How To Become A Design Team Lead: What It Is and Career Path

What is a design team lead and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a design team lead. For example, did you know that they make an average of $45.44 an hour? That's $94,522 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 21% and produce 284,100 job opportunities across the U.S.

ScoreDesign Team LeadUS Average

Salary

7.4

Avg. Salary $94,522

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.0

Growth rate 21%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.17%

Asian 29.96%

Black or African American 4.41%

Hispanic or Latino 8.14%

Unknown 4.79%

White 52.53%

Gender

female 28.50%

male 71.50%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

4.0

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

7.9

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.6

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a design team lead

Explore design team lead education requirements

Most common design team lead degrees

Bachelor's

70.4 %

Associate

11.8 %

Master's

11.1 %

Start to develop specific design team lead skills

Skills	Percentages
Sketch	10.28%
CAD	9.61%
Product Design	9.26%
Architecture	8.18%
Design Concepts	4.10%

Complete relevant design team lead training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New design team leads learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a design team lead based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real design team lead resumes.

Research design team lead duties and responsibilities

Deliver high-level n-tier architecture design, managing project expectations and timetables throughout all phases of development process.
Simulate 3-D and 2-D Matlab contours.
Design high-quality HTML base sales and service email marketing campaigns in a fast pace/high volume atmosphere.
Adapt key attributes of HTML screens for translation into multiple languages and support on various browsers.

Get design team lead experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a design team lead. The most common roles before becoming a design team lead include graphic designer, team leader team lead and internship.

Prepare your design team lead resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your design team lead resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a design team lead resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable design team lead resume templates

Build a professional design team lead resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your design team lead resume.