Should a UX designer CV be visually designed or kept simple?

Keep it simple. Most UK companies route applications through an ATS that strips multi-column layouts, custom fonts and embedded images. The recruiter receives a mangled version that's harder to read than a plain Word document. Save the visual craft for your portfolio, where the design choices serve the work. The CV's job is to get the portfolio opened. A clean single-column CV in a standard font, with strong bullets and a working portfolio URL in the header, outperforms a beautifully designed PDF every time.

How important is the portfolio compared to the CV?

The portfolio is the deciding artefact. UK design hiring managers in 2026 typically open the CV, scan for relevance, then open the portfolio and decide on the strength of two or three case studies. A mediocre CV with a strong portfolio still gets interviews; a strong CV with a weak portfolio doesn't. Each case study should follow the same shape: context, constraint, what you did, what you learned, what you'd change. Two deep case studies beat eight shallow ones every time, and the strongest portfolios show research and engineering partnership, not just final pixels.

Do I need a degree in design to be a UX designer in the UK?

No. Increasingly UK hiring managers don't filter on degree at all for designers; they hire on the portfolio and the way you talk about your work. Self-taught and bootcamp-trained designers are common in mid-market UK product teams, especially in fintech and SaaS. If your background is non-design (psychology, anthropology, marketing, engineering), name it as an angle in your summary; many hiring managers actively prefer designers with a research or technical background. Lean hard on the portfolio and the bullets; let the degree sit on a single line at the bottom.

CV Example · Tech · UK 2026

UX Designer CV Example UK

UX designer CVs are unusual because the CV is rarely the deciding artefact, the portfolio is. After 12 years placing designers into UK SaaS, fintech and agencies, the CVs that get the portfolio opened are short, opinionated and clear about how you work. Hiring managers in 2026 want to see research depth, comfort working with engineering, and a point of view about the products you've shipped. They are not interested in 'passionate about user-centred design'. The strong CVs name the product, the constraint, the research method and the measurable outcome of the work. The portfolio earns the interview; the CV earns the portfolio click.

By Alex · 12-year UK recruiter · Updated April 2026

Example header

Anya Kowalski · Senior Product Designer · 7 years · Leeds / Hybrid · Portfolio: anyakowalski.design

Personal statement / Professional summary

Senior product designer with seven years shipping B2B SaaS, primarily in the operations and financial tooling space. Comfortable owning a problem from research through to engineering hand-off, and partnering with PMs on the messy, ambiguous half of the work. Recent project: led the redesign of the reconciliation surface at an accounting platform, cutting average task time for 4,000 bookkeepers from 18 minutes to 7 and reducing support tickets on the area by 62% in the first quarter post-launch.

Bullet point examples

Strong bullets follow the same shape: action verb, specific scope, quantified outcome. Use these as patterns, not as copy-paste templates — the numbers must be your own.

Lead designer on reconciliation surface, accounting SaaS

Led end-to-end redesign of the reconciliation flow used by 4,000 UK bookkeepers, cutting average task time from 18 minutes to 7 and reducing support tickets by 62% in the first quarter post-launch.
Ran 22 contextual interviews with bookkeepers in their own offices to surface the underlying mental model engineering had been designing against incorrectly for two years.
Owned the new reconciliation pattern in the design system, including dark-mode tokens, accessibility documentation and a published Figma library used by 9 designers.

Research and discovery

Built a continuous discovery cadence with the PM (5 customer sessions a week, synthesised in a shared Notion), now used across 3 product squads.
Designed and ran 14 unmoderated usability tests in Maze on the new mobile app, surfacing the navigation issue that had been the top support complaint for 8 months.

Design systems and engineering partnership

Maintained the company's React-based design system (180+ components) jointly with frontend engineering, including monthly contribution sessions and a documented review process.
Cut design-to-engineering hand-off questions by an estimated 60% by introducing a one-page spec template covering states, edge cases and copy.

Accessibility and inclusion

Audited the core product against WCAG 2.2 AA, prioritised 28 issues with engineering, and brought conformance from a measured 71% to 96% in 4 months.
Ran two unmoderated usability sessions with assistive-technology users, leading to a redesign of the table component that improved screen-reader navigation across the product.

Earlier role: designer at fintech agency

Designed onboarding for a UK challenger bank's SME product, with a tested completion rate of 81% on the new flow vs. 54% on the prior version.
Mentored two junior designers through their first end-to-end client engagements over 18 months.

Skills section — what to list

Mirror the skills exactly as they appear in target job ads. The ATS reads this section literally — synonyms hurt match scores.

Figma (advanced, including variables and components)Design systemsGenerative and evaluative researchUsability testing (moderated and unmoderated)Maze, DovetailInformation architectureInteraction designPrototyping (Figma, ProtoPie)Accessibility (WCAG 2.2)HTML and CSS literacyFront-end framework awareness (React)Stakeholder workshopsWorkshop facilitation (Miro)Copy and content designCross-functional collaboration with engineering and PM

UX Designer-specific CV mistakes that get you binned

× Sending a CV without a portfolio link, or with a link that 404s. UK design hiring managers in 2026 close the CV and move on within seconds.
× Listing tools instead of work. 'Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Axure' is not a story. Tools sit at the bottom; outcomes sit at the top.
× No mention of research. Designers who only describe the visual output get filtered as 'visual designers' even when the role is product design.
× Vague generic statements like 'passionate about user-centred design'. Replace it with a positioning angle: which segment, which type of product, which research methods you favour.
× Presenting the CV itself as a design showcase with three columns and creative typography. UK ATS systems strip the formatting and the recruiter gets a mess. Keep the CV typographically boring; let the portfolio be the design artefact.

Common questions

Should a UX designer CV be visually designed or kept simple?: Keep it simple. Most UK companies route applications through an ATS that strips multi-column layouts, custom fonts and embedded images. The recruiter receives a mangled version that's harder to read than a plain Word document. Save the visual craft for your portfolio, where the design choices serve the work. The CV's job is to get the portfolio opened. A clean single-column CV in a standard font, with strong bullets and a working portfolio URL in the header, outperforms a beautifully designed PDF every time.
How important is the portfolio compared to the CV?: The portfolio is the deciding artefact. UK design hiring managers in 2026 typically open the CV, scan for relevance, then open the portfolio and decide on the strength of two or three case studies. A mediocre CV with a strong portfolio still gets interviews; a strong CV with a weak portfolio doesn't. Each case study should follow the same shape: context, constraint, what you did, what you learned, what you'd change. Two deep case studies beat eight shallow ones every time, and the strongest portfolios show research and engineering partnership, not just final pixels.
Do I need a degree in design to be a UX designer in the UK?: No. Increasingly UK hiring managers don't filter on degree at all for designers; they hire on the portfolio and the way you talk about your work. Self-taught and bootcamp-trained designers are common in mid-market UK product teams, especially in fintech and SaaS. If your background is non-design (psychology, anthropology, marketing, engineering), name it as an angle in your summary; many hiring managers actively prefer designers with a research or technical background. Lean hard on the portfolio and the bullets; let the degree sit on a single line at the bottom.