The State of UX in Italy
2026 UPDATE 📣 Help us define the contours of the discipline by answering this year’s new survey
On an early summer Friday afternoon, while the holiday mood buzzed outside, over a hundred UX professionals gathered in Milan, hosted by POLI.design’s Experience Design Academy, to reflect on their own profession. The 40th episode of our UX Talks became a powerful moment of collective introspection, backed by a quantitative survey of over 1,000 UX professionals from across Italy.
The session featured insights from the research conducted by Laura Licari (Publicis Sapient), Gianluca Brugnoli (TomTom) and Venanzio Arquilla and Davide Genco (Experience Design Academy), who together helped frame the conversation around where UX in Italy stands today — and where it’s headed.
The picture that emerged is complex: the UX industry in Italy is real — it’s young, highly educated, and passionate — but also shows signs of uncertainty, fatigue, and a tension between strategic aspirations and operational reality.
If you want to access the entire document summering up the research download it here https://xdapolidesign.com/
Young, educated, evolving
The first takeaway — seemingly obvious but not to be taken for granted — is that UX is now a recognized profession in Italy, with about 12,000 active profiles listed on LinkedIn. The average age is quite young: 52% are under 34, 56% have less than 10 years of experience, and yet 62% already hold “senior” roles.
This kind of acceleration, while expected for a young profession, raises deeper questions: What does “seniority” really mean when maturity comes so quickly? And more importantly — what happens after?
After the age of 45, the “UX Designer” title begins to vanish from profiles. Labels like “Strategist” or “Manager” take its place. But rather than a promotion, this shift often feels like a dilution of design identity itself — a career path that advances by subtraction: fewer pixels, less UX, more business.
The survey revealed a clear trend: 86% of respondents hold at least a university degree, 2% have a PhD, and overall satisfaction with educational backgrounds is high. Yet this cultural capital doesn’t necessarily translate into career growth. Pay progression, for example, is uneven: the € 20–40K bracket is overcrowded, even after 10 years of experience, while salaries above € 80K are limited to a handful of roles (strategists and managers).
In this context, salary becomes a reflection of how and how much design is valued. A designer who is anchored to delivery and crushed by production pressure, often trapped in user interface design and Figma, has little room to grow professionally and economically. Only those who are able to bring perceived value at the organisational level and business impact are able to advance their careers.
In this sense, the Product Designer role emerges as the most balanced: decent pay, international projects, strategic visibility. However UX and Product design roles are becoming increasingly blurred.
A mostly employed workforce
Forget the stereotype of designers working remotely from Bali. 81% of Italian UX professionals are employed, and 70% of them have permanent contracts. The work is mostly structured: designers are often part of large internal teams led by a more senior designer. In terms of working arrangements, 62% work in a hybrid mode, 30% work completely remotely, and only 8% go to the office every day.
This structure may explain why job satisfaction is still relatively high: 44% are happy with their current role. However, younger designers tend to be less content, not necessarily because they’re worse off — but because the bar has been raised, and expectations are higher than ever.
So… who are Italian UXers, really?
In terms of roles, 26% identify as UX Designers, 21% as Product Designers, and 14% as UI Designers.
UI Designers are the youngest group (73% under 34) and often seen as execution-focused. In the open comments section of the survey someone boldly called them “the blue-collar workers of the digital industry”, a harsh but telling description.
As careers progress, responsibilities shift toward research, concept design, discovery, and strategy. Yet even senior designers continue to work on execution. Perhaps by habit. Perhaps by love. Or maybe because, as someone joked during the talk, “It’s the designer’s curse, we just can’t stop doing.”
The gender gap is still real
The gender gap is still real. While women are well represented in the 25–34 age segment, their presence drops sharply in senior positions. It’s a familiar pattern across many industries, but no less troubling to see it reflected here. During the talk, Laura Licari addressed the women in the room with a clear advice:
Too often in interviews I hear women say, ‘Any salary works’ — far more than men. Of course fair pay should always be the standard, but I’d want women to feel confident asking for what they deserve. Knowing your worth is leadership. I say it to you… and to remind myself too.
The gender gap is most visible in senior roles and higher salary ranges. If we don’t address it early, it becomes systemic.
Let’s talk money: who actually earns more?
The numbers speak volumes. Over 60% of UX Designers and 80% of UI Designers earn less than €40K annually. In contrast, 52% of CX Strategists earn over €61K.
This salary jump comes with a change in responsibilities — those who lead discovery, pitch strategy, and influence decisions receive higher salaries.
Still, many designers feel unprepared for these strategic roles. As Gianluca Brugnoli noted:
“Everyone wants to go strategic, but few designers are actually trained for leadership.”
And once they get there, they rarely leave the design world — because it’s the only space where they feel truly safe and comfortable. As Laura Licari challenge the audience:
“We often see design teams reporting into product, engineering, or marketing leads, but almost never the other way around. Ever seen a product, engineering, or marketing team reporting into a design lead? Is this a structural barrier, or a self-imposed glass ceiling by designers themselves?”
When it comes to workplace types, not all UX jobs are created equal. Designers working in product or service companies tend to earn slightly more (median salaries of €36–37K) than those in digital or tech consultancies, which sit closer to €31–34K. Yet the highest salaries are found in strategic consulting and design agencies, where medians rise to €40K and beyond.
Company Types and Differences in Profiles
nterestingly, satisfaction levels do not always correlate with income. Designers in product companies report the highest satisfaction (3.7 out of 5), while those in startups and tech consulting — often more pressured environments — show the higher rates of stress and mental fatigue. Freelancers, despite their autonomy, tend to report lower satisfaction levels, likely due to the lack of support structures and limited time for training, as well as a decline in the business opportunities available to them.
Age also plays a role in shaping priorities. Younger designers (25–34) value work-life balance above all, followed by salary and interesting projects. For more senior professionals (45+), priorities shift: purpose, impact, and organizational culture become more important than flexibility.
Even within specific roles, disparities emerge. UI Designers are not only the youngest group but also the lowest paid: most earn under € 40K even after 10+ years of experience. In contrast, Strategists are the first to break the € 55K barrier, often just 6 years into their careers. That jump reflects a shift from execution to influence — those who drive innovation, concept design, pitch strategy, and participate in decision-making tend to earn more, and be heard more.
AI, upskilling, and a call for systemic design
Continuous learning is strongly linked to job satisfaction. Those who invest in training report better well-being and career fulfillment.
That said, there’s still a lot to do. 89% of designers believe AI is relevant to their work, but only half know how to integrate it. This isn’t just about learning new tools — it’s about adopting a new mindset and better understanding the actual impact on the design process.
We need designers who can think systemically, beyond UI toolkits and best practices — designers who can ask bigger questions and shape meaningful outcomes.
Looking in the mirror, as a community
This 40th UX Talk wasn’t just an event — it was a moment of collective introspection. Beyond the stats and graphs, there was a real sense of urgency to define what UX in Italy wants to become.
So where do we go from here?
UX in Italy is at a crossroad. The professional sector has grown significantly in the last 10 years attracting many new designers, and the profession has gained traction. But now the industry is in a new phase and UX needs to define its depth. It’s no longer enough to execute with polish — we need to influence with purpose. We need to speak not just in Figma files but in strategic frameworks. And that requires more than tools — it requires vision, education, and collective will.
As the field matures, we are called to return to something older and deeper: the designer as a cultural agent, a problem framer, a connector across disciplines. The return of the generalist, as Sarah Gibbons and Evan Sunwall recently noted, is not a regression — it’s an evolution. A response to hyper-specialization that left many feeling fragmented and burned out.
Holistic design is not a luxury. It’s the only way forward in a world of increasing complexity. That means building shared language across teams, reclaiming space at decision tables, and ensuring that our practice stays anchored to human needs, not just business metrics.
UX is alive in Italy. But for it to thrive, it needs to stop asking permission — and start shaping the conversation. As someone from the audience put it,
“We need to stop asking what we do — and start asking why we do it, and with whom.”
If you are interested in these kind of insights come join the UX Talks organised by POLI.design’s Experience Design Academy. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram to be updated about the upcoming UX Talks, which are always open to the public.
Curated by Alice Paracolli
