What is the UX Writer Career Path?
UX writing is a fast-paced field with exciting turns and twists and a successful career path.
Perhaps you’re here because you’re a fresh graduate looking to dive into UX writing. Or maybe you are transitioning from a different role to UX writing.
The UX career trajectory goes from a junior UX writer, UX researcher to senior UX professionals. If you’re interested in learning more about the career path via video, then watch below. Otherwise, skip ahead.
UX writing is a great career choice. Working in Content says LinkedIn promotes 1000+ job posts for UX writers only in the UK region. According to estimates, the US region’s rate will be much higher.
Let’s have a look at each of the possible UX careers.
What is UX Writer Career Path?
UX writing is a specialized field of technical writing. A user experience writer is familiar with UX designers, research specialists, and content strategist skills. Normally, a UX writing career path looks like this:
- User Experience Writer
- UX Research Writer
- Junior UX Writer
- Senior UX Writer
- UX Writing Specialist
- UX Writing Manager
Let’s dive deeper into the job descriptions and responsibilities of the mentioned job roles.
1. User Experience Writer
A user experience writer writes copy for a digital product, keeping user experience in mind. Here’s the job description for a user experience writer:
Job Details
A UX writer writes copy for digital services and apps. UX writers collaborate with partners like UX designers, researchers, product managers, and engineers. Collaboration leads to a productive outcome, as the content is composed with all the user’s aspects in mind.
Job Responsibilities
A User experience writer is responsible for these duties:
- Writes the content for the user interface that helps in user navigation.
- Composes error messages, instructional guides, promo texts, and notification messages
- Identifies opportunities, manages assignments, and works on priorities
- Collaborates with other team researchers and UX designer
- Incorporates feedback from seniors and stakeholders
Preferred Qualifications
- Minimum of a bachelor’s degree in the relevant field
- Good communication and verbal skills, particularly with subject matter experts and users
- 2-3 years of proven experience as a UX writer
- Good presentation skills
- Familiarity with digital technology, human-computer interaction, online products, and UX design
- Knows how the basics of using Figma or Adobe XD
These are some of the qualifications employers prefer when hiring user experience writers.
2. Junior UX Writer
A junior UX writer works under the super of senior working roles and assists them with their day-to-day needs. Here’s the job description for a junior user experience writer:
Job Details
Junior UX writers work in collaboration with product designers and subject matter wizards. They document functionality changes and new features and update existing knowledge. They assist the experts and compose release notes. Junior UX writers update user manuals and ensure that the product resonates with customers’ needs.
Job Responsibilities
A junior UX writer is responsible for these duties:
- Learns about a product; assists the product managers and senior UX writers in a product’s interface messages
- Communicate with technical writers about the requirements of product documentation
- Compose human-centered content
- Suggest changes in a product design as per the data gathered from how users interact with a digital product
- Conduct usability tests and run prototypes
- Review the suggested edits from senior subject experts
Preferred Qualifications
- A minimum of a bachelor’s degree in the relevant field
- Proven experience of 0-2 years as a UX writer
- Skills to work in harsh environments
- Ability to incorporate edits and feedback into the work
- Skillful with UX design tools
- Familiar with UX writing rules
- Good communication and verbal skills, particularly with subject matter experts and users
- Knows how to collaborate with Figma or Adobe XD
Employers prefer these qualifications for a junior UX writer.
3. Senior UX Writer
A senior UX writer is an experienced role who is also responsible for management tasks. Senior UX writers lead the junior writers in content design projects and play a fundamental role in assessing users’ needs based on their behaviors.
Job Details
A senior UX writer collaborates with UX design team members, user researchers, and content strategists. They conduct usability tests and articulate the personality requirements in a UI design. Senior writing roles are responsible for leading the junior team and ensuring productive results through teamwork.
Job Responsibilities
- Guide junior UX writers on their work duties, assign them tasks, and analyze work reports
- Compose cohesive product narratives and enhance brand voice
- Advocates for product consumers’ needs and designs UX content accordingly
- Provide valuable feedback to user research results and advice to incorporate new insights into research work
- Manages the junior worker’s team
- Enhance business conversions and improve results by quality testing and iterations on digit product content
Preferred Qualifications
- Minimum of a master’s degree in a relevant field
- 5-8 years of proven experience as a UX writer
- Efficient at team handling
- Great project management skills
- Familiar with localization and mapping of content into various languages
- Skillful with UX design and writing tools
- Efficient project handling and writing skills
- Good communication and verbal skills, particularly with subject matter experts and users
- Knows how to communicate through and write text in Figma or Adobe XD
- Previous experience participating in a Scrum and Agile environment
Enhance your qualifications and skills if you’re looking to apply to a senior UX writing job post.
4. UX Writing Manager
UX writing managers are responsible for managing the UX team. They communicate with the development team, stakeholders, and SME(s) and interact with junior and senior UX writers, content strategists, and user researchers.
Job Details
A UX writing manager manages the team of UX writers and interacts with SME(s) and stakeholders to inquire about projects and goals. They conduct case studies and detailed reports on the junior and senior writers’ drafted microcopies. In addition, they analyze user personas to enhance work productivity.
Job Responsibilities
Here are the most common job responsibilities of a UX writing manager:
- Manages and sometimes hires UX writers
- Majorly pays attention to promoting UX writing as a function
- Conducts career growth sessions
- Provides empathic support to junior UX writers
- Guides junior writes about the methods to develop a user-centered product
- Work along with user researchers, UX design managers to identify project requirements
- Inform senior management about business goals
- Good communication and verbal skills, particularly with subject matter experts and users
- Knows how to manage UX text in Figma or Adobe XD across multiple teams and products
- Lots of experience participating in a Scrum and Agile environment
Preferred Qualifications
- Minimum of a master’s degree in the relevant industry
- 5-8 years of experience as a UX writer, preferably a senior UX writer
- Good mentorship and leadership skills
- Efficient team handling
- Skillful with UX writing and design tools
- Good written and verbal communication skills
- Prior management role experience
- Productive with good attention to detail skills
Big organizations prefer UX writing managers with an educational background in business and English literature writing.
5. UX Research Writer
A UX researcher conducts user research and writes product copy accordingly. They systematically research user data, analyze it, and write copies based on the results.
Job Details
UX research writers conduct qualitative and quantitative research and usability tests. Quantitative research focuses on quantitative data, statistics, and numbers, while qualitative research focuses on non-numerical data. A UX researcher drafts content for the user interface and analyzes attitudinal and behavioral research.
Job Responsibilities
- Conduct attitudinal and behavioral research on the user’s attitude while using a product
- Draft microcopies based on the conducted research
- Present research results to UX writing seniors and provide valuable insights to improve the interface copies
- Communicate the research results with the UX designer to assist the product design process
- Conduct user interviews, user research performs A/B testing, and analyze the results of card sorting activities
- Write microcopies according to the use of questionnaires and surveys and investigate user flows
- Communicate insights with team members for effective working
Preferred Qualifications
- Minimum of a bachelor’s degree in the relevant field, majorly human studies
- 1-3 years of proven experience as a researcher
- Good analysis skills
- Insightful and creative at data research
- Familiar with research tools and digital products
- Good communication and verbal skills, particularly with subject matter experts and users
- Knows how to input their findings into Figma or Adobe XD
- Some experience participating in a Scrum and Agile environment
The roles of a UX research writer are the same as those of a UX writer, and the main difference lies in the research work.
6. UX Writing Specialist
A UX specialist focuses on writing the content faced by the public. They are responsible for formatting content and adjusting it to make it user-centered. Since they have a specialist role, they provide insights on the drafted content to the UX writing community. UX specialists sharpen the content in terms of organizational goals and user requirements.
Job Details
A user experience specialist writer not only writes digital microcopies for consumers but also content to market and brand a product. UX writing specialists are responsible for the product’s development process. They specialize in enhancing the end-to-end user journey. The UX specialists work on identifying new features of a product to make it user-focused.
Job Responsibilities
- Compose a product’s marketing content and interact with marketing teams
- Promote a product from a user-centered perspective
- Identify new possible features of a product
- Incorporate brand voice into microcopies
- Draft error messages
- Enhance visual design through library science techniques
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree with at least four years of experience, and a master’s degree with a minimum of 2 years of experience
- Preferably from a professional background as a UX engineer
- Good at human-computer interaction
- Good communication and verbal skills, particularly with subject matter experts and users
- Knows how to collaborate with Figma or Adobe XD
- Some experience participating in a Scrum and Agile environment
Above, we have provided a trajectory of a UX writing career. Let’s have a look at whether this choice is good for the long run or not.
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Is UX Writing a Good Career Path?
UX writing is a good career choice, indeed. 87% of hiring managers expressed that their top hire priority is from the user experience.
According to an estimate from Glassdoor in the USA, a UX writer earns an average of $112k per year. On a global level, UX writers earn an average of $65k per year.
The demand is always increasing as businesses shift to spreading their services on digital platforms. The more digital platforms are used, the more the need for UX writers increases.
Summary
User experience writing is indeed a good career choice. The demand for writing jobs has lately been increasing with the rise of digital product inventions in tech companies.
If you are new to the UX field and are joining it for a career change, we recommend you apply for a junior UX writing position. As you gain experience, you can request a promotion to the senior UX writer role and the manager’s role.
As a fresh graduate, you can gain experience by interacting with a UX writing community and UX researchers.
In the US, the average salary for a user experience writer ranges from $36k to $158k per year, according to a salary estimate from Glassdoor. The senior dedicated UX writers, project managers, and UX professionals lie in the upper range, while the UX researchers and junior UX writers lie in the lower bound.
If you want to become a UX writer, learn the roles, and work on your UX writing skills, Read the article on UX writers’ salaries to get a detailed idea of pay estimates for the mentioned roles.
If you are new to UX writing and are looking to break-in, we recommend taking our UX Writing Certification Course, where you will learn the fundamentals of being a UX writer, how to dominate UX writer interviews, and how to stand out as a UX writing candidate.
