Design
UX/UI Designer CV: what employers ask for
Design CVs have to work alongside a portfolio. The CV is where a screener checks your process, your part in the work and the results. A CV that only lists tools pushes all the work onto a portfolio the screener may not open.
From real postings
We read 95 UX/UI Designer job postings from 48 companies on 6 November 2026. The most named asks were Prototyping (71), Cross-functional work (54) and Design systems (45). 46 postings stated years of experience; the middle value was 5.
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What a strong UX/UI Designer CV looks like
Start here if you are editing a CV today. The evidence for each point follows below.
Section order, top to bottom
- HeaderName, email, phone, city and your portfolio link, placed where it cannot be missed.
- SummaryTwo or three lines: your title, years of experience, your focus (product, interaction, visual, research) and the kind of products you design.
- ExperienceMost recent first. Bullets about problems you designed for and what changed, with the method named.
- Skills and toolsShort: prototyping, research methods, design systems, Figma.
- EducationDegree or course, kept short. Few postings in our sample mentioned a degree.
The summary
Say what kind of designer you are and where your portfolio is. Prototyping was the most named ask in our sample, and many postings asked for a portfolio directly.
Product designer with six years of experience on mobile and web apps. I prototype and test flows with users, and maintain the design system our engineers build from. Portfolio linked above.
Skills: show them, do not just list them
Prototyping, cross-functional work and design systems were the three most named asks. Show each through a project: the problem, what you tested, and the change in the product.
Weak and strong bullets
Illustrative rewrites, not real candidates. Use your own work, and only numbers you can back up.
Weak: Designed the mobile app.
Stronger: Led design of the booking flow in the mobile app; usability tests with 8 users cut average booking time from 3 minutes to 70 seconds.
Why it works: Your role, the method and a measured change.
Weak: Created a design system.
Stronger: Built the Figma component library with engineering, now used across 4 products, reducing UI inconsistencies found in QA.
Why it works: Design-system work with its reach across products.
Weak: Did user research.
Stronger: Ran 12 interviews with account admins that showed permissions were the main pain point, which reshaped the quarter's roadmap.
Why it works: Research that changed the roadmap, not only a list of methods.
What UX/UI Designer job postings ask for
Counted from 95 real postings, not guessed. When you paste a posting into Resymetry, it checks each of these asks against your CV and marks it as shown, only listed, or missing.
| Skill or ask | Postings naming it | Only as nice to have |
|---|---|---|
| Prototyping | 71 of 95 | 1 |
| Cross-functional work | 54 of 95 | – |
| Design systems | 45 of 95 | 2 |
| Figma | 41 of 92 | 3 |
| Interaction design | 37 of 95 | – |
| Portfolio | 36 of 95 | – |
| Stakeholder management | 36 of 95 | 2 |
| Roadmap | 25 of 95 | – |
| Visual design | 25 of 95 | – |
| Customer / user research | 23 of 95 | 3 |
Show 8 more
| Skill or ask | Postings naming it | Only as nice to have |
|---|---|---|
| A/B testing / experimentation | 17 of 95 | – |
| Accessibility | 16 of 95 | – |
| B2B / SaaS | 16 of 95 | 3 |
| Metrics / KPIs | 16 of 95 | – |
| Machine learning | 14 of 95 | 4 |
| Prioritisation | 14 of 95 | 3 |
| LLMs / generative AI | 12 of 95 | 1 |
| AI coding tools | 8 of 95 | 3 |
How we counted
On 6 November 2026 we read 95 live UX/UI Designer postings from 48 companies, through their public job boards (Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby). A posting counted when its title matched the role. We took at most three per company, so no single employer sets the result.
A skill counts once per posting, when it is named outside the benefits and company boilerplate. Matching is by keyword, so read the numbers as “named in”, not “strictly required”. “Only as nice to have” means it appeared only under a heading such as “Nice to have” or “Bonus”. 41 of the 95 postings had such a heading, so that column is a floor.
By location on the posting: 61 US, 13 UK, 5 India, 16 elsewhere or remote. Most employers in the sample are technology companies, which skews the result towards their stacks.
Companies sampled: Affirm, Anduril, Asana, Ashby, Brex, Chime, Cohere, Coinbase, Databricks, Datadog, Deliveroo, Discord, Duolingo, Faire, Figma, Fivetran, Gemini, Greenlight, Gusto, InMobi, Instacart, Intercom, Linear, Lucid Motors, Lyft, Meesho, Monzo, New Relic, Okta, OpenAI, Oscar Health, Perplexity, Ramp, Reddit, Riot Games, Robinhood, Roblox, Samsara, Scale AI, Spotify, Stripe, Synthesia, Toast, Twitch, Vanta, Watershed, Wealthfront, Zscaler.
The script that produced these numbers is scripts/role-postings.mjs in the Resymetry repository. It stores counts only, never the text of a posting.
What employers look for in a UX/UI Designer CV
Screeners check these first. Each one should be visible in your job entries, not only in a skills list.
- Shipped work, not only concepts, with your role on the team made clear.
- A process that includes research, testing and iteration, not only visuals.
- Results linked to design changes, such as task success, conversion or support tickets.
- Design systems and working with engineers on handoff and quality.
- Accessibility and inclusive design practice.
4 common UX/UI Designer CV mistakes and how to fix them
A creative layout with columns, icons and skill bars.
Fix: Use a simple one-column layout. Hiring software may not read the fancy version, and your portfolio can show your visual skill.
Skill bars or percentages.
Fix: Remove them. They cannot be read by software and do not mean much to people.
No results from design work.
Fix: Add what changed after launch, even qualitative results from testing.
Unclear what you did on team projects.
Fix: Say which parts were yours: research, flows, visuals or the design system.
Starting from scratch, or the layout is the problem rather than the content? There are free ATS CV templates to start from.
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UX/UI Designer CV questions
- Should a UX/UI designer CV be visually creative?
- Keep the CV simple and readable, and let the portfolio show your visual work. Complex layouts can break when hiring software reads them.
- What should a designer CV include besides the portfolio link?
- Your role on each project, your process and the results. The screener should understand your work without opening the portfolio.
- How do designers show impact without hard metrics?
- Use usability test results, fewer support tickets, task completion or clear feedback from users. Be specific and honest.