Lead Designer Jobs in USA with Visa Sponsorship
Lead Designer roles attract H-1B visa and O-1 visa sponsorship from tech companies, agencies, and startups. Most require a bachelor's degree in design or a related field, and employers filing an LCA must meet prevailing wage requirements for your location and experience level. For detailed occupation requirements, see the O*NET profile.
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Get Access To All JobsThe application window is expected to close on: 08/06/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Cisco Networking is an industry leader providing intelligent network solutions for organizations to securely connect users, devices, applications, and workloads everywhere. We empower organizations everywhere - from local libraries to global hotels, hospitals, manufacturers, and more - to focus on their mission and have technology that simply works.
Meet The Team
Network Platform Experiences, part of Cisco Networking UX, shapes platform-wide experiences that help customers understand, manage, and act across their networks. The team’s work supports Cisco Networking’s broader portfolio by creating shared patterns for recommendations, automation, agentic workflows, predictive insights, and data-rich intelligence experiences. We work closely with product, engineering, data, AI, and platform partners to make advanced technical capabilities useful, trustworthy, and shippable. This is an opportunity to help define what strong AI experience design looks like across Cisco Networking.
As UX designers, we consider the full customer journey across products, personas, workflows, and ecosystems. We believe product quality depends on team quality, so we place a high value on thoughtful hiring and the growth and development of everyone on our team.
Your Impact
This role leads AI-enabled product design initiatives across key Cisco Networking platforms and products, shaping experiences from discovery through launch and continued iteration. Your work will turn ambiguous AI, ML, automation opportunities into clear product concepts, flows, prototypes, and shipped experiences that help customers understand what is happening, decide what to do, and act with confidence.
A key part of the role is defining reusable UX patterns for AI explanations, user control, review, correction, feedback, and intelligent interactions, so intelligent systems feel understandable, trustworthy, and useful across the portfolio. You will translate user goals into design direction, data models, telemetry requirements, and model training needs, connecting customer value to the technical systems behind it. In close partnership with cross-functional platform teams, this role shapes both the customer-facing experience and the AI behaviors, automation, and system logic behind useful, trustworthy products.
Minimum Qualifications
- Portfolio demonstrating shipped AI-powered, ML-enabled, automation-heavy, or data-intensive product experiences, including complex customer journeys, data visualization, and decision-support interfaces
- 10+ years of professional product design experience with enterprise, platform, or technical products.
- Experience designing and shipping customer-facing AI-enabled products, including generative AI, ML-powered, or other intelligent product experiences in production.
- Experience designing adaptive experiences that respond to different personas, workflows, and customer contexts, helping customers understand what matters, decide what to do, and act with confidence.
- Experience translating user goals into product flows, prototypes, telemetry needs, data requirements, or model-related design requirements.
Preferred Qualifications
- Product and systems thinking across complex customer journeys, personas, workflows, and ecosystems.
- Technical fluency with AI, data science, platform, and engineering partners.
- Experience designing for trust, control, personalization, review, feedback, adoption, and responsible failure states.
- Experience mentoring designers, raising craft quality, and improving design collaboration.
- Experience using modern AI tools, prototyping, research, lean UX, and measurable outcomes to align teams and accelerate delivery.
Does this sound like you? We would love to hear from you!
Please include a link to your online portfolio. Only applications that include a portfolio will be considered.
Why Cisco?
At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.
Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.
We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.
Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:
The starting salary range posted for this position is $169,300.00 to $237,200.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.
Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.
U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:
- 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
- Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
- Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
- 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
- Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.
Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:
- .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;
- 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;
- 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and
- Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.
For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.
The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:
New York City Metro Area:
$194,600.00 - $328,600.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$179,000.00 - $294,000.00
- For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.
Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.
The application window is expected to close on: 08/06/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Cisco Networking is an industry leader providing intelligent network solutions for organizations to securely connect users, devices, applications, and workloads everywhere. We empower organizations everywhere - from local libraries to global hotels, hospitals, manufacturers, and more - to focus on their mission and have technology that simply works.
Meet The Team
Network Platform Experiences, part of Cisco Networking UX, shapes platform-wide experiences that help customers understand, manage, and act across their networks. The team’s work supports Cisco Networking’s broader portfolio by creating shared patterns for recommendations, automation, agentic workflows, predictive insights, and data-rich intelligence experiences. We work closely with product, engineering, data, AI, and platform partners to make advanced technical capabilities useful, trustworthy, and shippable. This is an opportunity to help define what strong AI experience design looks like across Cisco Networking.
As UX designers, we consider the full customer journey across products, personas, workflows, and ecosystems. We believe product quality depends on team quality, so we place a high value on thoughtful hiring and the growth and development of everyone on our team.
Your Impact
This role leads AI-enabled product design initiatives across key Cisco Networking platforms and products, shaping experiences from discovery through launch and continued iteration. Your work will turn ambiguous AI, ML, automation opportunities into clear product concepts, flows, prototypes, and shipped experiences that help customers understand what is happening, decide what to do, and act with confidence.
A key part of the role is defining reusable UX patterns for AI explanations, user control, review, correction, feedback, and intelligent interactions, so intelligent systems feel understandable, trustworthy, and useful across the portfolio. You will translate user goals into design direction, data models, telemetry requirements, and model training needs, connecting customer value to the technical systems behind it. In close partnership with cross-functional platform teams, this role shapes both the customer-facing experience and the AI behaviors, automation, and system logic behind useful, trustworthy products.
Minimum Qualifications
- Portfolio demonstrating shipped AI-powered, ML-enabled, automation-heavy, or data-intensive product experiences, including complex customer journeys, data visualization, and decision-support interfaces
- 10+ years of professional product design experience with enterprise, platform, or technical products.
- Experience designing and shipping customer-facing AI-enabled products, including generative AI, ML-powered, or other intelligent product experiences in production.
- Experience designing adaptive experiences that respond to different personas, workflows, and customer contexts, helping customers understand what matters, decide what to do, and act with confidence.
- Experience translating user goals into product flows, prototypes, telemetry needs, data requirements, or model-related design requirements.
Preferred Qualifications
- Product and systems thinking across complex customer journeys, personas, workflows, and ecosystems.
- Technical fluency with AI, data science, platform, and engineering partners.
- Experience designing for trust, control, personalization, review, feedback, adoption, and responsible failure states.
- Experience mentoring designers, raising craft quality, and improving design collaboration.
- Experience using modern AI tools, prototyping, research, lean UX, and measurable outcomes to align teams and accelerate delivery.
Does this sound like you? We would love to hear from you!
Please include a link to your online portfolio. Only applications that include a portfolio will be considered.
Why Cisco?
At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.
Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.
We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.
Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:
The starting salary range posted for this position is $169,300.00 to $237,200.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.
Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.
U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:
- 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
- Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
- Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
- 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
- Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.
Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:
- .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;
- 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;
- 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and
- Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.
For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.
The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:
New York City Metro Area:
$194,600.00 - $328,600.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$179,000.00 - $294,000.00
- For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.
Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.
See all 1,395+ Lead Designer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Lead Designer roles.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding Visa Sponsorship as a Lead Designer
Target companies with a sponsorship track record
Employers who have sponsored H-1B visas before understand the process and are far less likely to back out. Check USCIS LCA disclosure data to confirm a company has filed design-related petitions in the past two to three years.
Lead with your portfolio, not your visa status
Most hiring managers evaluate design candidates on portfolio quality first. Get the offer, then address sponsorship. Raising visa requirements before demonstrating your design value reduces your leverage significantly in early conversations.
Understand what your degree covers
H-1B specialty occupation requires your degree to match the role. A bachelor's in graphic design, industrial design, interaction design, or a closely related field typically satisfies this. Fine arts degrees may require additional documentation depending on the specific job duties.
O-1A is worth exploring if your work stands out
Lead Designers with published work, awards, jury credits, or industry recognition may qualify for the O-1A extraordinary ability visa. It bypasses the H-1B lottery entirely and can be filed at any time of year without an annual cap.
Clarify the role scope before applying
USCIS scrutinizes H-1B petitions more closely when job duties are broad or managerial. Lead Designer roles that include hands-on UX, visual design, or product design work are easier to approve than roles described primarily as team management.
Ask HR about their immigration counsel early
Companies that retain an immigration attorney handle sponsorship more smoothly than those figuring it out for the first time. Asking whether they work with outside counsel signals you know the process and helps you assess how prepared they are.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a Lead Designer role qualify for H-1B visa sponsorship?
Yes, Lead Designer roles generally qualify as H-1B visa specialty occupations when the position requires a bachelor's degree or higher in design, UX, visual communication, or a closely related field. USCIS looks at whether the degree requirement is specific to the field, not just any bachelor's degree, so job descriptions that require a design-specific background are stronger candidates for approval.
What visa options exist for Lead Designers beyond the H-1B?
The O-1A visa is a strong alternative for Lead Designers with a recognizable body of work, awards, published features, or jury or advisory roles. It has no annual cap and no lottery. The EB-1A green card follows similar criteria for those pursuing permanent residence. Designers from Australia may also qualify for the E-3 visa, which has far less competition than the H-1B.
Does my design degree need to be from a U.S. university?
No. USCIS accepts foreign degrees, but they must be evaluated as equivalent to a U.S. bachelor's degree in a relevant field. A three-year Australian design degree is generally accepted as equivalent. If your degree is in a different field, you can substitute three years of specialized work experience for each year of missing education to meet the requirement.
Are H-1B approvals for design roles common?
H-1B approvals for design roles are approved regularly, but petitions describing the role as primarily managerial or cross-functional face more scrutiny. USCIS approves design petitions most consistently when the job duties center on hands-on design work requiring a specific degree. Roles blending design with general product management or business strategy can be harder to support without a well-documented petition.
Where can I find Lead Designer jobs that offer visa sponsorship?
Migrate Mate is built specifically for international job seekers looking for roles that offer visa sponsorship. Rather than sifting through general job listings and guessing which employers will sponsor, Migrate Mate surfaces companies with verified sponsorship histories so Lead Designers can focus on applications where sponsorship is already on the table.
What is the prevailing wage requirement for sponsored Lead Designer jobs?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.