As opposed to a graphic designer, which is a role for creatives at the beginning of their career, a senior designer has more to do with management tasks than design. Taking marketing solutions and business goals into consideration, a senior designer manages the work of designers producing graphics that satisfy the demands of the market.
This, of course, does not mean that senior designers do not have ample experience and expertise in graphic design. At this point in their career, they focus on supervising creative solutions, both in print and digital. They delegate tasks to facilitate collaboration, in order to maintain high-quality standards of creative work.
Senior designers have an extensive portfolio of completed projects and hands-on experience in using image editing software. Apart from excelling in their craft, they are also great communicators who are able to give productive feedback, understand design needs, and negotiate with clients. Senior designers make around $78,400, with the higher half of the median reaching up to $87,600.
Senior Designer Overview
Senior Designer Careers
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior designer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $46.6 an hour? That's $96,918 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 3% and produce 8,800 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Senior Designer Do
There are certain skills that many senior designers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, time-management skills and analytical skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a senior designer, we found that a lot of resumes listed 8.0% of senior designers included user interface, while 7.5% of resumes included layout, and 7.2% of resumes included graphic design. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the senior designer job title. But what industry to start with? Most senior designers actually find jobs in the technology and manufacturing industries.
How To Become a Senior Designer
If you're interested in becoming a senior designer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 63.3% of senior designers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 10.1% of senior designers have master's degrees. Even though most senior designers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a senior designer. When we researched the most common majors for a senior designer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on senior designer resumes include master's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a senior designer. In fact, many senior designer jobs require experience in a role such as designer. Meanwhile, many senior designers also have previous career experience in roles such as graphic designer or art director.
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Senior Designer Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of art director you might progress to a role such as creative director eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title director of communications and marketing.
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Average Salary for a Senior Designer
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
Brainstorm Creative Resources Senior Designer Senior Designer | Brainstorm Creative Resources Brainstorm Creative Resources | 01/22/2021 01/22/2021 | $93,91501/22/2021 $93,915 |
Mayo Clinic Senior Designer-Marketing Senior Designer-Marketing | Mayo Clinic Mayo Clinic | 01/21/2021 01/21/2021 | $173,13801/21/2021 $173,138 |
Randstad Senior Designer/Motion Designer Senior Designer/Motion Designer | Randstad Randstad | 12/22/2020 12/22/2020 | $146,09012/22/2020 $146,090 |
Robert Half Senior Designer Senior Designer | Robert Half Robert Half | 12/22/2020 12/22/2020 | $73,04512/22/2020 $73,045 |
Randstad SR. Designer SR. Designer | Randstad Randstad | 11/05/2020 11/05/2020 | $62,00011/05/2020 $62,000 |
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Senior Designer Resumes
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Senior Designer. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Senior Designer Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Senior Designer resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationTop Colleges for Senior Designers
1. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
2. Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA • Private
3. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
4. Northeastern University
Boston, MA • Private
5. New York University
New York, NY • Private
6. Boston University
Boston, MA • Private
7. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
8. Duke University
Durham, NC • Private
9. George Washington University, The
Washington, DC • Private
10. Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA • Public
Top Skills For a Senior Designer
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 8.0% of senior designers listed user interface on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and time-management skills are important as well.
- User Interface, 8.0%
- Layout, 7.5%
- Graphic Design, 7.2%
- CAD, 5.0%
- Autocad, 4.5%
- Other Skills, 67.8% See All Senior Designer Skills
Best States For a Senior Designer
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a senior designer. The best states for people in this position are Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and California. Senior designers make the most in Washington with an average salary of $130,149. Whereas in Oregon and Nevada, they would average $110,862 and $105,968, respectively. While senior designers would only make an average of $102,010 in California, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Washington
$130,149
Avg. Salary
2. Oregon
$110,862
Avg. Salary
3. Massachusetts
$100,263
Avg. Salary
How Do Senior Designer Rate Their Jobs?
Top Senior Designer Employers
We've made finding a great employer to work for easy by doing the hard work for you. We looked into employers that employ senior designers and discovered their number of senior designer opportunities and average salary. Through our research, we concluded that General Motors was the best, especially with an average salary of $117,933. Bechtel follows up with an average salary of $96,526, and then comes Microsoft with an average of $154,204. In addition, we know most people would rather work from home. So instead of having to change careers, we identified the best employers for remote work as a senior designer. The employers include Johnson Controls, Activision Blizzard, and Zynga
Senior Designer Videos
