Emerging Product Design Roles You’ve Never Heard Of

So I've been noticing something big happening with UX and product design jobs lately. Something that could totally change how you plan your next job move. But before I tell you what it is, let's rewind a bit. Back in 2016, when I landed my first full-time design job, my first UX project was a website layout that I did in a tool called Adobe Illustrator. Some of you might know this tool. And Figma wasn't even a thing yet at this time. I had no idea what UX or UI meant. I was just a graphic designer making stuff look pretty. Looking back, what I was really doing then was UI design. Things were so much simpler. You were either a UX designer that's thinking about how screens are connected to help users complete the flow, or you're a UI designer that's making everything look beautiful, sleek, and visually appealing. It was almost unheard of for a company to expect one person to do both UX and UI design. Today, the role of a UX designer and a UI designer has blended so much that now companies expect one person to be able to do both efficiently, which is why the term UI/UX or UX/UI designer became really popular. By the way, I don't like that term, but Well, that's a subject for another day. But that's not all that's changed. The big thing happening is that the rise of AI and the obsession with hypergrowth from venture capitalists is creating entirely new specializations and roles within UX and product design. So if you're looking to position yourself for a future where you're a well-paid designer who is doing the best work of their lives, then pay attention to these roles because one of them might be your next career move. Let's break them down. Number 1, growth product designer. Growth product designer is usually focused on designing experiences that help businesses with user acquisition, engagement and retention. Unlike a generalist product designer, a growth designer is always thinking about how to get users to sign up, complete the onboarding process faster, refer new users, make sure the new users become active and engaged for the first 30, 60, or 90 days, or whatever number of days that they want to make sure that the users are engaged. So growth designers are likely to run a lot more experiments than regular product designers and understand what's working and what's not working. The Duolingo language learning app is a really good example of a product that's been successful because of well-designed growth experiments. So Duolingo definitely has a few growth product designers focused on user acquisition, engagement, and retention. Spotify Wrapped is another example of a feature designed to retain existing users and acquire new ones. Whenever people share their Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year, people that are not on Spotify feel like they're missing out, and this is a way for Spotify to acquire new users. So just like Duolingo, Spotify has a few growth product designers. Companies like Duolingo and Spotify may not clearly state that they are hiring a growth product designer in their job adverts, but a lot of companies are adding these roles to their job titles. Here's one example, and here's another one that I found on LinkedIn. So if you really enjoy data-driven design, then the role of a growth product designer might be the perfect fit for you. Number 2, design engineer. This role has been bubbling under for a long time, and I think it's about to explode. It's basically a fancy title for a product designer that's also comfortable with coding, especially with using front-end development frameworks. Sometimes they are called UX engineers or product engineers. I believe that UX and product design roles is heading in this direction with like AI tools like Claude, Cursor, Replit, Lovable, and all of them that are coming out now. And these tools are making it easier for designers to convert their designs to code. Just like how the role of a UX designer and a UI designer blended into product design, the role of a product designer and a frontend developer could blend in the near future, and designers might no longer need to hand off their designs to engineers. So it's really possible that the role of a designer would naturally transition to the role of a design engineer. So if you're just starting your product design career, this is the perfect time to start learning how to use AI to convert your design into fully working mobile apps and web apps, you should also start learning how to use AI to speed up your process and just use AI to understand code. Also, if you are obsessed about the craft of design and want to see the exact implementation of your design in production, then this is the ultimate role for you. But you need to learn how to use AI as a coding partner. Number 3, conversation designer. A conversation designer focuses on creating seamless and natural conversational experiences for users through a chatbot or a voice assistant. Conversation design has been around for a while, but it didn't have an official job title until recently when I started seeing them in job adverts with the rise of the 1 million AI apps that exist today. So a simple example of a product that needs good conversation design is the Amazon Echo device with its Alexa voice assistant or the iPhone Siri. Now, as AI gets more powerful and popular, a lot of companies are embedding smarter chatbots into their experiences, and they need conversation designers to create great experiences for them. For example, Amazon now has a shopping assistant called Rufus that can do most of your shopping for you in a chat interface, and there are so many other products that are heading in this direction. So a conversation designer would typically design the conversation interface, the flow of the dialogue and interaction, so talking to a bot feels natural and human-like. As AI chatbots become more common, good conversation design will be the difference between a frustrating bot and one that feels truly helpful. And this is where the role of a conversation designer comes in. Number 4, AR/VR designers. AR/VR designers specialize in creating augmented and virtual reality experiences that overlay interactive digital content onto the real world. So to put it simply, they design applications that integrate virtual elements seamlessly into a user's surroundings. Think about the Apple Vision Pro or the Meta Quest. The AR/VR designer role has also existed for a while and has been predicted to blow up for so long, but it has gotten less popular because VR devices like the Vision Pro didn't live up to the hype, and competitors like Meta haven't gained wide adoption. But I strongly believe the adoption will happen eventually. I mean, Facebook changed their name to Meta because of their bet on AR and VR experiences. So they definitely know something that a lot of us do not know. As spatial computing and mixed reality gain traction, designers with 3D and immersive experience skills will be in really high demand as well. So if AR/VR excites you, if you love gaming, you love game design, you love just being lost in the virtual world, here's how you can position yourself as a sought-after AR/VR designer. Number 1, start learning popular 3D tools like Blender, or Unity. Develop a strong understanding of spatial interactions and design for immersive experiences. And then you can start to create personal projects or portfolio that's demonstrating that you can actually build for this environment. Mastering these skills now will give you a real competitive edge in the near future. Now, here's the most crucial takeaway from everything we've talked about. Despite all of these new roles and advancements in tech, The core responsibility of a product designer hasn't changed. Your primary job is still to understand your user needs deeply, create intuitive and effective solutions, and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to make those solutions real. If you've been worried that AI might replace designers completely, think again, because these emerging roles are proving that rather than replacing us, this new technology is opening new, exciting opportunities for UX designers. So if you're serious about future-proofing your design career, exploring one of these specializations could be your next strategic move. But before diving in, make sure you master the foundational skills every UX designer needs. Check out this next video where I break down exactly what those core skills are, and I'll see you there.