(This is solely based on my personal experience; I assume it varies across teams and companies.)

Typically, within a team, you have a UI Designer who crafts the design and provides Figma templates/models to the team.

Next, there are engineers responsible for building the application based on the UI Designers model.

However, I’ve noticed that even though most engineers excel at handling the application’s logic, they often lack proficiency in design/CSS. Many of them, including myself, hate dealing with it and consider it a time-consuming task.

Even Front-End developers, skilled in application building, Front-End logic, components, API calls etc. generally possess decent CSS skills and can integrate a simple design. However when it comes to more advanced tasks (e.g., complex responsive layouts, animations using keyframes, intricate transitions, managing clip-path shapes, complex gradients, accessibility, keyboard navigation, etc.), they struggle to manage that effortlessly.

I feel there is a “gap” between the UI Designer and the SWE/Front-End Developer.

Of course any developer can eventually achieve whatever they want, but in the meantime it’s a huge waste of time and resources if they require 2 hours to create a gradient animation using keyframes while an expert in this field can complete it in 2 minutes.

Imagine having a CSS/SCSS/Tailwind expert on your team, dedicated to seamlessly integrating the design by filling up the class/className properties. Developers could just build components without any design concerns and focus solely on logic, and then the CSS expert passes over your code to fill in the className properties, handling the Tailwind configuration, creating the CSS, dealing with the assets etc. and making everything looks beautiful. Wouldn’t that be valuable for many teams?

Or even better, a UI designer who is also expert in CSS. Someone capable of both designing an application and integrating the design. Someone who is aware of the development constraints. Because a “pure designer” can certainly craft a stunning design for an application, but then you might end up in situations like “yeah bro your confirmation animation when I click on this button looks nice, but it’s going to take me 2hrs to code this little detail”

I’ve seen some job titles like “UI/UX Developer” that appear to align with this description, but I wonder why it’s not more common.

I work for a survey company, like the surveys you get via email or text after visiting your doctor or dentist. I was hired in as a CSM, Client Success Manager. Just before annual raises were determined, the company did “adjustments” to many titles across the company and ours was changed to CSS, Customer Success Specialist. They were adamant that nothing about our functions have or will change, “it just better reflects” the job role. Yet, in emails and in meetings, were all still being referred to as “CSM”, never “CSS”. Yet, in other service/product lines in the company, their CSMs job titles didn’t change.
We get the client the moment sales hands the new client off, we do onboarding, we do a lot of the tech issues since they laid off the tech support rep, we do client training and ongoing education sessions, we do analytics monthly, quarterly or yearly depending on the size of the client, we upsell products and services, we do some consulting, we have weekly churn meetings. We are with the client through their lifetime with the company.
Now we’re being told that starting next year, we’re going to get “incentives” related to client retention, but I know that also means that we may be held to a higher standard of accountability if a client leaves.
Is what I’m doing not what a CSM does??? Or is this truly what a CSS does?
From what I understand of hierarchies in Customer Success, the CSS is lower on the totem pole than a CSM. Did the company change our titles incorrectly so they can save a buck?