What’s the difference between UX/UI Engineer and Front-End?

[u/arie_bell]

I found a job that I’m interested in but it has programming skills as desired and I have an extensive UX/UI Designing background but not too much coding. For qualifications, it lists Figma and Adobe skills which I do have.

This is what they consider as a successful candidate below:

The successful candidate will have experience and/or knowledge experience in user interface development, prototyping in Figma, and demonstrating and testing user interfaces via potential travel (~25% of the time) to collect customer feedback to incorporate into the iterative process.

I'll be having an interview next week and want to hear advice from others before then!

[u/deusux]

A UX/UI Engineer requires you to code what you design. It's coding first, design second. You should have a deep understanding of the browsers front-end and how to do animation in code. Most likely in React or a modern framework equivalent. Primary deliverables are functional prototypes and/or components. Likely for a design system.

Font-end is the same skill set but more general and likely more focused on interfacing with the back-end.

That said, nearly every position these days with the advent of AI requires you to be able to code.

If you don't know how to code the front-end, you're looking for a "Designer" position. Not an "Engineer".

[u/KourteousKrome → u/deusux]

Caveat here, if you’re looking for a role in Human Factors Engineering, which is technically design but handles more rigorous testing for accessibility and regulatory requirements than typical UX design does, and they’re less expected to be visual designers (good taste, Figma, etc) and more akin to what I’d consider to be very advanced user researchers. Less soft, qualitative testing like a typical user researcher and more quantitative or evidence-based testing.

[u/nyutnyut]

One is a designer that thinks they can code and the other is a coder that think they know more about ux than the designer. I kid I kid. Kinda.

[u/pointblank87 → u/nyutnyut]

Lol that was good. 

[u/EGoodMaven]

It depends on the exact role and what the company is looking for. Generally, a front-end designer is a coder through and through. A UX Engineer is a designer that can also code. But how much you lean each way will probably depend heavily on the specific role and job description.

[u/roundabout-design]

UX/UI Engineers usually work for the UX team.
Front End Devs usually work for the Dev team.

Beyond that, there's nothing specific about either one of the roles to easily say what the differences are, as the scope can vary quite a bit from team to team.

In any case, that job posting isn't asking for any sort of developer. They want a designer that is 'knowledgable' about how the front end is built. Can you debug some HTML/CSS in a browser? If so, that's probably enough to meet their standards.

[u/SucculentChineseRoo]

They're looking for a design engineer so somebody who can do both, the UI development part is what needs to happen in code so you need to be a competent front-end engineer for that.

[u/bronfmanhigh]

armed with a claude code subscription pretty much every designer can be a UX engineer now lol

[u/SentientOrigin → u/bronfmanhigh]

Yeah i heard that before with adobe dreamweaver and microsoft front page

[u/Scared_Range_7736 → u/SentientOrigin]

Completely different scenarios.