If there was a name for a Frontend Developer who sits ideally in front-of-the-front-end while also advising Design with regards Accessibility concerns, maybe UX here and there, and the feasibility of actually implementing the design ideas in code...
What would that role be called?
I get that Design Systems and the people who build them sit in this space. But still, what is that role called? And what if I'm not actively the one in charge of the design system?
@sarajw catching up on this thread. I’m also Design Technologist. I was the first in such a role at my company, so I kind of picked the title in consultation with my management and coworkers
It's pretty heartening to see this role exists and it has various names :) in my company we're all "Web Developer" I think, but having the clutch of titles to be aware of is super useful.
Thank you so much to everyone who answered this - it was all so very helpful to give me confidence in my discussions with my CTOs today, about my role within the company and how I see it developing 🚀✨💜
@sarajw I'm sitting in a role that sounds similar. I'm expected to be able to work on any part of the stack, but my particular skills and focus mean I'm almost always bouncing between designing (with consultations as needed from our design team) and building front-end.
My company used to call it "UX Developer" but they "standardized" away such specialized distinctions so now I'm just "Software Developer II". My job didn't change, just the title 🙄
@sarajw I know this might not be super helpful, but I was the one frontend dev on the design team at a Fortune 500 with like 50ish frontend devs. I was still called a frontend dev, but the team delineation was part of it.
@sarajw I work in this exact role right now at Microsoft. We call it “Design Developer” but I know different places use various names such as “Design Engineer,” “UX Engineer,” and “Design Technologist.”
Also while a good chunk of our work is design system focused my teammates and I also work on design tooling, prototypes, websites, accessibility, sometimes are product designers, generally act as translators/liaisons between design and engineering, and so on, and still have this title.
@hawkticehurst thank you, that's great information, and I'm so pleased to see how many of these roles do exist even if they don't all agree on the name!
@sarajw I’ve found it particularly difficult to use “Design Engineer” in a job search, even though it’s a good description. For example, on LinkedIn you might find you are getting a lot of non-software-related engineering roles recommended to you.
@knowler yep - it was basically my degree, we were multidisciplinary engineers - I went into electronics personally, but others specialised in civil or aeronautical or mechanical engineering. We were all studying engineering design :)
@sarajw This has been me throughout most of my career and I've always struggled with labels, but I have been using "Design Engineer" lately as I think it is the most concise way I've found yet to cover most of my bases.
@sarajw Sounds about right! My company also uses "Creative Software Engineer" on some job postings to cast a wider net, even though we don't use that title internally.
@sarajw that's where I sit, and my title is front end engineer, and nobody knows my skillset. It's always a surprise when I'm introduced to a new team. 🙃 I was a design technologist, but of course that meant engineers didn't expect me to be able to write code. I feel like we always get called some form of unicorn in this space, even though I think there are actually a lot of people like us. It's the company's hiring criteria that are messed up, not that we are fewer and far between (imo)
@hbuchel so it makes sense that I'm struggling to find a good term for it! You're the second person to say "design technologist" though, not heard that one before
@sarajw At Amazon, at least, it's a huge catch-all role so I'm not sure it's universally accepted as the space you're describing. It was generally meant to imply you aided with research/discovery and built prototypes. I once worked on a team with 3 other design technologists: the other three did a lot of hardware, 3d modeling/printing, infrastructure and workspace design. I was the only web focused one. I'm sure it varies from company to company.
@sarajw I misread that at first as "a name for a Frontend Developer who sits idly in front-of-the-front-end" and nodded because we all know developers like that.
Yes. The UX engineer's scope is across the design and the implementation of the components.
It's like a combination of UI designer and front-of-frontend developer. Very much focussed on the UI rendering part. They are part of the design team and work closely with the engineers to make sure the components can seamlessly (🤞) be imported in the apps (web and mobile).
@sarajw Hey that's describing my job exactly! I stick with with "Front-end developer" (I use "creative developer" but that doesn't feel like a real title?), but I agree there's a lot more going on than just integrating a design into code. (which in French was "intégrateur/intégratrice web" but feels like it might not be the same kidn of overlap)
@sarajw It sounds like you’re talking about a UX Engineer. (i.e. my day job)
In this article I reference the role Design Engineer. But I think UX Engineer has become the one that stuck.
@dutchcelt aahh yes I did read that! And you called it Design Engineer. I like that too. I don't think it is UX - it's not the research, the personas, that stuff, that I'm thinking about.
My degree was actually called Engineering Design, haha - though I specialised in comms electronics back then.
@sarajw I moved away from web/ux design because of the research part. That didn’t interest me. But as an engineer I do look for that information to appropriately implement a design.
The fact that the role doesn’t have a formal or common title is kinda nuts. It’s an indictment of both the design and development communities.
@dutchcelt or that the split happened because front end and design got too big, which is fine in itself, and the separated roles used to collaborate and overlap, but now they do so less because there's lots more to know on both sides, and the gap is growing, so now we're needing people to fill it back up...
You probably said all this in your post and I'm just paraphrasing, sorry 😅
@sarajw You hit the nail on the head. The role always, well, the last 20 years for sure, existed. But for the last few years, the need for that role has grown rapidly, and thus, we need more talent to step in/up.
I'm just scouting around for a good word or description that will help me describe a role I think I might like to grow into... Although I know the industry as it is seems to like people staying in their lanes.
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