What is a Design Engineer’s salary? And why you should hire one.
What is a design engineer?
A design engineer is an engineer who operates at the intersection of creativity and technical expertise, bridging the gap between design and engineering teams. They are as comfortable writing code as they are creating components in Figma; their primary role is to ensure that the products their team builds are not only technically feasible and scalable but also functional and user-friendly.
In software, they go by many other titles, such as UX engineer, UI engineer, interaction designer, design technologist, technical product designer, or design systems architect. At Paraform, we’ve seen companies looking for design engineers post their roles under most of these titles. Regardless of the name, their focus remains the same: delivering products that align with user-centric design principles while streamlining the transition from concept to production.
For startups and growing companies, understanding when to hire a design engineer can be transformative. These professionals can significantly improve collaboration between design and engineering disciplines, reduce inefficiencies, and prevent long-term design debt. In this article, we’ll explore when the right time to hire a design engineer might be, why doing so early can set your company up for success, and what to expect when budgeting for a design engineer salary.
Why (and when) you should hire a design engineer
Hiring a design engineer is often overlooked in the early stages of a startup, in comparison to other types of engineering roles. Many companies rely on generalist engineers or design-oriented product engineers to handle the overlap between design and engineering. However, this approach can create inefficiencies and bottlenecks as the company scales. Here’s when it makes sense to bring on a design engineer:
1. Early in product development
The earlier you hire a design engineer, the better positioned your company is to build products that are cohesive, scalable, and user-friendly from the start. Design engineers can set up scalable design and development systems to ensure that the product vision is executed with precision (and following the original design intent).
By hiring at this stage, you can:
- Streamline the product development lifecycle.
- Establish scalable design systems that will grow with the company.
- Lay the groundwork for a strong, user-centric culture that prioritizes collaboration between product, design, and engineering teams.
If your product relies on a superior user experience as a differentiator, you should hire a design engineer as early as you can afford to. This ensures that both form and function are prioritized, reducing the risk of costly design revisions down the line.
2. When design work becomes consistent
If your startup has reached a stage where design tasks like prototyping, UI development, or maintaining a design system are ongoing, it’s time to consider hiring a design engineer. Relying on other engineers or designers to handle these tasks can lead to suboptimal implementation, especially if they lack the specialized skill set of a design engineer.
By hiring at this stage, you can:
- Reduce handoff friction between teams when scaling up, for seamless implementation of design work.
- Ensure ownership of design engineering, as opposed to distributing responsibilities across separate teams.
- Quickly prototype in various levels of fidelity without the need for excessive design artifacts.
Without a dedicated design engineer, your team risks building patchwork solutions that can be difficult to scale or adapt as your product evolves.
3. To prevent or reduce design debt
Design debt occurs when design decisions are rushed or poorly implemented, leading to inefficiencies and inconsistencies at a system level that become harder to fix as your product grows in complexity. This can show up as disjointed user experiences, mismatched design elements, or a lack of cohesive design systems. And by the time users notice and provide feedback, it’s often extremely time-consuming and/or costly for the design and engineering teams to correct.
By hiring design engineers before design debt accumulates, you can:
- Ensure design decisions are executed correctly the first time, reducing the future burden of design debt.
- Implement well-designed systems that scale and evolve with your product.
By addressing design challenges early, design engineers save companies from expensive fixes in the future.
4. When scaling beyond an MVP
As your company transitions from an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to a more polished product, the need for design engineering becomes critical. At this stage, it’s essential to refine the user interface, interactions, and overall design system to meet the expectations of a growing user base.
Key contributions of design engineers at this stage:
- Enhance the visual appeal and usability of your product to drive customer satisfaction and retention.
- Create a robust design system that supports rapid iteration and feature expansion.
- Instill a sense of pride and ownership among team members by delivering a beautiful, cohesive product.
A design engineer can ensure that your product remains intuitive and scalable as it evolves, creating a strong foundation for future growth.
Can I wait until growth stage?
Earlier-stage companies might be able to delegate initial design engineering work to a design-oriented founding or front-end engineer, But waiting too long also has hidden costs. Delaying the hire of a design engineer can lead to several challenges, including product build inefficiencies, inconsistent user experiences, and design debt. By bringing a specialist on board early—ideally when consistent design work emerges or when scaling beyond an MVP—companies can:
- Build a product that’s optimized for both aesthetics and functionality.
- Foster a collaborative culture across engineering, design, and product teams.
- Avoid costly design rework as the product grows in complexity.
- Prototype, refine, and bring a concept to production faster. Compared to other engineers, design engineers can more quickly spin up a functional prototype from a wireframe or mockup without the need for multiple design artifacts and explicit documentation for various states of a responsive screen.
How much do design engineers make?
So, you’ve decided to hire a design engineer. Now, how much should you budget for one?
It can be difficult to pinpoint a clear design engineer salary range, as the title hasn’t been widely adopted in the software space. Most searches for ‘Design engineer salary’ will yield results for hardware design engineers, who work with CAD and make sure products are designed fit manufacturing specifications.
And the few companies who do hire for design engineers might instead use another title, such as one of the ones mentioned above. One exception is Vercel; they’ve been known to recruit for ‘Design Engineer’ roles.
Their design engineer salary is anywhere from $155,000-$240,000 in base pay, depending on their level of experience, plus additional equity compensation. This is very similar to what ‘Software Design Engineer’ makes on Glassdoor:
Software design engineer salary
Total pay range: $152,000 to $232,000 per year
Median pay: $186,000 per year
This is typically broken down into $110,000 to $153,000 in annual base pay, and $42,000 to $79,000 per year in additional compensation, such as equity and/or bonuses.
Other design engineer salaries
We can also look to similar positions to see how much design engineers charge for their skills. The total pay for these positions starts from just over $100,000 and goes up to $255,000, with median salaries ranging from $138,000 to $198,000.
Design technologist salary
Total pay range: $104,000 to $185,000 per year
Median pay: $138,000 per year
This is typically broken down into $75,000 to $131,000 in annual base pay, and $29,000 to $54,000 per year in additional compensation, such as equity and/or bonuses.
UX engineer salary
Total pay range: $114,000 to $186,000 per year
Median pay: $144,000 per year
This is typically broken down into $87,000 to $136,000 in annual base pay, and $26,000 to $49,000 per year in additional compensation, such as equity and/or bonuses.
UI engineer salary
Total pay range: $156,000 to $253,000 per year
Median pay: $197,000 per year
This is typically broken down into $106,000 to $159,000 in annual base pay, and $50,000 to $93,000 per year in additional compensation, such as equity and/or bonuses.
Technical product designer salary
Total pay range: $157,000 to $255,000 per year
Median pay: $198,000 per year
This is typically broken down into $112,000 to $172,000 in annual base pay, and $45,000 to $83,000 per year in additional compensation, such as equity and/or bonuses.
Interface engineer salary
Total pay range: $113,000 to $188,000 per year
Median pay: $145,000 per year
This is typically broken down into $90,000 to $146,000 in annual base pay, and $23,000 to $43,000 per year in additional compensation, such as equity and/or bonuses.
Interactive engineer salary
Total pay range: $134,000 to $216,000 per year
Median pay: $169,000 per year
This is typically broken down into $99,000 to $152,000 in annual base pay, and $34,000 to $64,000 per year in additional compensation, such as equity and/or bonuses.
Companies building products with key user-facing interactive elements like TikTok and Snap are paying $191,000 to $284,000 a year for Interactive Engineers.
As with other engineering roles, the compensation of a design engineer increases with seniority. If they are an IC (and not at a ‘Staff Engineer’ level), their compensation should align with the above numbers. But as they progress to being a design engineering manager and/or Lead Design Engineer, they can make $175,000 to $320,000 or more, with additional compensation from $50,000 to $112,000 or more. Companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Meta pay software engineering managers upwards of $400,000 a year.
Because the term ‘Design Engineer’ is still relatively new in the software space, may progress into more senior engineering roles, such as becoming the manager of their own team or a tech lead, under a different title. However, as this term seems to be adopted by startups who hire design engineers to bridge the gap between design and engineering functions (as opposed to larger and potentially more siloed organizations), it’s unlikely to see Senior Design Engineer or Design Engineering Manager positions posted.
Like with most Founding Engineer roles, a Design Engineer who joins a startup might have more of their compensation in equity as opposed to cash. If they join at an earlier stage (Seed; Series A; Series B), they are also more likely to be ICs, taking on the scrappy role of building out the company’s design engineering function from the ground up.
Why hiring a design engineer early matters
While the term ‘Design Engineer’ is still gaining traction, the function plays a pivotal role in modern startups, ensuring products are user-focused, scalable, and technically sound. While many companies delay hiring a design engineer until growth stages, there’s a strong case for bringing them on earlier.
Product success in today’s competitive software landscape often hinges on delivering seamless, intuitive solutions. Companies like Vercel, Linear, and Replit know this. Their products don't just work well – they feel seamless. This isn't by accident. They decided to build products that customers actually love to use, and invested in design engineering early, embedding the function into their DNA.
Looking forward, design engineers could be the difference between building another tool and creating a product that defines its category. You could delay this hire. But companies that do may end up paying for it – not just in design debt, but in missed opportunities and market positioning. By hiring these folks early, you make sure nothing gets lost in translation from mockup to execution.
Hire a design engineer
Are you looking to hire a design engineer? Let us help. We’ve partnered with companies like Palantir, Ramp, and EightSleep as well as earlier-stage startups to hire for a wide range of difficult roles, including specialized roles that are less clearly defined on the market.
Our expert recruiters work with both startups and enterprise companies to fill your most hard-to-hire positions in less time. Book a Paraform demo to chat with a member of our team and learn how we can assist!