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2017 Design Salary Survey
Tools, Trends, Titles, What Pays (and What Doesn’t) for Design Professionals

John King & Roger Magoulas



2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

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I



2017 Design Salary Survey
Tools, Trends, Titles, What Pays (and What Doesn’t)
for Design Professionals

John King & Roger Magoulas


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

REVISION HISTORY FOR THE FIRST EDITION

by John King and Roger Magoulas

2017-02-08: First Release

Editor: Mary Treseler
Designer: Ellie Volckhausen
Production Editor: Shiny Kalapurakkel

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2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Table of Contents
The 2017 O’Reilly Design Salary Survey............................................. iii
Executive Summary................................................................................ 1
Introduction.......................................................................................... 2
Salary Overview..................................................................................... 3
Geography............................................................................................ 6
Age Versus Years of Experience.............................................................. 9
Gender............................................................................................... 12
Industry, Company Size........................................................................ 13
Coding Time, Programming Languages................................................. 16
Tasks................................................................................................... 19
Meetings............................................................................................. 22
Working with Other People.................................................................. 23
Types of Products, Products or Services................................................. 26
Design Process..................................................................................... 28
Tools................................................................................................... 30
Tools: Wireframing and Prototyping...................................................... 33
Tools: Information Organization / Architecture....................................... 38
Conclusion.......................................................................................... 43

Appendix A: Adjusted Median Salary.................................................... 44
V


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

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2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Executive Summary
THE 2017 O’REILLY DESIGN SALARY SURVEY explores
the landscape of modern design professionals, giving details
about their roles and how much they earn. The results are
based on data from our online survey that collected 1,085
responses. We pay special attention to variables that correlate
with salary, but this report isn’t just about money—we present a range of information, including the popularity of design
tools, tasks, and organizational processes.
In what is now our second salary survey, we find some

consistency as to what matters in the
field of design: that the better-paying
design jobs tend to concentrate in tech
centers; that experience matters more
than age; that knowing more tools,
working with more people in a wider
variety of roles, and working for larger
organizations all correlate with higher wages. And, in a sign
that some things in the design world resist change (in some
cases, whether we like it or not), we still see women making

Some key findings include:
■■

The West Coast (CA, WA, OR) has the highest salaries—
salaries are high even relative to those states’ per
capita GDP

■■

Healthcare, banking, and computers/hardware
respondents report the highest salaries

■■

Respondents from large companies report higher
salaries

■■

Agile is the most popular design process; however,
those using LeanUX or a hybrid of
different processes earn the most

Designers reporting no
process earn the least

less than men and that most designers still use pen and paper
as their primary design tool.

■■

Designers reporting no process
earn the least

■■

Higher earners use a wider
selection of tools

■■

For prototyping and
wireframing, salaries are highest
among those that use Sketch

We hope that you will find the information in this report useful. If
you can spare 5–10 minutes, please go ahead and take the survey
yourself: oreilly.com/design/2018-design-salary-survey.

1


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Introduction

FOR THE SECOND YEAR RUNNING, we at O’Reilly Media
have conducted a survey for designers, gathering information
about their compensation and details about their work. This
year, 1,085 people from 48 countries took
the survey. Respondents are mostly UX,
product, and graphic designers, but there
are also a fair number of developers and
other professionals involved in product
design. The survey was conducted online,
collecting responses from December 2015
to December 2016.

Throughout the report, we quote median salary statistics for
various groups of people, such as those respondents who
used a certain tool or came from a particular industry. Since
these figures can be misleading if the
variable in question correlates with geography or experience, we also sometimes quote a median “adjusted” salary.
Technical details are in Appendix A.

1,085 people
from 48 countries
took the survey.

While typical for online surveys, the methodology we used
of a self-selecting, uncontrolled respondent pool can lead to
less than ideal results. However, the broad range of respondents’ geographies, industries, and company sizes helps
mitigate the issues associated with a small, narrow sample.

2

In the horizontal bar charts throughout this report, we include
the interquartile range (IQR) to show the middle 50% of
respondents’ answers to questions such as salary. One quarter
of the respondents has a salary below the displayed range,
and one quarter has a salary above the displayed range.


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Salary Overview
THE MEDIAN SALARY OF THE ENTIRE SAMPLE IS $77K,
with the middle half earning between $50K and $109K. This
“middle half” statistic is called the “interquartile range,” and
we show it in many of the graphs to give a sense of the salary
spread for various groups of respondents. The spread is very
broad, but this isn’t surprising given the diversity of professional backgrounds among respondents and the fact that they
come from locations with very different overall wage levels.
Most respondents report some gain in salary over the past
three years, and about 10% of the sample saw their salaries
double. Another third has wage growth of 30% to 100%
(also across the last three years). Respondents who have no
wage growth tend to have lower salaries (median of $50K),
but otherwise there’s no clear pattern between salary growth

(as a percentage) and current salary.


TOTAL SALARY
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

$0K
$20K
$40K
(US DOLLARS)

$60K
$80K

Total Salary

$100K
$120K
$140K
$160K
$180K
$200K
> $200K
0%

5%

10%

Share of Respondents

15%

20%


TASKS (MAJOR CHANGE
INVOLVEMENT ONLY)
IN SALARY OVER LAST THREE YEARS
PERCENTAGE
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

10%

+30% TO +40%

7%

10%
15%

+40% TO +50%

+20% TO +30%

+10% TO +20%

7%

11%

+50% TO +75%

+0% TO +10%

12%

8%

NO CHANGE

+75% TO +100% (DOUBLE)

5%

6%

NEGATIVE CHANGE

+100% TO +200% (TRIPLE)

4%

NA (SALARY WAS ZERO)

4%

OVER TRIPLE

5

2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Geography

TWO-THIRDS OF THE SAMPLE IS FROM THE UNITED STATES,
and 20% is from Europe. After the US, the most well
represented countries in the sample are Canada (5%), the
United Kingdom (4%), Germany (2%),
Russia (2%), and Australia (2%).

Salaries vary sharply across geography; however, in most
cases, country and state variations mirror the local economy.
Per capita GDP is a good predictor of salary, although some
countries in Western Europe, including Italy, the Netherlands, Spain,
and Portugal, have lower than
expected salaries—likely reflecting
how different recovery rates from
the 2008 recession and different tax
and social safety net regimes affect
wages. In the US, the West Coast
states (CA, OR, WA) have higher salaries relative to their per
capita GDP, which, combined with their higher response rates,
may indicate a relatively high demand for design jobs on the
West Coast, helping to push up wages.

In most cases, country
and state variations mirror
the local economy.

For US-based respondents, a disproportionate share comes from the
West Coast: 37% of the sample is
from California, Washington, and
Oregon (states containing only 16%
of the US population). New York and
Massachusetts also have disproportionately high response rates.
The skew in the geographic distribution of respondents likely
reflects that the O’Reilly audience and design-related jobs tend to
concentrate in tech-centric coastal cities.

6


WORLD REGION
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

5%

8%

13%

CANADA

EASTERN
EUROPE

WESTERN
EUROPE

65%

4%

UNITED STATES

ASIA

1%
AFRICA

3%

LATIN AMERICA

2%
AUSTRALIA/NZ

SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)

Region

United States
Europe (except UK/I)
UK/Ireland
Canada
Latin America
Asia
Australia/NZ

Africa
0K

30K

60K

90K

Range/Median

120K

150K


US REGION
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

8%

18%

PACIFIC NW

NORTHEAST

8%

16%

29%

MID-ATLANTIC

MIDWEST

CALIFORNIA

5%

8%

SW/MOUNTAIN

SOUTH

8%
TEXAS

SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)
California
Northeast
Midwest
Region

South
Texas
Pacific NW
Mid-Atlantic

SW/Mountain
0K

30K

60K

90K

Range/Median

120K

150K


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Age Versus Years of Experience
THREE-QUARTERS OF THE SAMPLE IS BETWEEN 26
AND 45, with about an eighth younger and an eighth
older. Salary generally increases with age until age 50,
where we see the 7% of the sample
who are over 50
report a slightly lower median salary
than respondents in their 40s.

The lesson of age and years of experience tells us that we should
be careful about confounding variables affecting our interpretations: being older (without anything else happening) may not
increase your salary (at least not after

30), but having more experience will.
While this example is fairly obvious,
others are not, and in this report, we
make an effort to avoid this same
problem in more subtle contexts by
occasionally referring to an additional
metric we call “adjusted median.”

The 7% of the sample
who are over 50 report
a slightly lower median
salary than respondents
in their 40s.

Respondents were also asked how
much experience they have, and, as
expected, salary increases steadily
with years of experience, although
only up to a point: respondents with
20–25 years of experience earn more
(median: $118K) than those with
more than 25 years of experience ($101K). After we factor
in years of experience, age doesn’t make any difference in
salary among respondents aged 31 to 50. Holding experience constant, respondents younger than 30 do make a
little less, but the difference isn’t as much as the age medians would suggest.

The adjusted median blocks the effects
of geography and experience—creating
a metric that estimates what the median would be if the respondents all came from a fixed location
and all had the same experience—to make comparing factors

more reliable. Appendix A contains additional details on the
methodology. To illustrate, we show each five-year age category
between 31 and 50 with an adjusted median salary of $80K,
those between 26 and 30 with $73K, and those between 51
and 60 with $68K–$69K.

9


AGE
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

7%

OVER 50

17%
41 TO 50

36%
31 TO 40

SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)
30 or younger

30 OR YOUNGER

Age

40%

31 to 40
41 to 50
Over 50
0K

30K

60K

90K

Range/Median

120K

150


YEARS OF EXPERIENCE (IN YOUR FIELD)
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

10%
OVER 20

5%
12%

17 TO 20

13 TO 16

16%
9 TO 12

SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)

5 TO 8

LESS THAN 5
Years of Experience

27%

5 TO 8
9 TO 12
13 TO 16

30%

LESS THAN 5

17 TO 20
OVER 20
0K

30K

60K

90K

120K

150K

Range/Median

11


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

GENDER
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

Gender
48%

51%

FEMALE

Men and women are equally likely to have received a raise in
the last three years, but men are slightly more likely to receive
a bonus: 46% of men in the sample received a bonus, while
only 41% of women received one.

12

SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)
Gender

THE SAMPLE IS SPLIT FAIRLY EVENLY BY GENDER. The
median salary of women in the sample is $82K, higher than
the median salary of the men, which is $74K. However, the
adjusted median salary of women is about $4K lower than
the adjusted median salary of men. The discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that women in the sample are disproportionately from places with higher wages. In almost every
geographic region (adjusting for experience), men are paid
more than women on average, even at the same experience
levels.

MALE

Female
Male
$20K

$40K

$60K

$80K

Range/Median

$100K $120K


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Industry, Company Size

Healthcare, banking, and
computers/hardware all have
median salaries of about
$89K, compared to an
adjusted median of $74K for
all other industries.

RESPONDENTS COME FROM
A VARIETY OF INDUSTRIES:
software is by far the most common, with about a third of the
sample, followed by consulting,
advertising/marketing, and retail/
ecommerce. There are variations
in salary among industry, although
many of the differences diminish once we calculate the
adjusted median salaries. When adjusted for experience and
geography, healthcare, banking, and computers/hardware
all have median salaries of about $89K, compared to an
adjusted median of $74K for all other industries. Search/social
networking is even higher, with a median salary of $127K

(the adjusted median is also high:
$96K), although this is based on
just 2% of the sample.

Over one-third of the sample come
from companies with no more

than 100 employees, and another
quarter come from mid-sized companies (in the 100–1,000 employee
range). Salary does appear to go up with company size: from a
median of $63K for 2–100 employee companies, to $96K for
companies with over 10,000 employees. Again, these differences
shrink slightly once we block out experience and geographical
effects, but the 10,000+ group still shows an adjusted median
salary of $10K–$15K higher than the other groups.

13


INDUSTRY
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

5%

BANKING / FINANCE

5%
5%

3%

COMPUTERS / HARDWARE

EDUCATION

MEDIA / ENTERTAINMENT

5%

3%

MANUFACTURING / HEAVY INDUSTRY

2%

NONPROFIT / TRADE ASSOCIATION

2%

HEALTHCARE / MEDICAL

SEARCH / SOCIAL NETWORKING

6%

2%

RETAIL / ECOMMERCE

GOVERNMENT

2%

9%

CARRIERS / TELECOMMUNICATIONS

ADVERTISING / MARKETING / PR

6%

13%

OTHER

CONSULTING

33%

SOFTWARE


INDUSTRY
SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)

Software
Consulting
Advertising / Marketing / PR
Retail / Ecommerce
Healthcare / Medical
Media / Entertainment
Industry

Education
Banking / Finance
Computers / Hardware
Manufacturing / Heavy Industry

Nonprofit / Trade Association
Search / Social Networking
Government
Carriers / Telecommunications
Other
0K

50K

100K
Range/Median

150K

200K


2017 DESIGN SALARY SURVEY

Coding Time, Programming Languages

ONLY 43% OF THE SAMPLE reports that programming
plays some role in their work. The other 57%, in fact, earn
more, with a median salary of $83K (coders earn a median
of $69K). However, this difference all but disappears when
we adjust the salaries, since the
distribution of respondents who
code vary greatly over geography. For example, 58%–59% of
respondents from Europe and Asia
say that they spend at least some

time coding, while only 30% of
respondents from California code.
Combined with a review of the
2016 Design Salary Survey, we
don’t see code having more than a
noisy impact on salary.

Among those that do code, most report spending at most 8
hours/week on the task, while only 9% of the sample report
that they code more than 20 hours/week. The group with
the highest adjusted median salary is the one that spends
1–3 hours/week, although the salary
differences are fairly minor.

58%–59% of respondents
from Europe and Asia say
that they spend at least
some time coding, while
only 30% of respondents
from California code.

16

As for language choice, by far the
most popular language is JavaScript
(31% of the sample), with Python
and Java coming next, with 8% and
7% shares of the sample, respectively.
Swift users tend to have high salaries:
their median of $95K is far above the

sample-wide median, and this margin
is decreased but still significant after
geographical adjustment.


TIME SPENT IN MEETINGS (HOURS PER WEEK)

TIME SPENT CODING (HOURS PER WEEK)

INDUSTRY
TASKS (MAJOR INVOLVEMENT ONLY)
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS
SHARE OF RESPONDENTS

2%

57%
NONE

NONE

25%

17%

1 TO 3 HOURS / WEEK

1 TO 3 HOURS / WEEK

45%

8%

4 TO 8 HOURS / WEEK

4 TO 8 HOURS / WEEK

8%

25%

9 TO 20 HOURS / WEEK

9%

9 TO 20 HOURS / WEEK

> 20 HOURS / WEEK

4%

> 20 HOURS / WEEK
SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)
None

SALARY MEDIAN AND IQR (US DOLLARS)
None

4 to 8 hours / week
9 to 20 hours / week

> 20 hours / week

1 to 3 hours / week

Time Spent

Time Spent

1 to 3 hours / week

4 to 8 hours / week
9 to 20 hours / week
> 20 hours / week

20K

40K

60K

80K

100K 120K

Range/Median

0K

50K

100K

Range/Median

150K

200K