The 5 best US cities for UI/UX designers

A quick glance at the 50 best jobs in America on Glassdoor reveals that many of the best roles center around some form of experience creation or design. Product managers, marketing managers, and UX designers are just a few positions on the list that are focused on digital product design.

Last week, the writers over at Justinmind compiled a list of what they believe are the top five cities where you’d want to be if you’re interested in a career in user inference (UI) or user experience (UX) design. While some of the cities are fairly obvious, a couple of them might surprise you.

Cities like San Francisco, Austin, and New York are obvious choices. Between Silicon Valley, the startup-focused scene in Austin, and the design schools in New York, any of these would be a great choice for a designer just starting out or looking for a role at a more prominent and well-known company.

Seattle is also on the list. While it may not exactly be shocking that the home to companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon is a great place for designers to relocate, what you probably don’t know is that it’s also third in the top 20 markets for UX professionals with salaries anywhere from $70k to $122k.

Finally, smaller-market-minded designers might be more inclined to make the move to Charlotte, NC. Over the last 10 years, the tech business in the North Carolina city has grown by 62%.

This job growth has resulted in over 7,000 tech jobs being created and a 700% growth in software publishing employment, according to Forbes.

Here at InVision, we think the best city for a design-focused life is wherever you are (or wherever you want to be) right now. InVision has always been a fully remote company—CEO and co-founder Clark Valberg wants employees to work wherever we want, whenever we want, and he believes giving people that freedom can increase employee happiness and foster communication that’s better than that of many co-located companies.

With designers in particular, remote work opens up the possibility of drawing from the broadest, most diverse talent pool available instead of just what’s in reach of a particular ZIP code. It also allows that talent to create a better work-life balance and find other uses for the significant chunk of their lives that would otherwise be eaten up by a commute.

If you’re interested in starting a career in design, or you want to learn about how to take your design job to the next level, we suggest checking out our new DesignTalks series on Careers. Join four digital product design experts as they talk career strategy, leadership, identifying once-in-a-lifetime career opportunities, building your personal brand, and more.