Design Skills in Demand

This family covers product and UX designers as well as engineering designers, so it spans screen design and physical products. Tool requirements differ sharply between the two, which is why both Figma and CAD appear here.

We analyzed 57 U.S. job descriptions from 14 employers for Design roles. The most requested skills were CAD (42%), Prototyping (33%) and Electrical systems (14%).

475open U.S. roles tracked
3 yearstypical experience asked for
$139,850median advertised pay, from 39 roles that state it

Hardware

  • CAD42%
  • Electrical systems14%

Product & design

  • Prototyping33%
  • Project management12%

Operations

  • Root cause analysis14%

Business tools

  • PowerPoint12%

Updated November 7, 2026, using job descriptions collected since September 26, 2026. Shares show how many of the sampled descriptions mention a skill, so a low share can still be a firm requirement in the roles that list it. We sample a limited number of descriptions per employer so that no single company dominates, and we only report figures backed by several employers. Advertised pay comes from a different group of roles than H1B filings, so the two are not directly comparable.

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