Beyond Big Tech UX Jobs: Industries and companies hiring for UX roles in 2025 and beyond

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Many consumer products have a lot of similarities, right? So consider how your previous consumer experience might translate into another industry. The thing is, you don’t need to be an industry expert to apply for jobs in certain industries. You just need to show that whatever experience you do have translates, and that really comes down to your 3 key career marketing materials, your resume, your portfolio, and your LinkedIn. Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients.

Sarah Doody [00:00:54]: You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Welcome back to another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast. And today, I want to talk about specific industries that are hiring for UX and product and tech positions that are outside of the tech industry. So early on in the life of this podcast, I did an episode all about how to find tech jobs outside the tech industry, which we’ll link to in the show notes. And a lot of people ask, okay. Give me exact companies, exact examples. So that’s what this episode will be about.

Sarah Doody [00:01:47]: We’re gonna go through some industries. And before we get started, I thought it would just be useful to give you some real data looking at where people who got hired from my career coaching program, Career Strategy Lab, have been hired. So let’s jump right to it. So looking at our data from 2024, it’s literally right in front of me. I am seeing companies in the security industry such as Next Door and SimpliSafe, 2 companies you might want to consider. Finance is huge. I see Fisher Investments. I see JPMorgan Chase.

Sarah Doody [00:02:31]: I see Wells Fargo, just to name a few. Then health care. Health care is a big one. I see Athenahealth. I see Mayo Clinic, UnitedHealthcare. Let’s see. Navitus Health Systems. Then we get into education.

Sarah Doody [00:02:51]: So I see Southern New Hampshire University, University of Michigan. Let’s see. What else do we have? University of Phoenix. There was another health care one. Oh, Vanguard, another financial one. And okay. We oh, health equity is another, healthcare one. And then what other industries jumped out to me? America’s Tech Kitchen.

Sarah Doody [00:03:19]: So, like, entertainment and media. Let’s see. We also have PepsiCo. Interesting. That person is a senior UX designer at PepsiCo. And let’s see. What else do we have? SiteTracker. That’s another security company.

Sarah Doody [00:03:35]: So those are just some of the companies where we have had people get hired, but security, health care, finance, media, education. So if you are in your job search and you’ve maybe been applying to big tech companies, maybe consider branching out into these other industries, especially if you have prior experience in these industries. And this tip is for my career switchers. And if you listen to this podcast, you’ve probably heard me give this tip many, many times. But here’s the hiring. If you are switching from, say, education to UX, you might wanna consider applying to universities, colleges, your local school board, Udemy, Khan Academy, companies that are in the education industry because they come down to multiple candidates and some of them don’t have experience in education, but you do, that could help set you apart from the other candidates. Alright. So let’s jump back to my little script that I did because I had a lot I wanted to cover here today.

Sarah Doody [00:04:49]: So let’s and of think about why you might wanna branch out from the tech industry to begin with. Well, if we look backwards a little bit, we know that tech companies over hiring in the last 2 to 3 years. Right? And now they’re realizing that and that’s why we’re seeing a lot of layoffs. So that’s why it can be really strategic to look outside the tech industry where maybe these companies might be more conservative with their hiring and thus maybe there is less of a risk that they would over hiring, like, the big tech companies, and then have to go into layoffs or sometimes multiple rounds of layoffs. Also, I would say there is potential that you could experience less competition if you and of go to these non big tech industries. Right? Because so many people want to have a FAANG company, you know, Facebook for Meta, Apple, Netflix, Google, Amazon, etcetera, on their resume. And if you can and of let go of that because part of that might be a little bit of your ego, and if you can let go of that you might find, wait a tech, There is a lot less competition over here when I’m applying to University of Michigan for Southern New Hampshire, universities, UX department for UnitedHealthcare, Aetna Health. Right? So something to think about there now.

Sarah Doody [00:06:25]: Let’s get into some of the exact industries and and maybe why they might be expanding. Right? So health and health care. We just talked about this, but you could think of, like, software that hospitals, doctors’ offices, dental offices, physical therapist offices, like, all the electronic medical records software and booking software. That could be a good place to start thinking about opportunities with those companies. Of course, like, hospitals themselves often have their own tech departments, so that might be something to consider. Also, health insurance. Right? And then there’s the whole world of health apps. Right? That could be maybe diabetes related apps or meditation and, even physical product, that little device, Cardia Mobile, that measures your heart and does an EKG.

Sarah Doody [00:07:23]: There’s so much going on in health tech right now, and it’s very diverse. Right? Like I said, health insurance companies, apps that are just digital apps that have a physical hardware component as well. So if you’re into health care, that could be something to consider. You could think of companies even like Philips, GE Healthcare, and some of those apps I mentioned like Cardia Mobile, calm.com even could be one to consider because the health tech market is expected to grow a lot over the next couple of years, and I think that may be driven by, you know, the the digital experience that came about because of the pandemic, because a lot of people were trying not to do things in person and so a lot of health stuff, even just health communications, was going digital. Right? So something to think about there. Alright. Financial services and Fintech. So what do we mean by that? Think about banks, insurance companies, companies that deal with retirement savings, companies that deal with debt, companies that deal with monitoring monitoring your credit.

Sarah Doody [00:08:42]: There’s so many types of companies within the financial services and Fintech industries. It could even be your local credit union. Right? You might experience far less competition for roles at that credit union than you would applying to, I don’t know, like Robinhood or Fidelity or something like that. Right? So there’s a really big variety in the types of companies you could apply to within the financial services and Fintech tech. But similar to health care, they are experiencing this very digital first revolution, let’s say, where customers are really expecting and demanding to not have to go in to a physical location for not even have to pick up the phone to deal with financial for retirement type things. Right? So they’re all trying to improve and enhance the customer experience and take as much as they can digital so they don’t lose customers. Right? It’s all about it’s often about customer retention. So we can think of companies like JPMorgan Chase, Wells For, Capital And, Fidelity.

Sarah Doody [00:10:09]: Chime is another and. Robinhood. What else? Even even some of these companies that deal with finance for children, and I forget the exact name of it, but if you just Google, like, financial apps for children, you will find a ton of apps that help kids save and learn about money management, and some of them even, like, allow parents to pay their kids for chores and manage, and of, debit cards for kids and things like that. There’s so much. So if that’s of interest to you, maybe check out some of those companies. Like I said, especially if you have previous experience in these companies, you could really leverage that previous experience you have to help set you apart from other candidates who maybe have never worked in financial services or Fintech before. Alright. Let’s move on to retail and ecommerce.

Sarah Doody [00:11:12]: This is another big one. This obviously has seen a lot of growth, especially fueled by the pandemic. Everyone was, very much forced into doing a lot of online shopping during the pandemic, and many people realized the massive convenience of that. Right? And so so many companies are trying to compete with each other on their digital experience and how easy it is for their customers to find, buy, pick up, return, etcetera, product, whether it’s, you know, at Target for at Lululemon or at Home Depot or Walmart or the grocery for, there’s a wide variety of companies within retail and ecommerce that would love to find awesome UX talent. But the thing is, a lot of UX talent isn’t looking in these industries. Right? So think about if you are interested in retail and ecommerce for you have previous experience in it, that could be a good industry for you to look at. And in fact, the National Retail Federation says that ecommerce sales are expected to grow 8 to 12% annually, which is gonna drive more demand, right, to improve the shopper experience, whether it’s on the website, on app for, even in the physical stores themselves, right, especially if you’re someone that does service design. So just recently, like, this week, I was and curating some jobs to post on on my LinkedIn for people, and I posted jobs from Lululemon.

Sarah Doody [00:12:56]: I saw Nike was hiring. Under Armour was hiring. Wayfair, was hiring Home Depot. They seem to be hiring all of the time. Of course, Amazon, but that’s a big tech company. So think about if any of those industries for if ecommerce is interesting to you, maybe just do some searches for those companies and see what you find because that industry is growing and it’s not expected to slow down. Alright. So let’s think about why these industries are investing in UX and product.

Sarah Doody [00:13:32]: But actually, before we get to that, I forgot one other industry that I think, is seeing growth, travel. Right? A lot of people now are playing catch up when it comes to travel. People want to go to Europe. They wanna go on cruises. They wanna go on destination weddings. They wanna have family reunions, all of these things. And I’m noticing that a lot of travel companies are hiring. Not only that, but I notice a lot of really interesting companies popping up in the travel planning space.

Sarah Doody [00:14:06]: And that comes to mind is For, f o r a, Fora Travel. Maybe you’ve seen their posts on Instagram, but they seem to be growing quite a bit. And the convenience of these travel curation and travel planning and of products and services is the immense time it takes me. And if I’m gonna spend money to, like, get to a location because I buy a plane ticket, I wanna maximize my experience when I am on the ground there. Right? So instead of me booking everything myself and hiring, say, hotels.com tech kind of a cut from each booking, someone like Fora, I don’t have to pay them extra. They’re just taking what Hotels dotcom would have taken from me anyway. Right? So travel could be an interesting and, especially if you’re into travel. I imagine user researchers at, like, airlines or hotels or even this for a company, they might actually get to travel as a part of their jobs, which is pretty awesome if you ask me.

Sarah Doody [00:15:12]: Alright. So back to what we were going to talk about, why are these industries hiring UX and product people? What is driving this growth? I think it’s just a matter of companies realize that consumers value awesome experiences and they will be turned off very quickly by bad experiences. And if they can create awesome experiences, they will hopefully be able to retain customers and have them become repeat customers. Right? It’s a lot easier to have a customer be an ongoing customer than it is to acquire new customers, which can be quite expensive. So it’s in the best interest of these companies to create an awesome experience so people think, wow, that was amazing. I’m only gonna shop from this airline or I’m only gonna shop from this store, like Target or something. Right? So same thing with health care, same thing with finance. Right? You don’t if you have a bad experience with a finance company, like, that’s your money.

Sarah Doody [00:16:19]: You’re probably not going to wanna stay with that bank if they screw something up. Right? So think about these industries where the stakes are high when it comes to maintaining customers so that hopefully they stay with you for a long, long time. Alright. So I know some of you might be hiring, what if I don’t have experience in these industries? Okay. Don’t freak out. No problem. The cool thing is about UX and product design is that so much of your experience is transferable from industry to industry. Right? So, if you’ve worked on, like, very data heavy product, like, I don’t know, in finance or something, that might very much translate to a data heavy product in health care.

Sarah Doody [00:17:11]: For example, like, and electronic medical records or health insurance or something like that. Consumer apps, sure, they are different, like consumer travel versus consumer fitness versus consumer education, let’s say, or entertainment. Sure, they’re different. However, many consumer products have a lot of similarities, right? So consider how your previous consumer experience might translate into another industry. The thing is, you don’t need to be an industry expert to apply for jobs in certain industries. You just need to show that whatever experience you do have translates, and that really comes down to your 3 key career marketing materials, your resume, your portfolio, and your LinkedIn. And if you communicate your skills and experience in a really consistent way across all three of those career marketing materials, that’s going to help you stand out. Even better if you do have experience in the industry you’re applying to, make sure that you are highlighting that.

Sarah Doody [00:18:21]: Definitely, if you do a cover letter, that would be one of the first things I would be putting in the first and to three sentences. Like, in my previous job at Khan Academy, because maybe you’re applying to, like, University of Phoenix, that immediately connects the dots. This person worked at Khan Academy Education And. They’re applying to University of Phoenix Education Industry. That might pique the interest of the recruiter or hiring manager. So what can you do right now? Alright. First, you need to branch out from the big tech companies. If you’ve been applying to those companies and you’re not getting interviews, it’s time to branch out and now you have some ideas of industries to look to.

Sarah Doody [00:19:02]: People always ask me what are some exact job boards. I’m a big fan of builtin.com. They allow you to browse and filter by certain industries. And recently I was on LinkedIn jobs and I don’t know if this is new or I never noticed it before, but if you click all filters and you’re inside LinkedIn jobs, they allow you to search for certain industries. So you could type in senior user researchers, senior product designer, whatever the job title is, and then filter down to certain industries, if that is interesting. But even if you just type in, like, senior user researcher and filter down to health care, that’s going to help educate you as to health care companies and health tech companies that you did not even know existed. I guarantee you, you will find tons of very interesting companies that you’ve never heard about before if you just open your job search beyond the big tech companies. So there you have it, exact examples of industries where you can find UX and product design jobs that are not in big tech.

Sarah Doody [00:20:23]: Look to builtin.com. Use the detailed filters on linkedin.com. And don’t forget that if you are switching into UX or product jobs, it is very valuable if you look for jobs in the industry that you already have experience in. Even if you don’t wanna and that long term, that could be a stepping stone into the industry. All right. I hope this was helpful. If you have a friend that is in job search right now, pass this podcast episode onto them. They might find it helpful.

Sarah Doody [00:21:01]: Alright. That’s all. I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM. And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts.

Sarah Doody [00:21:34]: Catch you later.