How to hire an Industrial Designer

How to hire an industrial designer, step by step

Here's a step-by-step industrial designer hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write an industrial designer job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new industrial designer
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does an Industrial Designer do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   Before you post your industrial designer job, you should take the time to determine what type of worker your business needs. While certain jobs definitely require a full-time employee, it's sometimes better to find an industrial designer for hire on a part-time basis or as a contractor.

   Determine Employee vs Contractor Status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

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   Hiring the perfect industrial designer also involves considering the ideal background you'd like them to have. Depending on what industry or field they have experience in, they'll bring different skills to the job. It's also important to consider what levels of seniority and education the job requires and what kind of salary such a candidate would likely demand.

   Here's a comparison of industrial designer salaries for various roles:

   Type Of Industrial Designer	Description	Hourly Rate
   Industrial Designer	Industrial designers develop the concepts for manufactured products, such as cars, home appliances, and toys. They combine art, business, and engineering to make products that people use every day... Show More	$20-44
   Product Design Internship	Product design interns are students who are doing their on-the-job training under the product design department of an organization. They are usually assigned administrative tasks... Show More	$26-50
   Lighting Designer	Lighting Designers are responsible for developing and implementing electrical and lighting systems. They are responsible for conducting site assessment and analysis, liaise with clients and engineers to determine technical specifications, design lighting plans, create budget reports for a project initiated, track progress targets, install electrical and lighting systems and ensures installation adheres to local energy regulation as well as building codes... Show More	$16-39

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common Skills:

   • Industrial Design
   • Solidworks
   • CAD
   • Sketch
   • KeyShot
   • Prototype
   • Visualization
   • Prototyping
   • Product Development
   • Design Solutions
   • Concept Development
   • Adobe Creative Suite
   • Development Process
   • Rhino

   Check All Skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Produce, clean, and manage 3Dprints (SLA) for multiple brands' form studies.
   • Lead front-end QA of all major releases, filing, prioritizing and fixing bugs myself.
   • Streamline product development process by introducing state-of-the-art prototyping and model making techniques.
   • Create 3-D files and renderings for packaging and display by SolidWorks and KeyShot.
   • Strengthen concept visualization, presentation and layout design through effective 3D rendering with Keyshot and Rhino3D.
   • Produce detailed drawing sets for bid packages using Vectorworks.

   More Industrial Designer duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in the industrial designer job description is a good way to get more applicants. An industrial designer salary can be affected by several factors, such as the location of the job, the level of experience, education, certifications, and the employer's prestige.

   For example, the average salary for an industrial designer in Florida may be lower than in Washington, and an entry-level engineer typically earns less than a senior-level industrial designer. Additionally, an industrial designer with lots of experience in the field may command a higher salary as a result.

   Average industrial designer salary

   $63,384yearly

   $30.47 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level industrial designer salary

   $43,000 yearly salary

   Updated March 17, 2025

   Average industrial designer salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. Salary	Hourly Rate
   1	California	$89,485	$43
   2	Washington	$88,808	$43
   3	Massachusetts	$75,539	$36
   4	Kansas	$69,962	$34
   5	New York	$65,434	$31
   6	New Jersey	$65,400	$31
   7	Missouri	$64,385	$31
   8	Indiana	$62,790	$30
   9	Texas	$61,725	$30
   10	Illinois	$61,467	$30
   11	Minnesota	$60,998	$29
   12	Colorado	$59,157	$28
   13	Ohio	$56,539	$27
   14	Maryland	$54,710	$26
   15	Wisconsin	$53,415	$26
   16	North Dakota	$50,680	$24
   17	Florida	$50,423	$24
   18	Georgia	$47,442	$23

   Average industrial designer salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average Salary	Hourly Rate	Job Openings
   1	Meta	$128,230	$61.65	603
   2	Microsoft	$126,140	$60.64	14
   3	Google	$123,394	$59.32	77
   4	NVIDIA	$119,548	$57.48	10
   5	Apple	$115,121	$55.35	112
   6	Waymo	$108,189	$52.01	3
   7	Western Digital	$105,238	$50.60	3
   8	Fitbit	$105,184	$50.57
   9	GoPro	$103,906	$49.95
   10	Intuitive Surgical	$102,051	$49.06	5
   11	Nike	$100,864	$48.49	141
   12	Gap Inc.	$99,876	$48.02	8
   13	Amazon	$98,983	$47.59	448
   14	Uber Technologies	$97,733	$46.99
   15	VF	$96,051	$46.18	13
   16	General Motors	$94,991	$45.67	19
   17	Nokia	$93,976	$45.18	2
   18	Sonos	$92,913	$44.67
   19	Marchon Eyewear	$92,857	$44.64
   20	Zebra Technologies	$92,546	$44.49

4. Writing an Industrial Designer Job Description

   A job description for an industrial designer role includes a summary of the job's main responsibilities, required skills, and preferred background experience. Including a salary range can also go a long way in attracting more candidates to apply, and showing the first name of the hiring manager can also make applicants more comfortable. As an example, here's an industrial designer job description:

   Industrial Designer job description example

   As a designer at Forward, you have a unique opportunity to redesign healthcare from the ground up. Forward is on a bold mission to make high quality healthcare available to a billion people across the globe with a vastly improved user experience-easier, more accessible, and massively more effective.
   
   We're looking for designers to define this new world. As an early member of our design team, you'll have a key role in defining Forward's physical and in-person user experience, developing novel products and services, and evolving our first products. You'll partner with an incredible group of world-class doctors, leaders, product managers, engineers and operators, within a culture that deeply prioritizes design and user experience.
   
   We're highly funded by top investors, and since launching in 2017 have expanded nationwide. We're looking for passionate, mission-oriented individuals to work with-we're just getting started.
   Press and Videos:
   Virtual Tour of Forward [YouTube]
   'Forward at Home' Product Launch [TechCrunch]
   "Health Moves Forward" [CEO Blog Post]
   Forward Doctors Respond to COVID-19 [FastCompany]
   What You'll Do:Create designs that will directly contribute to saving and improving people's lives Work with a top-tier team of fellow designers from IDEO, Uber and Amazon, and alongside founders, leaders, and PMs from Google, Tesla, Airbnb and more Combine the best of humans and technology to deliver an amazing user experience and design how the world's first at-scale healthcare system should work Evolve and reinvent our tech-enabled clinic designs, Body Scanners, Smart Screens, Dermatoscopes, and future novel hardware Engage across the end to end design process, from concepting, prototyping and testing, refinement, product engineering, and production Contribute to a supportive design culture with Forward's design team, including collaborating with other designers and participating in design critiques and reviews Actively work with key stakeholders and leadership to drive decisions and design directions Work with expert clinicians and patients to improve their tools and health outcomes Partner with product managers and engineers to bring products to life-Forward ships products and iterations rapidly
   What We're Looking For:3+ years experience designing and shipping physical products Design decisions grounded in user research, metrics, and business goalsA commitment to personal development and a learning mindset Can navigate ambiguity-a lot of Forward is designed from scratch, with a first-principles mindset and a question of “what's possible?”Thriving in an environment of cross-functional collaboration and shared successes Mission-led motivation with an appetite for challenging problems Experience collaborating with electrical, mechanical, and software engineers Strong physical prototyping skills and a proven ability to clearly convey ideas and reasoning Familiarity with CAD and rendering tools like Solidworks, Rhino, and KeyShot
   WHY JOIN FORWARD?
   
   We don't want to just move dollars around the healthcare industry - we want to rebuild it and fix it. All of it. You'd be a major part of the story behind one of the most ambitious startup attempts of the past decade and you'd work with a team of people who want to use their talents for good.
   
   We are an equal opportunity employer. In accordance with anti-discrimination law, it is the purpose of this policy to effectuate these principles and mandates. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type and affords equal employment opportunities to employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We conform to the spirit as well as to the letter of all applicable laws and regulations. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

   Copy This Example

   

5. Post your job

   There are various strategies that you can use to find the right industrial designer for your business:

   • Consider promoting from within or recruiting from your existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals from friends, family members, and current employees.
   • Attend job fairs at local colleges to find candidates who meet your education requirements.
   • Use social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to reach potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your industrial designer job on Zippia to find and recruit industrial designer candidates who meet your exact specifications.
   • Use field-specific websites such as dribbble, authentic jobs, working not working, coroflot.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   During your first interview to recruit industrial designers, engage with candidates to learn about their interest in the role and experience in the field. During the following interview, you'll be able to go into more detail about the company, the position, and the responsibilities.

   Remember to include a few questions that allow candidates to expand on their strengths in their own words. Asking about their unique skills might reveal things you'd miss otherwise. At this point, good candidates can move on to the technical interview.

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new industrial designer

   Once you've found the industrial designer candidate you'd like to hire, it's time to write an offer letter. This should include an explicit job offer that includes the salary and the details of any other perks. Qualified candidates might be looking at multiple positions, so your offer must be competitive if you like the candidate. Also, be prepared for a negotiation stage, as candidates may way want to tweak the details of your initial offer. Once you've settled on these details, you can draft a contract to formalize your agreement.

   You should also follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that you've filled the position.

   To prepare for the new industrial designer first day, you should share an onboarding schedule with them that covers their first period on the job. You should also quickly complete any necessary paperwork, such as employee action forms and onboarding documents like I-9, benefits enrollment, and federal and state tax forms. Finally, Human Resources must ensure a new employee file is created for internal record keeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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How much does it cost to hire an industrial designer?