8,882 active roles, straight from company career pages.
Design hiring is not one market, it is several running in parallel. A startup Series A company building its first product design practice, a global engineering firm staffing visual communications, and a consumer brand scaling its UX research function are all posting "design jobs" at the same time, but they are looking for entirely different people with entirely different bodies of work. JobFerret currently indexes 8,882 active design roles, and understanding how those roles cluster by company type and stage is the fastest way to find the opportunity that actually fits how you work.
The clearest fault line in design hiring runs between product and UX design on one side and graphic and visual design on the other. Product and UX roles tend to appear at technology companies and growth-stage startups where the designer is expected to own problem framing, wire-framing, user research, and cross-functional collaboration with engineering. Portfolios for these roles are evaluated on process and decision-making, not just visual polish. Graphic and visual design roles, by contrast, are far more common at large infrastructure, environmental, and industrial companies, where design supports brand, communications, and technical documentation. The top hiring companies on JobFerret right now reflect this split clearly: SpaceX (115 open roles) and Bosch Group (67) represent the engineering-led end of the spectrum, while firms like AECOM (96), Egis Group (86), and Veolia (74) signal strong demand for design talent embedded inside large project-driven organizations. BjakCareer (103) rounds out the top group as an active aggregator across multiple sectors.
Portfolio expectations shift dramatically depending on company stage. Early-stage companies typically want generalists who can move from brand identity to product flows without friction. Mid-market and enterprise employers often want specialists, someone who has spent years inside a design system, a specific industry vertical, or a defined research methodology. Knowing which stage you are targeting should shape not just which jobs you apply to, but how you frame the work you show.
On geography, among roles with a stated location, the leading clusters are San Francisco (55 roles), the United States broadly (55), London (51), and Paris (40), reflecting design's concentration in technology hubs and major European capitals. Remote roles account for 20% of listings, a meaningful share, though the largest single category is roles with no location specified at all (534 listings), which often indicates distributed or flexible arrangements worth investigating directly.
In practice the titles overlap heavily, but UX design roles tend to emphasize research, usability testing, and information architecture, while product design roles often signal broader ownership of the end-to-end experience including interaction design and collaboration with product managers. Reading the required skills and the team structure in each listing is more reliable than relying on the title alone.
Generally yes. Large engineering and infrastructure firms such as AECOM or Egis Group typically value portfolios that demonstrate technical communication, brand consistency, and the ability to work within established standards. Startup portfolios are more often evaluated on creative problem-solving, speed of iteration, and demonstrated impact on a product's growth or usability.
Remote roles make up 20% of the design listings currently indexed on JobFerret. That share is notable but not dominant, so if remote flexibility is a priority it is worth filtering specifically and reading location policies carefully in each listing.