When it comes to careers, we aren’t all equal. There are many different jobs in design, and each role has its role. In a technical field like web design, some roles are more difficult than others to learn. For example, if you’re just starting out in web design and have no experience, you might want to think about doing a freelance job where you don’t have to put up with people holding your hand every step of the way.

That said, there are still plenty of opportunities for beginners as well as professional designers with years of experience who can work on projects from the ground up without any engineering knowledge at all (something that could be very beneficial for an agency). These things can all be learned on the job, but knowing how to choose the right role for your skills and interests can help a lot. But let’s look at what we know:

So which design role should you go for?

The key thing is to find the one that will help you grow as a designer. If you already have experience in another role, then find a position that still has that same skill set but adds something new (like extra client work) or steps up your pay (like a lead designer position).

Each one of these roles and skillsets requires a combination of different things, such as front-end development (little), design, and business knowledge. This can be quite a lot to learn, but by starting off in the right position, you’ll be ahead of the game and get valuable experience that will help you further down the line. It’s worth going into a position that is too difficult, though; it might be a great way to learn, but you also never know when it will backfire on you.

So I cannot imagine how confusing it must be to be a designer entering the tech industry right now and being confronted with all of the different job titles. There are so many job titles, and it’s made even more complex by the fact that different companies may interpret a similarly named role differently, as well as the fact that there are often many distinct names for what is effectively the same work, and there’s a lot to take in.

But in today’s article, I want to break down for you the most common design roles in the tech industry tell you what they mean and what sort of skills they involve, so that hopefully if you’re entering the industry or perhaps making a switch, it can help you know where to start with your search. Let’s get into it.

№1 — Product designer

This is a very common role at the moment, and probably the majority of the design job openings that you see in the tech industry will be for a product design role. A product designer is a designer who works on the design of a digital product. This title has become the general term for a UX/UI designer in the tech industry, and it’s one of those titles where the actual scope of the role depends greatly on the company team structure and the size of the company. A product designer at a smaller company is more likely to wear multiple hats and be involved in the UX design of the product, as well as the visual design of the interface and maybe the design system.

When the company and the design team get larger, though, product designers get to focus more on perhaps a very specific area of the product, a very specific feature, and perhaps a very specific skill set as well. So perhaps instead of being across the UX, the user research, and the visuals, they’re just focused on the UX side of things. So for this one, I really recommend reading the job description carefully so that you can get a better understanding of the kinds of things you’d be doing in the role. But in general, this is a role that will suit you if you’re really interested in working on a product in making design decisions based on things that users need to accomplish with the product, learning from how they’re using it currently, and making improvements to make things better for them. I think you’ll really thrive in this role if you love systems and pay attention to all the small details that make up an experience.

№2 — UX designer

So as I said, often a UX designer in the company is actually called a product designer these days; it’s hard to know, but this is a designer who is focused specifically on the experience a user has with the product, so they’ll be figuring out the most efficient and enjoyable ways for the user to get things done. In practice, this role looks like spending a lot of time mapping out user journeys like the flow through the product, creating wireframes, perhaps doing research, making prototypes as well. You’re figuring out the best like information architecture and structure of the design to help solve a problem for the user and likely for the business as well and then usually you will hand it off to a UI designer or maybe use a design system of pre-designed components to sort of put that visual layer onto your UX structure.

If you love the data and science side of design but don’t really care for the art or like the more creative visual expression side of it so much, then UX design is probably a really good role for you because you’ll get to thrive in that area. If this is the type of role that excites you and that you’re looking for, make sure you check out product design job descriptions as well and read the details of what the role will entail because that’s where you’ll likely find a lot of UX roles as well.

№3 — UI designer

This is a designer who designs the visuals for a user interface, and I found that it’s not a super common role on its own in the tech industry anymore. Usually, a designer is expected to be able to handle both the UX and the UI side, and in that sort of like product design packaging, we were talking about. But in the companies where this role does exist, they’re probably either working hand in hand with the UX designer on that visual side of bringing a design to life, or they’re working, perhaps on the design system in determining the right colors, the right size, and shape of buttons to feel easy together and to feel harmonious in a design that perhaps other designers working with that system to pull in to bring designs to life.

If you want to focus on the visual side of design, this role will suit you, but like I said these days, it’s usually a UX/UI design package or product design role that people are looking for. So again, read those descriptions carefully.

№4 — Web designer

So a web designer in a tech company will use similar skills to product design, UX/UI design, information architecture, user research, but they’ll be applying those skills and that knowledge to a website rather than a digital product. Usually, in a tech company, this role falls in the marketing or growth side of the organization, and the site you’re working on is the company’s marketing website, so the thing that’s selling users on using the product. Sometimes the role is called Web UI designer, but even in those cases, I’ve found that the role is still responsible for the UX of the website, as well as the visual look and feel of it, so that can be a little confusing.

There’s often more like freedom and flexibility and creativity available to you in the design of a website compared to a product that has to be a little more structured, and there’s a lot more like moving pieces being put in place. So if you enjoy both sides of the design, like the UX and the visual side of things, but you also want to flex those creativity muscles a little more, then a web design role could be the one for you.

№5 — Marketing designer

So this is a title that a web designer in-house at a tech company might actually have when they’re responsible for not only the marketing website but also other marketing materials and assets, as well as the design of the brand, so this role is also called a brand designer a lot of the time, and tech companies tend to use it interchangeably. You got to watch out for that one if you’re applying for branding design roles; this is not the one for you. In marketing design, just like I was saying for web design, you use a lot of the same skills as product designers, UX/UI, information architecture, all that stuff, but you’re also probably using graphic design, illustration, and those sorts of skills as well for the wide range of assets that you’re working on and that you’ll be designing.

Like with product design as well, the scope of this role depends greatly on the company that you’re at, because if it’s a small team or it’s a large team, depending on if their brand focuses heavily on illustration or if the marketing techniques they use involve a lot of print stuff, then the scope and the range of the projects that you work on can be quite different. In general, though, the challenges that you’ll solve as a marketing designer are increasing conversion rates to make the marketing materials perform better and ensuring that users have all the information and like easy access to the information that they need to decide if the product is right for them.

If you like working on a range of projects and just like with web design, if you enjoy both the art and the science side of design, then this is a role that will suit you, especially if you have an interest in marketing and branding as well.

Conclusion

I hope this breakdown gave you some pointers, or perhaps you’ve got an idea of which one might appeal to suit you most for where to start and your search for a design job in tech. I know it can be hard to figure out which role, which career path to pursue, but just go for whichever one feels like it interests you the most and has the skills that you most want to work on developing used within that role and keep in mind too that, once you pick one, you’re not stuck on that path forever; you can definitely change around, and the skills you learn in any of these roles will be able to apply to the others as well.