A UI designer's CV carries an awkward double job. It is read by a hiring manager who judges visual taste in three seconds, and often by an applicant tracking system that judges nothing but parseable text. Lean too far into design and the ATS chokes on your file. Lean too far into plain text and the design lead wonders if you can actually design. The fix is to keep the CV clean and let the portfolio carry the visuals.
Your portfolio link is the most important line
For a UI role, the portfolio is the real CV. The document exists mostly to get someone to click the link. Put the portfolio URL in the header, near your name, where it cannot be missed. Make sure it goes to live work, not a login wall or a dead Dribbble account you have not touched in two years.
If you have a personal site, link that. If not, a clean Behance or a Notion case-study page is fine. What matters is that the work loads fast and shows your process, not just final screens.
Keep the document ATS-safe
Resist designing the CV itself into oblivion. Two columns, embedded text boxes, and icon fonts often break in parsing. A single-column layout with real text, standard headings, and one accent color reads as designed without confusing the machine. Save the creativity for the portfolio, where it counts.
Lead with outcomes, not tools
Every UI designer lists Figma. It tells a hiring manager nothing. What separates candidates is impact: a redesign that lifted conversion, a design system that cut handoff time, a flow you simplified from nine steps to four. Write bullets that name the result.
- Redesigned the onboarding flow, raising completion from 54 to 71 percent.
- Built and documented a 40-component design system used by three product teams.
- Cut checkout drop-off 18 percent by reworking the payment screen.
Show the range, then the depth
List your core tools and methods in a tight skills line, Figma, prototyping, design systems, accessibility, but do not pad it with every plugin you have opened. Then let two or three case studies in the portfolio show depth. Breadth on the CV, depth in the work.
Hiring managers for UI roles trust what they can see over what you claim. One strong case study outweighs a paragraph of adjectives about your design philosophy.
Don't bury the UX thinking
UI and UX overlap, and most teams want a designer who understands why a screen works, not just how it looks. Include a line or two that shows you think about users: research you ran, a hypothesis you tested, a usability fix you shipped. It signals you are a designer who solves problems, not a pixel decorator.
When you adapt your CV for a specific UI role, mirror the language in the posting, whether that is design systems, mobile, or B2B SaaS. A tool like Postulit can pull your LinkedIn experience into a clean, ATS-friendly base you then tailor, so your energy goes into the portfolio and the case studies that actually win the interview.