2025 Salary Report
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Service Design Salary(+) Report 2025
Welcome
Welcome to the Service Design Salary(+) Report.
This report is more than just a salary guide; it is your guide to understanding the state of service design careers in 2025.
Ever wondered if you're being paid fairly? Or what the future holds for your service design career?
This report is your key to unlocking those answers and more. Over the years, it has evolved from a simple salary survey to a comprehensive resource that helps you explore the diverse landscape of service design.
We aim to empower service design professionals like you and help our field mature through transparency and knowledge sharing. With data from over 1000+ generous contributors, the 2025 edition of the report provides valuable insights into salaries, career paths, industry trends, and more.
This report is designed to be your guide, compass, and source of knowledge for navigating the world of service design. So, let's dive in and explore it together.
Noteworthy Insights
Here are a few highlights from this year's data that caught our attention:
- Salary Satisfaction Dipping: The average Salary Satisfaction Score is 6.9/10, marking the second consecutive year of decline. What's contributing to this trend?
- Raises on the Rise: Despite the dip in satisfaction, 58% of respondents reported receiving a salary raise in 2024.
- Sector Spotlight: The financial and public sectors boast the highest concentration of service design professionals. Are these sectors leading the way in recognizing the value of service design?
- Promotions and Layoffs: While 18% of respondents celebrated promotions in the last 12 months, 9% faced layoffs. What's driving these career shifts?
- Design Departments Dominate: Most service design professionals (31%) report to a design-specific department. How does this organizational structure impact their work and influence?
This report is designed to be your guide, compass, and source of knowledge for navigating the world of service design. So, let's dive in and explore it together.
The Service Design Salary(+) Report is made possible by our Partners
Getting Started
Since 2021, thousands of service design professionals have used this report to guide their career journeys. Who knows, maybe you're one of them?
We've worked hard to improve this fifth edition based on feedback from people like you. We've added new questions, clarified existing ones, and removed a few.
Unlocking the Power of the Report
What clues can I find in this report?
The first question is, of course, subjective and can only truly be answered by you.
By gaining a picture of the service design field as a whole and salary range across different locations, seniority, years of experience, and more, you can use this data to benchmark your compensation package.
Access to more data allows you to confidently assess and negotiate for what’s important.
While this report contains valuable clues to direct your career journey, it is a snapshot of the current situation and isn’t definitive.
Please keep in mind that this report serves as a compass. It’s not a map.
How to get the most out of this report
To get the most out of this report, please take the time to understand its structure. At first glance, the amount of data can seem overwhelming.
The data is organized into 17 lenses that act as your entry point. Each lens helps you combine different data points, such as salary satisfaction and country, to find clues.
Think of each lens as its starting point for your questions. So, if you want to know if "working more hours leads to a higher salary," you would take the Work Hours lens as your starting point. To know "how much a senior service design professional earns," you should take the Seniority Level lens as your starting point.
Each lens breaks down the data to help you find what's relevant to you and answer your questions. If there’s anything you want to discover more or feel we’ve missed, do let us know in the comments below so we can do our best to add it to the report or provide you with that data.
Start Here
Begin with the High-Level Overview and work your way down. This report is designed to present the data as simply as possible. From there, you might have some specific questions in mind. If so, you can start with step 2.
Deep dive into the report by exploring the different lenses to answer your questions. You can use the provided filters to tailor the information to your needs.
The 2025 Salary Report
1. High-Level Overview
This first lens gives you a high-level overview of salaries and the Satisfaction Score by country. It's a great starting point before you dive in to explore the other lenses, such as gender and work experience. You can select up to three counties to compare side by side.
Please note that "Other" represents the aggregate of countries with fewer than ten respondents.
2. Who Responded
Get to know the respondents by exploring the following charts. You can select the country you're interested in and find out different aspects of the respondents' profiles, such as gender, position, work experience, and job titles.
In 2025, we added a chart that shows whether or not someone works in the same city where they live.
3. Gender & Equity
While progress has been made, the gender pay gap remains a challenge in the service design field. We're committed to equal pay and opportunities for all, regardless of gender identity. Explore the data to see how this issue affects your country.
To protect the privacy of respondents who identify as a gender other than man or woman, their data has been aggregated into 'other responses'.
4. Minority Representation
We are committed to understanding and promoting equity and inclusion within the service design field. Through this lens, we explore the experiences of professionals who identify as members of underrepresented or marginalized groups. We recognize that individuals may identify with multiple minority groups, and the experiences of those with intersecting identities can be unique.
We use the term 'minority' to refer to groups that have historically faced discrimination or marginalization. We acknowledge that this term can be complex and perceived differently by various individuals and communities.
5. Position & Context
Service design professionals work in a variety of settings. Some are in-house, working directly for a company. Others work at agencies, serving multiple clients. And some are independent freelancers. How does your work setting impact your salary, benefits, and job satisfaction? Explore the data to find out.
In 2025, we updated how we calculate annual salaries for freelancers to better reflect their income. Additional details are available through the dedicated freelance lens.
6. Work Experience
You would expect that having more work experience results in a higher salary. But is that the case? And if so, how big is that difference? The charts in this lens help us uncover the facts.
We define overall work experience as “The total number of years you've worked in any professional role” and service design-related work experience as “The number of years you've worked in roles where you applied service design principles and methodologies, even if service design wasn't in your official job title.”
7. Seniority & Career Growth
8. Job Title
Our field is a mashup of various titles, roles, and descriptions. Because of this, service design professionals go by many job titles depending on the organization they work for. How does having "service design" in your official title impact salary? Explore the charts below to find out.
9. Industry
Service design is making its mark across a wide range of industries. Explore how your sector can influence your salary, benefits, and career opportunities. Which industries offer the highest salaries for service designers? Where are service design skills most in demand? How does the industry impact job satisfaction and career growth?
New in 2025: Freelancers could select multiple industries to better reflect their diverse client base. We’ve also expanded the list of industries with quite a few new options, such as FMCG and Manufacturing.
10. Reporting Department
By asking participants which department they report to, we can gain insight into where service design is positioned inside organizations and whether or not that influences compensation (and how much). Note that this includes only data from respondents with in-house positions and agencies.
Based on the feedback from the previous year, we added new departments for our respondents to select from in 2025. You can find the new options in the changelog.
11. Design Maturity
We asked respondents to subjectively rate the overall design maturity of their organization, and this lens looks at the impact of that maturity level. Does it pay to work at an organization with a higher design maturity? Are service design professionals more satisfied in organizations with a higher maturity? Do these organizations necessarily value design more? Note that this includes only data from respondents with in-house positions & agencies.
With design maturity, we refer to the extent to which an organization has integrated design into its culture, strategy, and operations.
12. Company Size
We asked respondents to specify the size of the company or agency where they work. This can help us understand if there is a correlation between company size and salary.
Respondents who work at an agency were asked to "specify the size of the agency, not your client."
13. Work Hours
Explore the relationship between work hours, salary, and satisfaction. We asked you to share how many hours, on average, you work per week – the number you're actually working, not what your contract says.
14. Remote Work
Remote work has become a significant aspect of many service design roles. In this section, you can explore the prevalence of remote work in our field and how it varies across things like industry or role.
15. Degrees
This section explores the educational backgrounds of service design professionals. How common are formal degrees in our field? Are there any trends in the types of degrees or institutions represented?
By "formal/accredited service design degree," we mean a degree program that is 1) specifically focused on service design as the primary subject area and 2) offered by an officially recognized and accredited educational institution (e.g., university, college).
16. Negotiation
Through this lens, you can explore the dynamics of salary negotiation in service design. Who's negotiating? Which industries are more open to it? Are there cultural differences or variations based on seniority? Let's find out.
New in 2025: We've added the option to select "not applicable" for those who were unable to negotiate their salary.
17. Ikigai
Respondents were asked to select which of the following options applied to them: "I enjoy my work" (💚), "I am good at my work" (💪), "The world needs what I do" (🌍), and "I get paid fairly for my work" (💰). They could choose as many options as they wanted. The percentages in the chart indicate how many respondents selected each option. These questions are closely related to the Japanese term Ikigai, which means "reason for being" or finding one's life purpose.
Background
Why This Report Matters
Each year since 2021, this report has been created by and for service design professionals across the globe. We understand that salary and benefits are affected by many factors—from location and experience to industry and company size—and we aim to showcase those factors in this research.
In a rapidly growing field like service design, professionals and employers don't always have a clear understanding of fair compensation. This report promotes transparency and empowers service design professionals to make informed decisions about their careers.
By providing accessible data and insights, we aim to mature the service design field and increase its credibility.
Why is compensation transparency so important?
- Clear and realistic expectations. This report provides the right expectations and realistic perspectives for working service design professionals and those interested in getting into the field.
- Understand opportunities across roles. It is a tool for you to gauge opportunities better and make the right decisions for your career.
- Break the biases and promote inclusivity. Just like many other fields, service design still faces a gender gap in compensation. The truth is that inclusivity goes beyond gender. By sharing this data, we hope to start conversations about these biases and help promote inclusivity and diversity in the field.
- More effective hiring. The data in this report allows employers to make better decisions during the hiring process and have a higher chance of attracting the talent they need.
- Increased retention rate. Collecting and publishing this data gives employers a realistic insight into what it takes to retain their talent.
- Higher job satisfaction. By understanding the factors that impact job satisfaction, employers can offer more relevant benefits and a working environment that boosts morale.
Beyond Salaries
While important, salary is not the only factor to consider when evaluating job satisfaction, especially given the increased availability of work from home and more global opportunities. We even found from our surveys that those in higher salary scales aren’t much happier.
Remember that compensation packages can include various benefits and perks that contribute to overall job satisfaction.
- Positive work environment
- Supportive colleagues
- Opportunities for growth and impact
- Healthcare
- Retirement plans
- Paid time off
- Bonuses
- Professional development opportunities
- And more
Methodology
Survey Evolution
Limitations & Considerations
Sample size
It's important to note that the sample size varies across different countries, job levels, and subgroups. For subgroups with fewer respondents, the data will be less reliable or representative of the overall population.
To improve the accuracy and representation of the data, we encourage wider participation in future surveys. Your contribution can help us paint a more complete picture of the service design landscape.
Diversity
We strive to reach a diverse range of service design professionals, but the respondents in this report don’t fully represent the global community. Some professionals may prefer not to participate in surveys or share information about their salary.
We are committed to expanding our reach and ensuring that future reports better reflect the diversity of the service design community. We welcome your suggestions on how we can better involve underrepresented communities in next year's survey.
Accuracy
We asked respondents to provide their annual salary based on full-time employment, regardless of their actual employment status (e.g., part-time, freelance, agency owner). This approach allows for clearer comparisons across different groups.
To provide a more representative view of typical earnings, we present the salary data as a median (the middle value) rather than an average. This helps to prevent extreme outliers, such as exceptionally high salaries, from skewing the results.
Subjectivity
Many of the questions in this report are subjective, meaning the answers may vary based on individual interpretation and experience. For example, questions about whether someone identifies as part of a minority group, the design maturity of their organization, and their level of salary satisfaction are all open to individual interpretation.
As a result, it's important to be mindful of the subjective nature of some of the data and consider the broader context when drawing conclusions.
Context
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the data, it's important to explore it through multiple lenses. Each lens provides a different perspective on the service design landscape.
For example, the Netherlands may show a high average salary for service designers. However, using the "Seniority Level" lens, you might discover this is due to a higher concentration of senior professionals in that region.
By combining different lenses, you can uncover deeper insights and better understand the factors influencing salaries, job satisfaction, and career progression in service design.
What You Want to Know
We asked you: "What key questions do you hope this year's report will answer?" Your responses were insightful and diverse, reflecting the many questions service design professionals have about their field. Here are some of the key themes that emerged.
- Salary and Compensation: Many of you are curious about salary benchmarks, trends, and how to advocate for fair pay.
- Career Development and Skills: You're also interested in understanding career paths, skills development, and the future of the profession.
- Industry Trends and Maturity: You're curious about the overall health and maturity of the service design industry.
- Freelancing and In-House Work: Many of you are interested in understanding the dynamics of freelance and in-house service design work.
- Diversity and Inclusion: You're passionate about creating a more inclusive and equitable service design industry.
- Impact and Value: You want to understand how to measure the impact and value of service design work.
Changelog
In the spirit of continuous improvement, we make changes to the survey and report every year. This changelog highlights the key updates and additions for the 2025 edition.
2025
Report Updates
- Previous Position
pdated the calculation of annual salary for freelancers to better reflect their income. We multiply their reported daily rate with the number of billable days in a year. In the previous editions of the survey, we asked for a single annual salary number.
Survey Updates
- Open Text Fields: More open text fields were added to allow for more nuanced responses. These responses will be used to improve future surveys.
- Minority Representation: Expanded the options for specifying minority groups based on feedback from the previous year. This year's options were Ethnicity, Nationality, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Background, and Other.
- Industry Options. Added new industry options: Automotive / Charity / Insurance / Oil & Gas / FMCG / Non-profit / Energy / Mobility / Manufacturing / Real Estate / Agriculture / Aviation / Tech / Hospitality. Also allowed agency and freelance respondents to select multiple industries.
- Reporting Departments: Based on last year's feedback, we included new reporting department options: CX / Services / Communications / Product / R&D / UX / Customer Success / Change / CxO / Engineering / Finance / Service Design / Digital.
- Negotiation: Added a "not applicable" option for those unable to negotiate their salary.
- Gender Identity: Allowed participants to select more than one gender identity.
- Help Text: Clarified many survey questions with additional help text.
We've made the full survey available through this Google Doc.
What's next
We're committed to continuously improving the Service Design Salary(+) Report. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us make the report even more useful and insightful for the service design community.
2026 wishlist
Here are a few of the improvements we are considering for the 2026 edition:
- Additional chart types to display multi-year data and discover trends.
- Find a way to share data from open text fields, such as the challenges and benefits of working in-house.
- Add new questions to explore the agency life in more depth.
2025 wishlist
Below is an overview of what we hoped to include in this year's report based on your feedback and how far we got.
🟢 Clarify inclusion criteria: Some participants expressed confusion about whether certain qualifications fell under specific categories. Clarifying inclusion criteria for academic qualifications or professional certifications could address this.
🟠 Explore common challenges: Participants suggested adding a section on the most common challenges faced in the service design industry. This could provide valuable insights into the pain points experienced by professionals.
🔵 A detailed breakdown of bonuses: Include a question that breaks down the bonus amount further, distinguishing between bonus targets, company retirement matches, and the value of healthcare and other perks. This could offer a more comprehensive view of compensation packages.
🔵 Include mental health: Since mental health plays such a significant role in work life, adding questions on this topic could provide a better understanding of job satisfaction.
🟢 Understand impact: What kind of impact do service design professionals themselves believe they are making? Including a question on whether people feel their work has made an impact could provide interesting insights for different industries and work conditions.
Do you have any suggestions or feedback on how we can make the report even more useful? We'd love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below or send us a message at team@servicedesignjobs.com.
Acknowledgment
We owe a huge debt of gratitude to our amazing service design community. Without your passion, generosity, and willingness to share your experiences, this report wouldn't exist. Thank you!
This report is the result of countless contributions from service design professionals like you. Whether you took the time to fill out the survey, shared it with your network, or provided valuable feedback, we appreciate your support!
We'd also like to give a special shout-out to our beta testers, who helped us refine the survey and ensure its quality. Thank you, Alomi, Helen, Eva, Ludmila, Rachel, Tamara, Sheila, Saara, Amy, Cody, Thomas and Evan.
And of course, we extend our heartfelt appreciation to our partners. We're incredibly grateful for their support in promoting transparency, equity, and a thriving service design community.
About the Author
The Service Design Salary(+) Report is an initiative by Service Design Jobs, the only online resource for up-to-date career opportunities exclusively for service design professionals worldwide.
Committed to providing tools and opportunities and transforming the careers of fellow service designers, this initiative is led by Marc Fonteijn.
Marc founded Service Design Jobs, the Service Design Show, and the ⭕ Circle community.
With two decades of experience in the field, he has made it his mission to provide service design professionals with any help needed to take their careers to the next level.
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Response From The Community
This year, over 180 participants left a comment at the end of the survey. We've read every single one. Thank you for sharing your ideas, suggestions, and praise with us. Below is a glimpse into just a few of the comments that stood out and that we want to share with you.
Great job folks, keep it up. I hope someone is paying for your time to do all this work ;)
Keep doing this! The questions keep evolving, too – I very much appreciate your work!
Thanks for your work! Looking forward to seeing the results when they come out :)
THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS EVERY YEAR
Thank you for consistently seeking to grow and strengthen our practice and industry!
I would be interested in understanding more about what type of tasks and responsibilities that go with different titles in different industries and countries.
This is essential information, thanks for collecting it
I wish this survey also could show companies and HRs that service designers could work remotely and are worthful in their design and system processes even they don't have a design department.
Thanks for doing this, it’s good to feel apart of the service design community even if it’s just filling in a survey !
I love forward to this survey every year. It provides a different view of the SD community and landscape
FAQ
This report aims to shed light on the diverse landscape of service design careers, promote transparency around compensation, and empower service design professionals to make informed decisions about their career paths. We also hope to foster a more inclusive and equitable service design industry by providing valuable data and insights.
First of all, your participation is invaluable. You can contribute to the next edition by:
- Participating in the annual survey.
- Sharing the report with your network and encouraging others to participate.
- Providing feedback and suggestions for improvement.
- Joining the conversation on social media.
The survey questions are carefully chosen based on feedback from the service design community, current industry trends, and our research goals. We strive to create a survey that is relevant, insightful, and captures the key aspects of the service design profession.
We regularly update the survey questions and response options based on feedback from the community and new trends in the field. This means that some options may not be available in the data from previous years.
Your privacy is important to us. All responses are collected anonymously, and we take data privacy very seriously. We do not collect names or email addresses, and the data is aggregated and analyzed to ensure individual responses cannot be identified.
We've made the full survey available through this Google Doc.
All data in this report was collected in November 2024.
We present values in USD to provide a global benchmark. However, please be aware that we converted salaries from various local currencies to USD on December 1st, 2024, using the exchange rate at that time. This, along with the fact that some salaries were estimates, can influence the data.
We use USD as a base currency to make it easier to compare salaries across different countries and regions.
The following exchange rates were used to convert salaries to USD for the 2025 Service Design Salary Report. These rates were accurate as of December 1st, 2024.
- AED: 3.6730
- ALL: 92.8609
- AMD: 393.2421
- ARS: 1007.604
- AUD: 1.5366
- BGN: 1.8481
- BOB: 6.8972
- BRL: 5.9744
- CAD: 1.4012
- CHF: 0.8809
- CLP: 970.8738
- COP: 4374.7326
- CRC: 507.2525
- CZK: 23.8821
- DKK: 7.0515
- EGP: 49.5724
- EUR: 0.9454
- GBP: 0.7851
- GTQ: 7.7014
- HUF: 390.28
- IDR: 15836
- INR: 84.5645
- IRR: 42087.5
- JPY: 149.7450
- KES: 129.5063
- MXN: 20.3755
- MYR: 4.4450
- NOK: 11.0552
- NZD: 1.6879
- PEN: 3.7384
- PKR: 277.5278
- PLN: 4.0555
- RON: 4.7043
- SAR: 3.7570
- SEK: 10.9025
- SGD: 1.3395
- THB: 34.2940
- TRY: 34.6588
- TTD: 6.7631
- ZAR: 18.0605
No. The report presents gross salaries and does not consider taxes or the cost of living.
This metric is calculated as the average rating given by respondents to the question, "How satisfied are you with your total compensation?" The rating scale ranged from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest).
To ensure data reliability and protect the anonymity of respondents, we only display charts with a sufficient number of responses. This helps prevent individuals from being identified based on their unique characteristics.
We've experimented with different types of charts, but bar charts are often the most effective and easy-to-read option for displaying the data. They also look great on screens of all sizes.
That said if you're using the report to write an article or tell a specific story, another type of chart would work better. If you're on that journey and need some guidance, please don't hesitate to contact us. We're always happy to help!
The report is designed to be interactive, allowing you to sort and filter the data according to your specific needs and preferences. This personalized experience wouldn't be possible with a static PDF document.
We've designed the report to be interactive, but we understand that you might need the data in a different format. Please let us know if you have a specific request, and we'll do our best to accommodate you.
This report provides a valuable snapshot of the service design field, but it's important to remember that it's based on a sample of approximately 1000 respondents. Therefore, it's best to use the data as a general guide rather than drawing definitive conclusions.
This report provides a valuable snapshot of the service design field, but it's important to remember that it's based on a sample of approximately 1000 respondents. Therefore, it's best to use the data as a general guide rather than drawing definitive conclusions.
We'd love to hear from you! You can reach us at team@servicedesignjobs.com for any feedback, questions, or partnership inquiries.
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