your years of working in an unrelated field. Let your experience speak for itself by using action-oriented bullet points highlighting your accomplishments and keep additional information, like volunteer work or educational awards, to a minimum.
You don’t need a massive list of skills — prioritizing a few of the most relevant skills is the best way to stand out. Choose skills like wireframing, prototyping, and interaction design, that you’ll actually be using on the job. Breaking your list of skills into categories is another great way of making a longer list more readable.
As a Senior UX Designer, you'll play a critical role in shaping the user experience for digital products. It's essential to keep up with the constantly evolving industry trends, such as inclusive design, voice interfaces, and micro-interactions. When crafting your resume, emphasize your ability to identify user needs, create user flows, and deliver wireframes and prototypes that lead to improved product usability.
At this level, you should showcase your expertise in various design methodologies, tools, and collaboration techniques. Hiring managers will look for candidates who can lead UX projects and effectively communicate with cross-functional teams. Highlight your understanding of design systems, expertise in user testing, and experience in mentoring junior designers to stand out from the competition.
As a Senior UX Designer, you're expected to lead projects and mentor junior team members. Describe specific instances where you've taken charge, managed timelines, or trained others on best practices.
Show hiring managers the tangible results of your designs by providing metrics. Include numbers on user engagement, conversion rates, or satisfaction scores to illustrate the success and effectiveness of your UX solutions.
UX designers (user experience designers) with at least 5-10 years’ experience in the field may want to take the next step and search for senior UX design roles. Senior UX designers take on a management role, leading a UX team and overseeing the design process. To land a senior UX designer role, highlight experiences that showcase your leadership and communication as well as your technical skills.
Emphasizing a steady history of career growth shows ambition, initiative, and commitment to the company’s goals. Highlight a clear progression of job title by listing different positions at the same company either separately or together, depending on how different the roles were, and making your accomplishments stand out with action-oriented bullet points.
Senior-level roles require leadership and communication. As a senior UX designer, you’ll likely be in charge of leading your own team, to make sure to highlight any past management or mentoring experience. Experience launching new projects, offices, or major redesigns can all speak to your ability to take initiative and excel in a leading role.
As an entry-level UX designer, you're starting your journey in creating seamless and intuitive experiences for users. The demand for UX designers has been on the rise, especially with the expansion of mobile and web applications. You'll want your resume to showcase your passion for user-centered design and your ability to think critically about the user experience. Employers are looking for candidates who can demonstrate their understanding of UX principles, and are eager to learn and grow in the field.
When crafting your resume, it's essential to keep in mind that employers in the UX industry are often looking for candidates who can creatively and effectively communicate complex information. Your resume should reflect your ability to do so, both through your content and the layout of the resume itself. Think of your resume as a UX project where the user is the hiring manager— make it visually appealing, easy to navigate, and informative.
As an entry-level candidate, you might not have extensive professional experience, so it's important to highlight your projects or coursework that demonstrate your understanding of UX design principles. Include the tools and software you used, such as Sketch or Adobe XD, as well as any collaboration experiences with cross-functional team members.
Your resume should tell the story of how you approach design challenges, and showcase your problem-solving abilities. Detail the steps you took in a particular project, such as user research, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing, to help potential employers understand your design process and how you prioritize the user experience.
UX (user experience) design is an emerging industry that relies more heavily on demonstrable skills than extensive experience, so entry level UX designers are very much in demand. Highlighting your UX design experience through projects, internships, and formal certifications is key to landing an entry level UX design role.
When you don’t have a lot of work experience in the field you’re trying to break into, internships are the perfect way to show your UX design skills in action. List these like you would any work experience, starting each bullet point with an action verb and using numbers and metrics to highlight what you accomplished.
If you’re applying to an entry level position, use university projects and coursework to your advantage. Recent graduates should lead with your education section and include whatever relevant experience you can. Volunteer work, additional qualifications, and even extracurricular activities can all highlight your relevant skills and work ethic.
As a UI/UX designer, you're responsible for creating visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces for digital products. Staying up-to-date with the latest design trends and tools is crucial in this fast-paced industry. When crafting your resume, it's important to focus on your design skills, as well as your ability to empathize with users and solve problems.
In recent years, companies have increasingly recognized the value of good design, so your resume should reflect your adaptability and commitment to staying current in the field. Showcase your proficiency in design tools, your flexibility in adapting to various projects, and your results-driven approach to ensure your resume stands out.
As a UI/UX designer, you should list the specific design tools you're proficient in, such as Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, or InVision. Also, include any relevant coding languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to showcase your ability to work with developers and implement designs.
Your resume should include a link to your online portfolio, which showcases your best work. In your portfolio, provide case studies that demonstrate your design process, from research and wireframing to final designs and user testing. This will give potential employers a better understanding of your approach to design and ability to solve user problems.
UX design and UI (user interface) design are often used interchangeably, with some jobs advertising for a hybrid UI/UX designer. UI design roles are more focused on visual design elements, including color schemes, icons, typography, and responsive design. Many advertised UX designer roles also ask for UI design skills, so positioning yourself as a UX/UI designer is a good way to instantly expand your job market.
Always begin your bullet points with a strong action verb, like “revamped,” “designed,” and “led.” This keeps the focus firmly on what you’ve accomplished and what your specific role was. Use a variety of action verbs and try not to use the same verbs more than 1-2 times.
Back up your achievements by including hard numbers and metrics. Using descriptions like, “decreased uninstallation by 40%,” and “35% increase in revenue,” not only shows what you did, it highlights the impact your actions had on the overall project and the company.
The UX engineer builds and designs digital products using UX principles. The cardinal difference between a UX designer and a UX engineer is that the engineer has the ability to code and build software from scratch. That said, UX engineers typically code only front-end-related features, such as buttons, toggles, and page layout. They may do some or all of the UX design. They may work closely with a UX designer who can take what they have built and improve the user-facing experience.
To become a UX engineer, you will need a college degree in a relevant field such as computer science, animation, or graphic design. Both visual and technical skills are important, so a mix of both is ideal. Hiring managers will be looking for someone with prior experience in related roles, such as a UX designer, digital designer, or interface specialist. Hiring managers will be looking for someone with coding know-how, creative talents, and great problem-solving skills.
It’s common for a UX designer, or another creative digital specialist, to want to make the jump to UX engineering. To do so, you will need to show technical knowledge when it comes to writing code. There are several online coding courses you can take to strengthen your resume.
Developing the user-facing aspects of a product is a team effort. The UX engineer may need to effectively collaborate with marketing, product development, customer success, and other teams to create a satisfactory interface. Highlighting your ability to effectively collaborate and implement others’ feedback into a design on your resume will make you stand out.
A UX (user experience) engineer is responsible for building design systems and front-end engineering rather than finalizing the look and design of a product. UX engineers collaborate with designers, researchers, and programmers and need a solid understanding of design principles as well as technical skills including familiarity with creative software, programming languages, and experience testing and debugging.
UX engineers need a lot of technical skills, so make sure you explicitly list skills and keywords. This is just as important for getting past a resume screener as well as showcasing your fit to a hiring manager. You can include hard skills and certifications in your work experience bullet points or in an additional skills section.
Make sure you’re tailoring your resume to each specific job you’re applying to. Listing the job title at the top of your resume in particular is an easy way to get past automated resume screeners and onto the desk of a hiring manager. Keep your work experience and skills section focused on the most relevant information, including recent certifications and proficiency with UX design software.
As a hiring manager who has reviewed countless UX designer resumes at top companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon, I've seen firsthand what makes a resume stand out. The following tips will help you create a strong UX designer resume that showcases your skills and experience in the best possible light.
Hiring managers want to see that you have a clear understanding of the UX design process and how you apply it in your work. In your resume, include specific examples of how you:
By providing concrete examples of how you approach the UX design process, you demonstrate your expertise and ability to deliver results.
A resume summary for a UX Designer is an optional section that sits at the top of your resume. It provides a brief overview of your professional experience, skills, and achievements that are most relevant to the UX design role you're applying for.
While a summary is not required, it can be a valuable addition to your resume if you're a career changer, have a diverse background, or want to provide additional context about your qualifications. However, avoid using an objective statement, as it focuses on your goals rather than what you can offer to the employer.
When writing your UX Designer resume summary, focus on highlighting your most impressive and relevant accomplishments, skills, and experiences. Tailor your summary to the specific job description and company you're applying to, and avoid repeating information that's already covered in other sections of your resume.
Your work experience section is one of the most important parts of your UX designer resume. It's where you highlight your relevant skills, accomplishments, and the impact you've made in previous roles. To make your work experience section stand out, focus on showcasing your design process, the tools you've used, and the results you've achieved.
Starting your bullet points with action verbs is the best way to highlight what you’ve actually accomplished. Follow this up with clear metrics and the impact they had on the company to really impress. Check out our full list of resume action verbs for even more ideas of effective action verbs to include in your UX designer resume.
Employers are looking for UX designers who can solve problems, design effective and user-friendly products, and create functioning prototypes, so focus on action verbs and accomplishments that highlight your skills in action. For example, use verbs like Designed and Conceptualized to demonstrate your ability to create a framework, or Streamlined to emphasize a focus on improving the end user experience.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
When it comes to UX design roles, hard skills are key. Get a feel for the skills you’ll need by looking over these top skills for UX designers and reviewing the job description itself. Including the right skills, either in the skills section of your resume or within your work experience bullet points, can not only make the difference between the ‘yes’ pile and ‘no’ pile, it might be the key to even getting your resume past the initial screening stage. (Read more about Applicant Tracking Systems.) For even more tips on what UX design skills employers are looking for, use our free Targeted Resume tool for personalized advice on what skills and keywords will help your resume get seen.
You can include the above skills in a dedicated Skills section on your resume, or weave them in your experience. Here's how you might create your dedicated skills section:
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on UX Designer job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
You should use bullet points to describe your achievements in your UX Designer resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Revamped website flows and navigation menus, reducing the frequency of misdirected customer service queries by 30% and increasing traffic to previously neglected pages
Re-designed website and developed social media marketing plan; increased total membership by 28% and social media followers by 17%
Collaborated with Lead Engineer to develop a cohesive style guide to standardize design patterns for Android and web app
Reduced signup drop-offs from 65% to 15%, increased user-engagement by 40%, and boosted content generation by 15%, through a combination of user interviews and A/B-testing-driven product flow optimization
Conducted 25+ user-testing focus groups leading to 3 new product features in 6 months
For more sample bullet points and details on how to write effective bullet points, see our articles on resume bullet points, how to quantify your resume and resume accomplishments.
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