How To Become A Usability Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a usability engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Usability engineering, at first glimpse at least, isn't a "design" role. Why? Because the fundamental objective of a usability engineer is to find intricacies. They're the people who conduct investigations into how well a user can carry out the tasks they desire to carry out and determine where the prevailing offering fails to deliver.

Your academic background will also make it easier for you to determine the credibility of the sources you evaluate. Therefore, you must have a background in computer science or a sub-field of psychology such as perception, cognition, or human factors so as to achieve success in this role.

Usability engineers typically get paid an average yearly salary of $91,435; however, this salary can vary with experience, ranging from $70,000 to $116,000.

ScoreUsability EngineerUS Average

Salary

7.6

Avg. Salary $98,689

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 29.12%

Black or African American 4.29%

Hispanic or Latino 8.01%

Unknown 4.76%

White 53.66%

Gender

female 45.70%

male 54.30%

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 usability engineer

Explore usability engineer education requirements

Most common usability engineer degrees

Bachelor's

63.5 %

Master's

22.9 %

Doctorate

7.1 %

Start to develop specific usability engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
User Experience	9.21%
UI	8.21%
User Research	6.16%
Interaction Design	5.96%
Web Application	5.40%

Complete relevant usability engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New usability engineers 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 usability engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real usability engineer resumes.

Research usability engineer duties and responsibilities

Gather and evaluate requirement using UCD principles to automate business processes, design prototypes.
Define user requirements, application UI design, layout and user interaction design.
Learned to use Balsalmiq prototyping tool to prototype a tool to be study.
Conduct usability testing, create low and high fidelity prototypes, develop html and css guides.

Prepare your usability engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your usability engineer 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 usability engineer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable usability engineer resume templates

Build a professional usability engineer 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 usability engineer resume.