---
title: "Automotive Designer"
description: "Creates the look and feel of cars, trucks and motorcycles, from early sketches and digital models to the final shapes of exteriors and interiors."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/automotive-designer"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Automotive Designer

**Category:** Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media · **SOC code:** 27-1021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 27-1021.00

Creates the look and feel of cars, trucks and motorcycles, from early sketches and digital models to the final shapes of exteriors and interiors.

Also advertised as: Car Designer; Transportation Designer; Exterior Designer; Interior Designer (Automotive); Vehicle Designer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $83,910 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $40.34/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $53,460 to $139,770, with the middle half between $66,450 and $109,050
- **Total US employment:** 33,490
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 2,800 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 25/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 33,490 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $53,460 |
| 25th | $66,450 |
| 50th (median) | $83,910 |
| 75th | $109,050 |
| 90th | $139,770 |
| Mean (average) | $93,260 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| KS | $104,870 | $116,434 | 260 |
| MI | $102,160 | $106,177 | 2,930 |
| MA | $101,720 | $96,183 | 1,240 |
| RI | $101,140 | $98,885 | 190 |
| CA | $100,770 | $91,013 | 5,300 |
| LA | $98,040 | $111,148 | 130 |
| MN | $94,370 | $95,690 | 590 |
| WA | $94,280 | $88,101 | 340 |
| AR | $92,540 | $106,445 | 230 |
| GA | $91,360 | $94,877 | 360 |
| CO | $90,590 | $87,907 | 400 |
| NJ | $90,310 | $83,002 | 1,230 |
| NY | $89,640 | $83,061 | 2,400 |
| IN | $88,040 | $94,333 | 1,110 |
| PA | $82,610 | $84,666 | 770 |

26 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 41 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/automotive-designer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/automotive-designer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 35,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 36,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 900 jobs, or +2.4%. Slower than average: 2.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 2,800 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 67.9% |
| Some College Courses | 15.2% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 12.3% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 4.3% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 0.3% |

## What the work involves

- Sketch and render concepts for vehicle exteriors or interiors
- Build 3D digital surface models in design software
- Work with clay modelers to refine full-size physical models
- Choose colors, materials and trims for vehicle programs
- Collaborate with engineers on packaging, aerodynamics and safety constraints
- Present design proposals at studio reviews
- Research users, trends and competitor vehicles

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Analysis — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Technology Design — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Design — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Engineering and Technology — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mechanical — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Fluency of Ideas — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Originality — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Artistic (A), Realistic (R), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| A — Artistic | 5.68 |
| R — Realistic | 4.67 |
| I — Investigative | 4.46 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.70 |
| C — Conventional | 3.47 |
| S — Social | 1.84 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| INTP | 87.5 |
| INTJ | 80.8 |
| ISTP | 72.5 |
| ENTP | 72.0 |
| INFP | 70.0 |

Best-fitting types: INTP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Commercial and Industrial Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-and-industrial-designer) — median $83,910
- [Mechanical Drafter](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mechanical-drafter) — median $71,550
- [Model Maker, Metal and Plastic](https://nuecareer.com/careers/model-maker-metal-and-plastic) — median $63,340
- [Fabric and Apparel Patternmaker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fabric-and-apparel-patternmaker) — median $62,750
- [Patternmaker, Metal and Plastic](https://nuecareer.com/careers/patternmaker-metal-and-plastic) — median $58,000
- [Fashion Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fashion-designer) — median $80,960
- [Industrial Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-engineer) — median $102,440
- [Layout Worker, Metal and Plastic](https://nuecareer.com/careers/layout-worker-metal-and-plastic) — median $63,870
- [Mechanical Engineering Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mechanical-engineering-technologist-and-technician) — median $74,510
- [Manufacturing Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/manufacturing-engineer) — median $102,440

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/automotive-designer