2024 UX Salary Report
A recent LinkedIn job search shows 1,761 results that match the term “UX researcher” worldwide. A search for “UX research” turns up 10,871 results. A search for “UX design” returns 35,750.
Much more broadly, Trueup, which tracks open listings at “tech and tech-ish companies,” shows 212,620 open tech jobs as of July 5, 2024.
Open to work? Hundreds of jobs in User Experience Design, Research, and Operations are added to UI’s UX Research & Design Job Board every month.
Our 2024 State of User Research report uncovered considerable anxiety among UX Research specialists about the current state of the job market. Anecdotally, we’ve also heard that hiring timelines for UX specialists seem long right now, with companies seemingly more “picky” about candidates.
But companies are hiring and, assuming all of those open listings on LinkedIn get filled, tens of thousands of UX hires will be negotiating their salaries in 2024. Countless more UX Designers, User Researchers, ReOps Specialists, and other user experience professionals will also be discussing compensation as part of performance review cycles or ad hoc salary reviews.
If you’re reading this report, you’re probably going to be sitting at one side of the negotiating table or the other. So it’s worth asking the question—what is a fair UX salary in 2024?
The UX Salary Report 2024 unpacks salary data from 2,255 people who do research—UX Researchers, Product Designers, and ReOps—collected as part of our annual State of User Research survey for the years 2021 to 2024, with an emphasis on 2023–2024 data (n=1,483).
In the sections below, we’ll cover:
- Median and geomean salaries for UX Research, ReOps, and Design pros around the world by years of experience, seniority, and company size
- Differences in pay between Senior/Principal UX specialists and UX Managers
- How much freelance UX Designers and Researchers make in different countries
- Year over year salary trends
We hope that this report empowers you to make informed career decisions. If you’re a hiring manager, we hope this data offers useful benchmarks for setting fair and competitive UX salaries.
Key terms
For clarity, here are the definitions of key terms we’ll be using throughout the report:
• UXRs: People whose titles include UX/User Researcher (or similar terms Product Researcher or Director of User Research)
• ReOps Specialists: People whose titles include Research Operations (or similar terms)
• UX & Product Designers: People whose titles include UX/Product Designer or anyone with a generalized User Experience (UX) title (not specifically Research or Design)
• UX specialists or UX professionals: Umbrella terms for all of the people represented in our dataset
• ICs: Individual contributors, or professionals who aren’t directly responsible for managing or directing other employees. In 2024, participants self-identified as Senior/Principal ICs or Junior/mid-level ICs. For all other years, we split ICs into those two groups based on years of experience (7+ = Senior/Principal) based on typical 2024 profiles.
• Median: A statistical measure that represents the middle value of a dataset. We’ve used the median when our sample size is above 25.
• Geometric mean (or geo mean): A value representing the central tendency of a dataset, calculated by multiplying the numbers together and taking the root. We’ve used the geo mean when our sample size is below 25.
• N: The sample size, or number of responses for a particular segment.
• Salary: Annual compensation, including bonuses but excluding additional benefits like equity. Unless otherwise stated, all salaries are given in USD.
How to use this report
- User Researchers, ReOps Specialists, UX and Product Designers: Use this report to make informed decisions about your career path by comparing your current or potential compensation to benchmarks across the field.
- Hiring managers and team builders: Use this report to evaluate the wages you offer for different roles. Understanding typical UX salaries will help you budget for the right roles and headcounts, and to set fair and competitive compensation packages that enable you to retain talented UX professionals.
Note to hiring managers: Before making any decisions about compensation, we also strongly encourage you to download the full dataset and use it alongside other sources for a more precise understanding of local UX salaries at companies like yours.
About our data
The data in this report comes from the 2021 to 2024 editions of our annual State of User Research report. It includes responses from 2,255 people who do research in 73 countries—those with job titles equivalent to UX/User Researcher, ReOps Specialist, UX/Product Designer, or User Experience (UX) more broadly. In this report, this group is referred to collectively as “UX specialists.”
Most of the charts below (any median or geometric mean values) pertain to data from 2023 and 2024 (n = 1,483). Data from these years have been combined. We made an effort to exclude “repeat” participants—people who took the survey in both years—by the personal data provided; 48 such people were identified and in these cases only their more recent salary (2024) was used in our analysis.
Years of experience vs. seniority
Throughout this report, we’ll be segmenting salaries by years of experience and/or level (seniority within a company).
Where sample sizes permitted it, we broke down data by both seniority and years of experience for more precise comparisons. This was not always possible, so often you will see data broken down by either seniority or experience, with the assumption being that there is an overall positive relationship between more experience and higher seniority.
Note: In traditional structures, Managers are typically at a higher level (and pay grade) than individual contributors. But many companies now offer two tracks—one for management and one for individual contributors. In this structure, Senior/Principal individual contributors often have similar amounts of experience or tenure as those at the Manager level.
For instance, in the chart below, we can see that 26% of people who identified as Senior/Principal individual contributors (ICs) in 2024 have 7 to 9 years of research experience—as did 28% of Managers in 2023 and 2024.
The data in this chart, showing global UX salaries for people with over 7 years of experience at the Senior IC and Manager levels by company size, suggests that within the field of User Experience, individual contributor tracks tend to offer similar (if not higher) compensation than managerial roles.
What is a good salary for UX specialists?
“Good” is always a loaded word—and often a vague one. When we talk about “good” salaries, what we often mean is a salary that is both A) fair and competitive, relative to industry, experience, responsibilities, etc. and B) adequate to meet your personal needs and financial goals, relative to the cost of living where you reside.
UX roles, like others in the tech industry, typically offer higher salaries compared with national averages. But whether a salary is sufficient to support your lifestyle, financial needs, and personal goals is, of course, something only you can say for sure.
Whether or not a salary is fair and competitive is also relative, although market rates can offer helpful benchmarks here. In the sections below, that is precisely what we’ve aimed to provide—benchmarks for UX salaries, based on job title, experience, seniority, and location.
Note that these are not salary recommendations—they are median values (in cases where the sample size was below 25, we used the geometric mean, as this provides a more accurate measure for smaller samples). We hope that this data is helpful, and encourage you to use it alongside sources like Glassdoor and others to evaluate the salaries you set (as a hiring manager) and advocate for (as a UX specialist). You’ll find a list of additional resources at the end of this report.
🇺🇸 UX salaries in the United States
Our data includes salaries from 769 UX specialists in the U.S.
In the charts below, you can see median salaries (or geometric mean, when n <25), broken down by years of experience and seniority/level.
As we’d expect, salary increases commensurate with experience. When we look at the same data by seniority/level manager salaries are lower than Senior/Principal ICs—in most cases, this seems to remain true even when we apply additional filters for years of experience.
Differences in UX salaries by state
Leaving aside the question of whether or not salaries are rising fast enough to keep up with cost of living in the U.S., it remains an axiom that—generally speaking—salaries tend to be higher in places where the cost of living is greater.
Remote work has evened the playing field to some degree (not all companies use location-based pay scales), our data shows that when it comes to UX salaries, there are still noticeable differences between U.S. states.
When we look at the values in descending order, California, New York, and Washington are predictably high on the list, as we’d hope to see for the states requiring the third, fourth, and fifth highest incomes in the country in order to live comfortably or even meet basic needs.
UX/User Researcher salary data in the U.S.
U.S.-based User Researchers (and UX Researchers, Product Researchers, Design Researchers, etc.) represent the single largest group in our sample (n=588 in 2023 and 2024), and as such influenced the overall trends discussed above. As you can see in the charts below, U.S. UXR salaries follow similar trends when it comes to salary growth relative to time and seniority.
We can further drill down into U.S. salary trends by both seniority and years of experience to answer questions like “how much does a Director of UX Research with 9 years of experience make in the U.S.?” (that would be around $217,000, based on the geometric mean).
UX & Product Designer salaries in the U.S.
Our 2023-2024 sample included 129 US-based UX/Product Designers and User Experience (UX) Specialists who do research as part of their jobs. Note that the chart below shows UX & Design salaries broken down by years of research experience—which may or may not be similar to years of design experience.
As we would expect, salaries for this group increase commensurate with experience.
Research Operations Specialist salaries in the U.S.
Note that in the chart below, ReOps Specialist salaries in UI data have been down by years of research experience—which may or may not be similar to years of experience in an ops-specific role and may not be the same as “experience” on Glassdoor.
Our data and Glassdoor estimates both suggest that ReOps salaries tend to be lower than those earned by UXRs with equivalent seniority and years of experience.
🇬🇧 UX salaries in the United Kingdom
The data below comes from 120 UX specialists who do research in the U.K. (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), including 98 UX/User Researchers, 19 UX/Product Designers, and 6 ReOps Specialists.
UX/User Researcher and Research Ops salary data in the U.K.
The National Careers Service lists the average User Researcher salary in the U.K. as £24,000 (starter) to £40,000 per year (for experienced UXRs). Those starting rates are quite a bit lower than the median salaries reported by Uxcel (£44,000) and Talent.com (£50,000 for UX Researchers, £47,996 for User Researchers). Job site Jooble, meanwhile, reports an average salary of around £65,000 for UX/User Researchers.
In our 2023 – 2024 dataset, the median annual salary for a UX/User Researcher (n=98) was £67,424 ($83,285, based on April 22, 2024 conversion rates).
UX & Product Designer salaries in the UK
According to Talent.com, the median salary for a UX/Product Designer in the U.K. is between £47,500 (UX) and £55,000 (Product). Uxcel lists medians of £46,710 (UX) and £51,442 (Product). Again, the National Careers Service gives the average starting salary for this role as £25,000,
Our sample of UX and Product Designers from the United Kingdom was too small (n=22) to meaningfully analyze in terms of median or geometric mean, but you can still take a look at the data below and draw your own conclusions.
🇨🇦 🇦🇺 🇳🇿 UX salaries in Canada, Australia, & New Zealand
The data below comes from 93 Canadian UX specialists and 35 UX specialists from Australia and New Zealand (all of whom do research as part of their jobs).
In 2023, survey participants from Australian and New Zealand provided their salary in USD; in 2024, participants entered their salary in the Australian dollar (A$; AUD), New Zealand dollar (NZ$; NZD), or Canadian dollar (C$; CAD). These amounts were converted on April 22, 2024 at a rate of 0.644101 AUD to 1 USD, 0.59163212 NZD to 1 USD, and 0.729411 CAD to 1 USD.
Although they’re oceans apart, typical UX salaries in the major Commonwealth countries actually appear similar, both in terms of distribution and measures of centrality.
In the absence of more substantial data from Australia and New Zealand, UX-ers in Oceania may find the following data from their Canadian counterparts useful for benchmarking—though we recommend caution when extrapolating insights from one country to the next.
With that said, here is UX salary data from Canada, broken down by years of experience (see above for segmentation by level/seniority):
UX/User Researcher salaries in Canada, Australia, & New Zealand
When broken down by years of experience, salaries for UXRs in Canada seem slightly lower than User Experience salaries overall. Median salaries at the individual contributor level, however, are the same as those in the broader UX dataset.
Our sample of UX Researchers from Australia and New Zealand was too small (n=21) to meaningfully analyze in terms of median or geometric mean, but you can still take a look at the data below and draw your own conclusions.
UX & Product Designer salaries in Canada, Australia, & New Zealand
This group is small but you can still take a look at the data below to get a sense of how much UX Designers earn in major Commonwealth countries. (Since we are comparing salaries across regions with multiple currencies, we have defaulted to USD.)
🇪🇺 UX salaries in Europe
Between our 2023 and 2024 surveys, we collected data from 327 UX specialists across Europe—211 of whom were located within the euro area (eurozone), while the other 116 were based in countries that use their own local currencies.
In 2023, survey participants provided their salary in USD; in 2024, participants entered their salary in their local currencies and these amounts were converted on April 22, 2024. When comparing salaries across regions with multiple currencies, we defaulted to USD. (See the appendix for a full list of salary conversions).
Note: In our report, Europe excludes the U.K. (classed as its own region in this report) and Turkey (which, depending on who you ask, is either in Europe or the Middle East; in our analysis we used the latter classification).
When possible, we have divided our European data into eurozone and non-eurozone groups.
On the whole, UX salaries seem higher within the eurozone. But typical salaries range widely between countries in both groups, so neither segment should be assumed to be homogeneous. The sample sizes in the chart below are small, so use caution, but along with the scatterplot you can get a sense of the distribution of salaries in some of our European countries.
UX/User Researcher salaries in Europe
Now let’s hone in on UX Researcher salaries in the region(s).
Within the eurozone, these salaries predictably increase with experience. In non-eurozone countries, it looks like the median salary actually decreases among the more experienced group. But when we drill in and split that 7+ segment into groups with 7-9 years experience (n=12) and 10+ years (n=17), the geometric mean salaries are the equivalent of $53,000 - $55,000 USD, which suggests that among our sample, typical UX Research salaries in Europe are similar after the three year mark, regardless of experience.
UX & Product Designer salaries in Europe
As you can see in the scatterplot below, UX & Product Designer salaries are similar across the region.
For most segments, Designer salaries in Europe are around 10-20% lower than User Experience salaries in general.
📍 User Experience salaries in Europe by country
For a handful of countries, we have 2023-2024 salary data for 20 or more local UX specialists. Below is a snapshot of that data, which you can explore in more detail by downloading the full dataset.
🇩🇪 Wie viel verdient man als UX-Spezialist in Deutschland? (UX, Design, & Research salary data for Germany)
In our dataset, the median annual salary for a UX specialist in Germany (n=68) between 2023–2024 was the equivalent of $76,027 (USD), based on April 2024 conversion rates.
Das durchschnittliche Gehalt eines UX-Spezialisten in Deutschland beträgt €71.358 (€5.946 pro Monat).
By comparison, Stepstone.de lists the annual salary for a User Experience Expert in Germany as €52,400.
🇵🇱 Ile w Polsce zarabia specjalista UX? (UX, Design, & Research salary data for Poland)
In our dataset, the median annual salary for a UX specialist in Poland between 2023-2024 (n=48) was the equivalent of $35,559 (USD), based on April 2024 conversion rates.
Mediana wynagrodzenia specjalisty UX w Polsce wynosi 144,117 zł (12,010 zł miesięcznie).
Please note that these figures are lower than those reported by Jooble, which reports averages of 183792 zł for UX Researchers and 168528 zł for UX Designers.
🇫🇷 Quel salaire pour un UX Researcher ou un UX Designer en France? (UX, Design, & Research salary data for France)
In our dataset, the median annual salary for a UX specialist in France (n=25) between 2023-2024 was the equivalent of $51,141 (USD), based on April 2024 conversion rates.
Le salaire moyen d’un spécialiste UX en France est de €48.000/année (€4.000/mois).
This is similar to the median annual salaries listed by Talent.com—€45.000 for UX Researchers (based on 93 salaries); €41554 for UX Designers, based on 1554 salaries.
For a more detailed understanding of UX salaries within France, Data Recrutement offers minimum, average, and maximum rates, segmented by location (within or outside the Paris metropolitan area).
🇳🇱 Hoeveel verdient een UX Designer of UX Researcher per jaar in Nederland? (UX, Design, & Research salary data for the Netherlands)
In our dataset, the median annual salary for a UX specialist in the Netherlands (n=25) was the equivalent of $79,907, based on April 2024 conversion rates.
Het gemiddelde salaris voor een UX Specialist in Nederland is €75.000 per jaar (€6.250 per maand).
Our sample of Dutch UX specialists is on the more experienced side, which may explain why the median salary in our sample is higher than the medians reported by Talent.com (€53,400 for UXRs, €52,107 for Designers) and average salaries reported by Jooble (€59,772 per year for UXRs, €55,056 for Designers), Werkzoeken (€51,000 per year for UX Designers), and Nationale Vacaturebank (€53,592 per year for UX Designers).
🇪🇸 ¿Cuánto gana un diseñador UX o un UX Researcher en España? (UX, Design, & Research salary data for Spain)
According to Talent.com, the median salary for both UX Researchers and Designers in Spain is €32,500. A report from Prosperity Digital offers a more nuanced guide by years of experience; they report typical UXR salaries in Spain ranging from €24,000 (1 to 3 years) to €46,000 (over 5 years). For UX Designers, the same report shows typical salaries of €30,000 to €60,000 per year.
Among own sample of UX specialists from Spain (n=24), the geomean salary was the equivalent of $54,642 USD (€51,286) based on April 22, 2024 conversion rates.
En España, el salario medio de un especialista en UX es de €51,286 al año (€4,274 al mes).
🌏 UX salaries around the world
🇧🇷 Quanto ganha um UX Designer ou UX Researcher no Brasil? (UX, Design, & Research salary data for Brazil)
The Brazil-based UX specialists in our sample (n=33) reported annual salaries with a median or R$154,369 (BRL)—equal to $29,797 (USD), based on April 22, 2024 conversion rates. That’s R$12,864 per month.
A média salarial do cargo de ux especialista no Brasil é de R$12,864 por mês (R$154,369 por ano).
Our findings are similar to those on Glassdoor, which reports an average salary of R$12,000 per month among UX Specialists in Brazil.
🇮🇳 UX Specialist salaries in India
In our dataset, the median annual salary for a UX specialist based in India (n=26) was ₹23,50,000 or ₹23.5 lakhs (the equivalent of $28,185 USD). In monthly terms, that’s ₹2 lakh (around ₹1,63,406 net per month, according to this nifty Indian salary calculator)
That’s around the average of ₹20.5 per year for both UX Researchers and UX Designers, as reported by 6figr.com, but is significantly higher than other salary benchmarks we encountered.
🇿🇦 UX Specialist Salaries in South Africa
The 12 UX specialists in our 2023 – 2024 sample reported annual salaries with a geometric mean equivalent to $33,957 USD, or R650,881 (ZAR). Although our sample size is small, this value is not far off from the median salaries found among Talent.com’s larger dataset (R530,850 per year for UX Designers, R540,000 for UX Researchers, and R732,000 for User Experience Specialists). ERI’s Salary Expert Database also shows median salaries around R590,000 – R660,000.
Q. Are salaries higher at big companies?
It seems so! As you can see in the chart below, which shows UX Researcher salaries in the United States broken down by company size, the median salaries for individual contributors and managers increases more or less in step with employee count; the geometric mean for UXRs at the Director level follows a similar pattern.
Globally, too, median salaries tend to be higher in larger organizations. In companies of all sizes, median salaries are similar for Senior/Principal IC and Manager level groups.
Q. Do UX specialists earn more now (in 2024)?
Let’s expand our scope to include State of User Research data dating back to 2021, starting with the U.S. (Before 2023, we asked survey participants to select their salary band they from a list of multiple choice options. For this reason, we are not able to compare median or average UX salaries for earlier samples, and have used ranges instead.)
In total, we’ve collected 1,178 data points from UX specialists who do research in the U.S., 934 of whom are dedicated UX/User Researchers. In the chart below, you can see UX salaries for the years 2021 to 2024. Since 2021, the majority of UX specialists in the United States have reported salaries over $100,000.
Given inflation rates, rising consumer prices, and fairly steady average earnings in the United States since 2021—we might expect salaries for UX specialists to increase or remain steady over that period. (As, indeed, average wages have surpassed inflation at the national level for over a year.)
And our data does suggest that Directors/Senior Director salaries have increased over time—the percentage earning over $200,000 increased 4X from 22% in 2021 to 88% in 2024.
The same was true at the Senior IC and Manager levels—until 2024: the percentage earning over $150,000 increased from 24% in 2021 to 54% in 2022 to 74% in 2023 — before decreasing to 59% in 2024. A similar reversal can be seen among junior and mid-level individual contributors. Why might this be?
Q. How much do UX freelancers make?
Maybe you’ve been laid off (you’re not alone). Maybe you’re sick of the 9-to-5 and are eager to strike out on your own. Or maybe you’ve been freelance for a while and are looking to adjust your rate sheet. In any case, you may be wondering how much money you can earn as a freelance UX Designer, Researcher, or Ops Specialist.
We don’t have a lot of data from independent contractors, so we don’t want to make any statements about “typical” income for this group. But in the chart below, you can get a sense of how much solo freelance UX specialists command in different countries, broken down by their experience.
More resources
We hope you’ve reached the end of this report feeling more informed about UX salary trends and—if you have a mind to your own compensation—empowered to enter salary negotiations with data-backed expectations about what makes a fair and reasonable wage.
Still have questions? Download the full dataset to explore the data using additional filters like industry, education level, and how folks first acquired their research skills.
To go beyond salary data and find out how UX Researchers and Designers work, how UXR teams are changing, the role of ReOps in 2024, and other key insights, be sure to check out the State of User Research 2024 report, as well as previous reports from User Interviews.
For further information about UX salaries, we also encourage you to supplement our research with resources like the ones we cited throughout our report:
- Glassdoor – Huge database of salary data, searchable by job title, location, industry and experience
- Talent.com – Similar to Glassdoor, with additional coverage outside the U.S.
- Jooble – another job board site with salary data for 67 countries
- Stepstone.de – jobs and salaries within Germany
- Uxcel – salary explorer for the U.S., U.K., and Canada
- Data Recrutement – salary data for France
- Prosperity Digital – salary data for Spain
- 6figr – AI-powered salary benchmarks
- SalaryExpert – database of aggregated salary survey data
- Trading Economics – collates economic data like inflation rates, consumer prices, wage growth, etc.
- National Average Wage Index – from the U.S. Social Security Administration
- SmartAsset – consumer-focused financial advice and data reports
Appendix
Currency conversion rates were based on rates of exchange provided by XE and Wise on April 22, 2024.
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