UI Designer
Know the landscape.

A UI Designer in the United States earns between $80,000 and $121,500 nationally, according to Robert Half’s 2026 Salary Guide, with New York’s high tier reaching past $165,000. But no creative role is more sensitive to what the job is called: the same interface-design skill set averages anywhere from $77,000 to $132,000 depending on which title the role carries.

UI Designer salary range (2026, national)

Robert Half reports compensation in tiers based on experience and skills. Here is the national benchmark:

Source: Robert Half 2026 Salary Guide, UI Designer (national). All three tiers as published.

UI Designer salary by city (2026)

Source: Robert Half 2026 Salary Guide, UI Designer by metro.

What the trackers say

The trackers disagree on this role more than the numbers alone suggest — and most of the disagreement is really about titles and samples:

Sources: Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, Built In, and PayScale, 2026 figures. Glassdoor reports total pay including bonuses; ZipRecruiter tracks posted cash compensation; Built In samples tech-company employees ($85,374 base plus $7,665 additional cash); PayScale’s self-reported sample skews earlier-career, which drags its average down.

The practical read: the Robert Half band ($80,000–$121,500) and ZipRecruiter’s $80,000–$126,000 middle range agree almost exactly — that’s the staff market. Built In’s experience curve shows the climb: $59,143 with under a year of experience to $113,714 at seven-plus years, with Senior UI Designers averaging $121,572 total comp.

The title lottery

Interface design is the one discipline where four job titles describe substantially the same work — and the title on the offer letter moves the number more than most skills do:

• “UI/UX Designer” is the discount title. On Glassdoor it averages $104,166 — about $11,000 below “UI Designer” and $27,000 below “User Interface Designer.” Combined titles signal a generalist seat at a smaller company, and the market prices them that way.
• “Product Designer” is the premium retitle. Robert Half puts Product Designers at $98,250–$158,500 nationally — a high tier some $37,000 above the UI Designer band. The work overlaps heavily; the product title carries end-to-end ownership and the tech pay band that comes with it.
• “Senior” is worth real money here. Glassdoor’s Senior UI Designer average is $183,796 total pay — interface design at product companies scales like an engineering ladder, not a creative-services one.

The negotiating takeaway: if the role you’re discussing spans research, flows, and interface craft, push for the Product Designer title and band — not a hyphenated UI/UX title at a UI price. And when benchmarking your own offer, check all four titles; quoting only the one on the posting can cost you the spread between $104K and $132K.

What the federal data says

Salary guides and job-post ranges are useful — but the deepest compensation dataset in America is the one the government collects. Every year the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys hundreds of thousands of employers for its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. Here’s what the May 2025 release (the latest available) shows for Web & Digital Interface Designers. BLS doesn’t track “UI Designer” as its own occupation — it files interface design under “Web and Digital Interface Designers,” a category created in 2021 (which is why the trend line starts there) that blends UI, UX, and web design into one bucket.

Median pay, 2021–2025

Where you sit in the range

The spread between the 10th and 90th percentile is the real story — it’s the gap between entry-level in a small market and top-of-craft in a major one. The shaded band is the middle 50% of all earners.

Median pay by state

Hover any state for its median. Highest: California ($136,110) · lowest published: Mississippi ($48,550).

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Web & Digital Interface Designers — national and state tables, May 2019–May 2025 releases. Annual wages.