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Entry-Level UX Designer Salary: What to Expect

Whether you’re working on a four-year degree or thinking about signing up for a UI/UX design bootcamp, you might be wondering what you should expect out of an entry-level UX designer salary.

UI and UX designers are two of the most in-demand jobs in the United States right now. A web designer can work at all different types of companies in various industries and sizes. And, perhaps best yet, you can become a UX designer without getting a traditional 4-year degree.

If you’re looking to get into the lucrative field of tech design, there are dozens of bootcamps out there offering UI/UX design courses. Coding Dojo’s UI/UX design bootcamp can help you get an entry-level UX designer job after 16 weeks of learning.

Let’s explore what to expect in terms of an entry-level UX designer salary after you graduate.

What is UX Design?

Short for user experience design, UX design is the practice of designing a website, software, or platform to give every user the best experience possible. 

A UX designer or design team will factor in dozens of different perspectives when creating a layout and website design. Those include considering company branding, general design concepts, function, and usability for users coming from a wide variety of backgrounds and needs.

Entry-Level UX Designer Salary

Like any job title, salaries vary depending on experience and location. UX designers in San Francisco or New York City are going to be making more annually than a designer working out of an office in Kansas City or Charlotte.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies were forced to adapt to a remote-worn environment. While some larger corporations have returned to the office, plenty of start ups and smaller companies are staying remote and are open to hiring people who live throughout the United States.

That means workers in Kansas City or Charlotte have a better shot of getting a higher paying UX design job while also getting to work out of the comfort of their home.

For this purpose, we’ll look at the average entry-level UX designer salary from across the U.S.

Entry-Level UX Designer Salary Expectations

On average, entry-level UX designers in the U.S. make $91,000 per year, according to Glassdoor. That’s a little less than what competitor Salary.com says, which records the average U.S. salary as $99,600 per year.

It’s important to note, these average salaries are base salaries plus additional compensation, which can vary significantly by company, or not even exist at all. To account for that, we can look to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, who have the median UX designer salary as $77,000 per year.

Those are both significant salaries that many jobs don’t offer to their most experienced. Plus, as mentioned above, many tech jobs are now available to qualified people across the country. Let’s look at an example.

Using Chattanooga, Tennessee, the average entry-level UX designer salary is $91k and $89k according to Glassdoor and Salary.com, respectively. If a recent bootcamp or university grad in Chattanooga was hoping to make more in their first job, they can look at remote jobs offered by tech companies across the country.

According to BuiltIn, the average remote UX designer salary is $105,000, around a $15k increase for those designers in Chattanooga.

What are the Differences Between UX and UI Design?

While UX Design and user interface design are usually grouped together and done by the same people, there are differences between the two.

Essentially, UI design is a facet of UX design. UI designers focus broadly on interface and layout. There are three main types of interfaces that users interact with:

  • Graphical User Interface (GUI)
  • Voice-Controlled Interface
  • Gesture-Based Interface

In that way, UI design is mostly focusing on the visual appeal and ease of use. On the other hand, UX design considers all of these factors while also focusing on how the user interacts with a brand or product while also making it accessible to everyone.

What is Design Accessibility?

One thing that web design hasn’t always been is accessible to every user. In the last decade, UX designers have put accessibility and usability for all at the top of mind. That includes considering every possible user who may try to use your site or software, particularly including people with disabilities, like being hard of hearing or seeing.

There are dozens and dozens of different factors to consider, oftentimes called a lens of accessibility. Those lenses are:

  • Lens of Animation and Effects
  • Lens of Audio and Video
  • Lens of Color
  • Lens of Controls
  • Lens of Font
  • Lens of Images and Icons
  • Lens of Keyboard
  • Lens of Layout
  • Lens of Material Honesty
  • Lens of Readability
  • Lens of Structure
  • Lens of Time

All of these include plenty of different considerations, including color choices for people who are colorbrind, audio features for those who are deaf, image description tags for people who are blind, any flashing features that could cause seizures, and so much more. Read more about the lenses of accessibility here

These things shouldn’t just be considered to help all people, although that is the most important part of design for accessibility. Even Google and other search engines punish websites that don’t strive to exist for every possible user.

Entry-Level UX Designer Jobs

Besides salary, what type of jobs should entry-level UX designers expect?

The most common title for an entry-level designer is, you guessed it, UX designer. Many companies do expect their designers to do both, so UX/UI designer is also a very popular title. Other common job titles you can expect to see are product designer, web designer, and marketing designer.

Beyond that, if you work your way up the ladder to oversee a design team or perhaps an entire department, you can expect to hold titles like designer manager, art director, vice president of design, and chief creative officer. This puts the ceiling of job titles well over half a million dollars depending on the company and industry.

UX Designer Job Demand

How in-demand are UX designers? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country is expected to see a 13% growth over the next decades, which is significantly faster than average.

On Indeed.com alone right now, there are 7, 500 full-time job listings for a UX designer. Of those, there are just under 3,000 remote jobs listed. When looking at all available jobs, there are currently 12,800 available with 5,800 of them being remote.

This is just another good indicator that no matter where you live, there’s a UX design job for you. All you need to do is acquire the skills.