but... should designers...

Relevant story...

A year ago I faced a huge career dilemma as a designer when I quit my job at a small software shop (we built sites and apps for clients). Over there I really enjoyed writing CSS w/Sass — huge fan of OOCSS/SMACSS/BEM, and democratizing and documenting the CSS code I was writing (design systems, FTW), but I really didn't enjoy doing any JS related implementation. We were all over Angular back then and I was seriously not interested.

I wasn't sure what I was. All the positions I stumble upon for front-enders talked about being responsible for building applications using MVC based frameworks and whatnot. That wasn't me. I loved designing experiences, but I also enjoyed a small piece of the building part (the html/css part). Yet, I couldn't find a position that described my mixed set of skills… so I panicked about my future.

It also hurt my confidence. When I measured myself against the requirements for these front-end positions, I felt like an amateurish developer. And when I looked at designer positions, I didn't have the case-study type of portfolio that would show I had a solid design process, so again I looked unskilled.

So, I decided to stop being in the middle of the spectrum (designer vs front-ender) and chose a side. I'm now focused on design (research, testing, visual design) and don't really do coding for work, only for personal stuff.

TL;DR... I don't think the industry has decided on who's job it is to care for CSS architecture in a product, so job posts aren't clear about it. Consequently, job seekers get the impression that there's no demand for this mixed set of skills and that might be causing a "drought".

+1 to looking at product designers for this. I am a product designer and consider myself an expert in HTML & Sass. That said, I would never call myself a UI Engineer. In my experience, this assumes working JS knowledge, which I have none.

I'm also on the other side of things here, where it's rare to find a postion where you can actually use your code skillz in a 'design' position. Front end code tends to be looked down upon by backend devs, and deemphasized when it comes to feature importance and bug fixing.

This is a pretty interesting problem. I prefer writing CSS to scale, and my favorite dev writers are those like Harry Roberts (@csswizardry), who make CSS their business. But from my perspective the job positions don't often ask for CSS expertise, they presume it's a given - which I think many do.

I feel like this is front end developers responding to the message put out by those hiring. If there was more apparent demand for CSS experts, you would have them.

Yeah... since moving back to Boston a few years ago I've run into this hardcore. Didn't have this issue when I lived in LA and SF.

For some reason here there is this weird perception like it's beneath an engineer/dev to do CSS... to the point where they would blindly ship something (if not stopped) that looks crappy - because functionally it was to spec.

In Boston - I think a large part of this might be the types of companies that are most prevalent here. I've long felt that on the west coast, they make apps and products that are more customer facing - they delight and solve for more personal/emotional needs. Here, the pride has long been on the tech that makes stuff work... the machinery behind the scenes.

I'll add that seeing as the front end is trending toward component based UI and styles that compile to JS, specializing in CSS/HTML without any expertise in JS seems like it has a pretty short shelf life.

It's only a matter of time before designers and front-end developers are the same person.

In my personal experience, you have to start at the source of the problem: universities.

I am a senior product designer and spend 90% of my time doing designs in Sketch, and 10% of my time occasionally supporting dev teams who don't have [the right] UI dev talent.

But my formal degree is in computer science.

My story is an odd one, because I'd always been fascinated with design, but figured it would be hard to make a career out of it, so I went into CS instead, always keeping up with design on the side for some beer money through college.

Throughout four years of instruction at one of the top universities in the country for computer science, I had ONE lone project where HTML/CSS came into play, and they didn't even really grade against it. Outside of my university's CS program, there is a separate department called "computer information technology" where students learn things like Photoshop and generic web development, but even there they don't really teach HTML/CSS.

I haven't done a comprehensive search, but my inkling is that it's simply not taught [at any sort of depth]. DOM positioning is really not that difficult of a concept, but "full-stack" developers still can't figure out the difference between absolute and relative positioning. In product design, this is unacceptable. Frameworks can only get you so far.

As far as hiring goes, there's a level of what I call "nitpixeling" that's required to perfectly translate mockups into code, so ideal candidates will be sticklers for design, but know the best techniques for translating it into code.

How do you find these people? I look at portfolios and try to find evidence of obscure CSS knowledge. Font-smoothing, transforms, CSS-based animation, flash-of-unstyled-text (FOUT) performance remedies, and out-of-the-ordinary layouts. I'm talking unconventional layouts that you don't find in a framework.

Call it highly specific, but to me, these are signs of a UI dev who not only knows what they're doing, but will search for solutions to make things look right.

Look for self-proclaimed "Web Developers" and dig into the source of their portfolio site and/or projects they've worked on. People who advertise themselves as "Front End Engineers" are usually just Angular/React/Polymer wizards, but only competent in HTML/CSS. You've gotta look for the evidence that it's more than just competence.

I'm a recent grad with a CS and HCI degree. I love doing UI dev & UX design. When I was trying to find a job after graduation I realized that UX Engineering positions are not that popular and Its hard to find the position.

So, either I had to brand myself as a Front-end Developer(JS/Angular/Ember etc.) or an Interaction Designer(Just do pure design and leave the rest to Engineering team) to find a job.

And also I was told that(this may not be completely true), UI/UX Engineers are generally paid less than Interaction Designers/UX Designers. And also UI Engineers in some places are branded under UX Designers are seen as people who build what designers say. I would love to know more thoughts about this.

So to check that I did an Front-end dev internship at a decently big company and realized that how less they cared about design. Which made me to brand myself as an Interaction designer moving forward even though I get paid a lot more as a developer.

And not to mention, I know a ton of UX Designer who are really good at UI Dev they understand OOCSS, SASS or paint times etc. But they don't brand them self as a UI Dev.

And I guess with the increasing number of new tools and techniques makes us focus less on CSS, for example frameworks like Angular 2, React, Polymer.

To conclude though I'm really love doing UI Dev. I had to brand myself as a Designer to land on my dream job. That being said I satisfy my UI Dev craving by doing side project on the weekends.

Yes, there can be lot of people thinking UI Dev is not the coolest job or they don't get paid much. May be you should change the job description a bit and let the people know that they are equal to any other designer/developer.

I would really love to know everyones thoughts on this.

I find myself on the other side of the spectrum, where it's hard to find companies looking for someone specialised in CSS/SASS/HTML.

I thought about calling myself a UI Engineer/Developer, but I've come across people who claim to be so and they generally are designers with some UI development skills, so I kept "Front-end Developer".

I guess this is all due to the huge rise of development in JS and since it's all technically part of the "front end", there's definitely a lot of confusion. This situation actually increased my interest even more in expanding my knowledge of JS. And I'm sure a lot of beginners a few years back got caught in this gold rush for JS skills and focused right on that, not caring too much about CSS.

Side note: it seems like you're looking for a full time engineer. If that changes and you're interested in working with a freelancer, hit me up! hello [at] tiagoduarte [dot] com

"CSS is declarative, so it should be easy and anyone can do it. And while we're at it design is just making things 'look good.'"

This is the message I've received loud and clear from 99% of the people looking for my help over the 11 years I've been web-working. Can you hear how salty I am?

Honestly, like others have said, if there was more demand for people with a focus on these skills, you'd find them. But as it stands everyone wants an expert in some other domain who will at some point "just handle" the CSS.

On your end, limiting yourself to local-only possibilities isn't doing you any favors, as well.

I wonder as well. I personally do CSS/LESS/SASS & HTML as well to help out our front-end engineer (who hates to do it himself and prefers to focus on react/the framework itself.) Even tho I was told I am doing pretty well, if I change the job I probably won't put it on my CV as it's not something I would want to do every day. I prefer to focus on Design and Prototyping rather than 'hack around' with ancient technologies that take ages to adapt new things and were not designed with todays needs in mind.

That said I am really interested to hear thoughts of other people as to my understanding these 'web ui designers that implement their design and get corrupted along the way' are pretty rare creatures.

Can this position be remote?

Matt, this is definitely a thing.

https://pages.18f.gov/frontend/

18F champion this role extremely well and it's one I align to also. It's extremely difficult to find this particular, niche role in companies out there but I can attest to a select few that support it (alongside a JS dev).

This is the struggle my company faces and as do many others.

It's an area thats starting to gain more attention, people are starting to specialize as there is a need for it, it's always been treated as just something JS devs need to do to, but a good majority of them don't put the effort in here as they are usually engineers, UI development is an art, the same way design is. You need the eye to do that kind of work, and this is why I am a strong proponent of designers being UI developers. They should be the same role, after all you are designing software, not a picture in photoshop or sketch.

You've asked a question here that really needs to be looked into further by developers, designers, agencies and the like. Fortunately we work in an industry which is ever-evolving but with this new roles and titles are always being created.

Things change in the classic 'frontend' role so fast now that the top-level trends need to be conveyed to those in hiring positions more regularly. In my previous digital agency I moved from being a backend dev (C#) to being a bit of a hybrid, doing most of the JS work. The company was unaware this JS-focused role existed until I requested to fill it and even then I was just considered a frontend dev by most.

Fortunately there was an understanding between myself and the 2 other frontend guys that they were the CSS guys and I was the JS guy so we had a decent spread of skills and could use each other for advice if not pass work around.

There's now such a huge area of expertise in SVG, animation and 3D that it's another whole new role if there's enough work; it's voodoo to me as someone who is pretty nifty with JS and SCSS.

These kinds of designers most likely already have great jobs, don't live in New York, or aren't willing to work full time. I just moved from NYC but half of my time there was spent as a freelancer. I actually found it difficult to find a front-end development position that was mostly geared towards modular Sass, styleguides, large-scale css, etc.

I'm an expert on both design and interface front-end development (HTML5 & CSS (SCSS) & JS libs use). That's how I advertise myself, which is a fit for your search. However, remote only.

R E M O T E . Huge talent pool. That's why i moved to Buenos Aires. Now i have access to really great unicorns who work in EST... and will cost you a lot less. hit me up if anyone wants to work together : artur @ design2dev.com

Maybe you can look for UX Engineers.

https://www.google.com/about/careers/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jc=USER_EXPERIENCE

cvv

I'm exactly what you're looking for and would definitely move but I don't have a worker visa =(

hi

CSS can be very tedious and difficult - it's probably not as bad on webapps (as apposed to websites) because you're not churning out a new project every few weeks. It's not appreciated and not particularly paid well so I'm not surprised that there is not many specialising in it. I find JavaScript development easier. A lot of the time in CSS you're searching for some "trick" to make the design work in all the different scenarios. The CSS toolkit is very poor especially when it comes to layout but that's changing with new CSS layout technologies but it will take time for them to be supported by all browsers.

Alo : )

Seeing as you are looking for someone to replace you, and you call yourself a Product Designer, shouldn't you be looking for other Product Designers and not UI Engineers? Although like others have said CSS is sort of an ancillary skill to front-end development or design. I don't know many people who specialize in it simply because the demand for that specialization is not high and the scope of work is somewhat limited creatively if you don't own the design itself. I don't know anyone who would want to specialize in CSS but not be involved in creating the design. Your best bet might be looking for a designer who has great CSS ability.