Design recruitment in 2025
2025 is off to a strong start in the world of design recruitment.
I’ve put together 7 topics in what I am seeing coming into 2025.
Table of contents of this article:
The increase demand for “craft-led” designers
Increase in salaries for Staff/Principal level designers.
Less middle management
Longer cycles to hire designers
Design community dissolving
Big shift to output over culture
Rise of the “designpreneur”
The increase demand for “craft-led” designers.
What companies often mean by craft-led is visuals and strong product/design taste. Companies are seeing design as a critical component to their products and understand the quality in the details become the differentiation.
Designers in demand are ones who:
Understand business + product
Have high empathy for customers
Can handle ambiguity
Critical thinking ability
Lead through the work
Can work with Eng to ship work
"Deep generalists"
Impeccable visual skills
First principle thinking
Increase in salaries for Staff/Principal level designers.
I know designers getting paid US-equivalent salaries in Europe. Why? It’s cheaper for US firms, and still incredible for someone living in Europe.
Companies who are serious about landing high-craft designers are doing whatever it takes. It’s not helped by AI/Crypto companies blowing many out of the water with huge packages. I’m talking 220-300k GBP packages in Europe.
Coupled with salaries there is a lot more flexibility for people to be remote and come to the office when it makes sense. If you’re not one of the elite AI companies you need to be open to offering a more flexible agreement if you want to attract the designers you want to hire.
Location based strategies for certain roles will hinder your search and narrow the talent you can attract.
Less middle management
Design managers are so underrated.
It's a tough role to hold in design.
You're not leading the whole team
You're not executing the "work"
You're in back-to-back meetings
You need a mature org to understand the value you bring:
Translating the vision of a CDO/VP to the wider team.
Unblocking situations, so ICs can get on with work.
Attracting and developing high-performing ICs.
General influence on the day-to-day work of the team
But, I am seeing this role change.
There seems to be less demand for hands-off people managers, so with a shift towards leaner teams, manager level still need to be hands-on AKA player-coach.
Companies are focused on output.
Increase towards smaller powerful teams.
There's not as much room for "professional" managers.
Companies want managers who are designers that happen to manage, to inspire their designers to do great work, and to be able to show board/leadership through the work how design can influence business strategies for the better.
Longer cycles to hire designers
It seems many companies struggle to find the level of talent they need to truly push them forward. On the flip side, there are many designers looking.
What is going on?
As one leader recently said to me it feels like the market is mad and nobody can find good work but hiring mangers saying there is a shortage of designers they actually want to hire.
So what is happening?
I feel for a long time we hired product designers based on their process and relied heavily on design systems for the visual support, so there’s less craft-focused designers (end-to-end with an emphasis on visual) on the market and those who are will be in high-demand.
This is just a hunch, please do correct me if I am wrong, I will be diving deeper into this topic over the coming weeks.
Design community dissolving
There does not seem to be anywhere for super senior IC’s/Directors to go, there are VP/CDO communities but no director level communities. Traditional design communities are dissolving with more of a focus shifting to pure output over culture/wellbeing.
A big issue with design communities I’ve noticed is that many communities lose their intimacy as they scale. Growth often kills the closeness that makes a community work. The second problem is that a lot of platforms that claim to build connection are actually just marketing tools. They may look like communities on the surface, but their main focus isn’t about helping people connect deeply.
Then there’s the question of sustainability. Many communities are run by individuals or teams doing it for free, and if they lose interest or get busy, the community falls apart. It’s rare to find long-lasting spaces that remain valuable as they grow.
Where are all the design communities?
Big shift to output over culture and a move to smaller teams with higher standards
A lot of companies don’t need large design teams.
The push towards quality over quantity is now. Long gone are the days of 2021 when SO many teams were bloated. With the possibility AI will replace many junior/mid level design tasks in the next 2-3 years there is a big push to hiring people who can bring creativity, high taste, critical thinking and some unique to the team.
Quality over quantity: Companies are hiring small teams of highly skilled individuals rather than hiring to fill a quota.
Communication efficiency: Smaller teams facilitate better communication and collaboration, allowing for faster iteration and decision-making.
Product-centric approach: By focusing on building a high-quality product with a smaller team, companies are able to stay very product centric and focus on what matters.
Kaari from Linear sums up their approach perfectly below:
Rise of the “designpreneur”
To my point of small communities, I am in a group on Slack ran by Tommy called Design Creators. There is 150-200 people, it’s tight-knit, huge engagement, strong rituals and it just works.
Anyhow, in that group is people using their design skillset and experience to build side projects, building products, starting studios, becoming creators etc.
Job security does not exist anymore.
The only security is within you to learn, adapt, grow and add value to your curiosity.
I spoke to a 19-year old designer the other day who is self-taught, freelanced, built his own product and has 3 years experience under his belt. His visual work blew me away.
His level of visual and interaction design is one of the best I've seen in a long time. It made me think the new generation of designers are learning as they go.
The other factor here is people want flexibility.
Designers are making £100,000 selling courses, being on Youtube, coaching etc.
If you’re a designer and you’re reading this, you have a skill people want to buy.
Back yourself.
2 examples of designers doing cool things whilst in full-time work:
Josh Newton - Building Orbit.
Filip Greš - Building the gist of
Until next time!