What Is Experiential Design Work Worth? We Finally Have the Data.

October 7, 2026

The 2026 SEGD Salary & Employment Report delivers the field’s first compensation benchmark, with salary data, role leveling, hiring trends, benefits, and career insights built specifically for experiential design. Get a first look at the findings this October in Kansas City.

SEGD members have asked us the question: what does fair pay look like in experiential design? This month, we finally have an answer built from our own community. The 2026 SEGD Salary & Employment Report will be available on segd.org the week of October 22, timed to the SEGD Conference Experience in Kansas City.

This is the first compensation benchmark of its kind for our field. It draws on 424 complete survey responses from practitioners and 633 SEGD Job Bank postings from 2020 through 2026. To everyone who took the time to share their experience: thank you. This data exists because you did.

Two Ways to Dig Into the Data

The Member Preview, free for current SEGD members. Your membership includes a snapshot of the field: three trends shaping the profession right now, what we learned about early-career designers, and a look at why job titles in our field are so hard to compare.

The Full Edition, available for purchase. For the first time ever, our field has a shared map of who does what and what that work pays. Until now, every firm has set pay by its own internal logic, and benchmarks built for graphic design have never described the work we actually do. The Full Edition changes that.

Inside, you’ll find:

• A pay leveling framework built on responsibility, not job title. A Senior Designer at one studio can be a Design Director at another. The framework sorts roles into five tiers based on what a person is actually accountable for, from someone just starting out to a firm owner, so you can compare the real job even when the titles do not line up.
• Titles mapped across disciplines. The five tiers are mapped across the practice areas of our field, including environmental graphic design, wayfinding and placemaking, exhibition and experience design, and branded environments. Nothing like this has existed for experiential design before.
• Salary bands and medians for every tier. See where you or your team stand at each experience level, with a closer look at how pay shifts by discipline, firm size, and region.
• The complete benefits and negotiation picture. Which benefits are standard, which are rare and valued, how satisfied people are with their pay, and what happens when they negotiate.
• Six years of hiring data from the SEGD Job Bank. What employers have been posting for since 2020, where the jobs are, the mid-level hiring gap, and how pay disclosure has changed.
• Guidance for studio leaders. Compensation benchmarks for setting pay, retention risks, the hiring pipeline, how firms of different sizes compare, and real examples of pay transparency in practice.
• Career development insights for individuals. What firms say they need next, set against what practitioners say they are missing.

Data you can use at the negotiating table, in a budget meeting, when writing a job description, or when deciding what a role should pay. One well-informed hire, raise, or retention decision can cover the cost of this report.

Member-Only Pre-Order Pricing

• Individual Member Pricing | Limited to 4 Membership Type(s): $250
• Studio Member Pricing | Limited to 12 Membership Type(s). $500

What Do the Numbers Tell Us?

We’ll start that conversation together in Kansas City.

On Friday, October 23 at 1:00 pm, SEGD CEO Cybelle Jones will share a high-level look at the findings in a NEXPO Talk, What the Data Tells Us: Inside the 2026 SEGD Employment + Salary Report. She will be joined in conversation by Kelly Kolar, President and Founder of Kolar Design, a former SEGD board member and one of our community’s most steadfast supporters.

Cybelle and Kelly will dig into what the findings mean for the people running studios, building teams, looking for their next role, or trying to understand what growth should look like. They’ll talk about the pipeline gap, culture as a competitive advantage, professional development, titles and transparency, and what these larger trends look like from inside a midsize Midwest firm.

The session closes with an open Q&A. Bring your questions, your own experience, and what you’re seeing inside your practice. The data gives us a starting point; the conversation about what we do with it belongs to all of us.

Get the Report + Join the Conversation

Two things you can do today:

1. Be in the room. Join us in Kansas City and add the NEXPO Talk to your Friday afternoon. Register now
2. Purchase the Full Edition now. Reserve your copy today, and it will be ready for you when the report goes live the week of October 22. 

Current members, watch your inbox that week for access to your free Member Preview. Not a member yet? Now is the best time to join. 

We cannot wait to dig into the data with you. See you in Kansas City.