Okay, so I’ve been noticing this pattern over the past six months that’s kind of fascinating. Companies that spent 2023-2024 aggressively outsourcing their design work are quietly reversing course.
Not making big announcements about it. Just… bringing design back in-house.
At first, I thought it was just a few companies I happened to know about. But then I started asking around, and it turns out this is a real trend. Like, a significant percentage of mid-size tech companies are rethinking their UI UX design outsourcing strategies right now.
The interesting part? They’re not just hiring traditional in-house teams. They’re doing something smarter that I think is worth talking about.
The Wake-Up Call That’s Happening Right Now
I talked to a product manager at a SaaS company last month. Let’s call her Sarah. Her company had been outsourcing design for about 18 months to “reduce costs.”
“How’d that go?” I asked.
She laughed. Not a happy laugh. More like a “I’ve seen things” laugh.
“We spent $180,000 on outsourced design last year. Know what we got? A design system we can’t use because nobody understands it, three major features that had to be completely redesigned after launch, and a product team that’s so burned out from managing design agencies that two people quit.”
Sarah’s company just hired their first in-house designer. Not because they suddenly have more budget. Because they finally did the math on what outsourcing was actually costing them.
And they’re not alone.
What Changed in 2025-2026
The shift away from UI design outsourcing isn’t happening because companies suddenly discovered some new truth about design. The fundamentals haven’t changed.
What changed is that enough companies have now lived through the full cycle of outsourcing to see how it actually plays out over time.
The 18-Month Pattern
Most companies follow this timeline:
Months 1-6: The Honeymoon
Everything seems great. You’re “saving money.” Designs are getting delivered. Sure, there are some communication hiccups, but nothing major.
Months 7-12: The Cracks
Wait, why does every project take three rounds of revisions? Why don’t the designs account for our technical constraints? Why does it take so long to make simple changes?
Months 13-18: The Breaking Point
Your product velocity has slowed to a crawl. Your developers are frustrated. Your design quality has become a competitive disadvantage. You realize you’re spending more time managing outsourced designers than you would just doing the work internally.
Months 19+: The Reversal
You start hiring in-house, but now you’re 18 months behind where you could have been.
Enough companies have hit month 18-24 that the word is spreading: outsourcing your entire design function doesn’t actually work for ongoing product development.
The Communication Tax Nobody Tracks
Here’s what I think is the fundamental issue with traditional UI UX design outsourcing: every single design decision requires explicit communication.
An in-house designer overhears a customer support call and adjusts the onboarding flow. That happens automatically.
An outsourced designer needs a meeting, a brief, context documents, and probably a follow-up email thread to make the same adjustment.
I watched this play out at a startup I was advising. They had an outsourced design team in another timezone.
Simple design change request:
- Product manager writes detailed brief: 30 minutes
- Scheduling meeting across timezones: 2 days delay
- Context-setting call: 45 minutes
- Designer does work: 3 hours
- Review meeting: 30 minutes
- Clarification rounds: 2-3 async message exchanges
- Final approval: 15 minutes
Total time elapsed: 3-4 days Total communication overhead: 2+ hours of internal time
For a change that should have taken 3 hours.
An in-house designer would have overheard the conversation, asked two clarifying questions, and shipped it that afternoon.
That difference compounds over hundreds of design decisions per year.
Why the “Cheap per Hour” Math Falls Apart
The most common justification for outsourcing UI design is cost savings. And on paper, it looks compelling:
Outsourced designer: $50-75/hour Senior in-house designer: $75-100/hour (when you factor in salary, benefits, equipment)
But this comparison is missing something crucial: efficiency.
An in-house designer at $100/hour who can complete a project in 20 hours costs $2,000.
An outsourced designer at $50/hour who needs 30 hours (because of communication overhead, revision cycles, and context gaps) plus 10 hours of your internal team’s time costs $2,500.
You’re paying 25% more for a worse outcome.
I’ve seen this math play out so many times now that I genuinely don’t understand how companies keep falling for it. Except I do understand – the internal time doesn’t show up on the design invoice, so it looks like you’re saving money.
The Knowledge Transfer Problem
Here’s something that happened to a company I know: they’d been working with an outsourced design agency for 14 months. The agency did good work, understood their product, had built up valuable context.
Then the agency restructured and assigned them a new design team.
All that context? Gone. They had to start over with onboarding, explaining product decisions, rebuilding trust.
Cost of knowledge transfer: approximately 40 hours of internal time (at $100/hour average = $4,000) plus 2-3 weeks of reduced productivity.
This happens constantly with outsourced relationships. Designers leave agencies. Agencies reassign teams. Contracts end and new vendors need to be onboarded.
In-house designers accumulate product knowledge that compounds over time. After a year, your in-house designer understands your product better than anyone except maybe your founders. That knowledge is worth real money.
With traditional outsourcing, you’re paying for that knowledge transfer over and over again, without ever building permanent institutional knowledge.
What Actually Works: The Hybrid Model
So if traditional outsourcing doesn’t work, but you also can’t afford to hire a full senior design team, what do you do?
This is where I’ve seen the smartest companies land: in-house execution + senior design leadership.
The model looks like this:
Hire 1-2 junior to mid-level designers in-house
- They’re building product knowledge every day
- They’re in your meetings, understanding context
- They can iterate quickly without communication overhead
- Cost: $70-90k per designer
Partner with senior design expertise for strategic guidance
- Weekly or bi-weekly strategy sessions
- Design reviews and mentorship for your junior team
- Help with complex UX problems and system-level thinking
- Cost: ~$5-10k per month for ongoing partnership
Total cost: $90-120k annually
Compare this to:
Traditional outsourcing: $80-100k annually (but with all the communication overhead and context problems)
Full senior team: $180-220k annually (more than you can afford right now)
You’re spending slightly more than basic outsourcing, but you’re getting:
- Product knowledge that compounds
- Fast iteration without communication tax
- Junior designers who are learning and growing
- Senior expertise when you need it
This is what companies like DNSK.WORK specialize in – being that senior design partner who helps you build and level up your in-house team without needing to hire a full-time senior designer you can’t afford yet.
Real Example: How This Actually Works
Let me tell you about a company that’s doing this model really well. They’re a B2B SaaS startup, about 40 people, post-Series A.
What they tried first: Full outsourcing
Hired a design agency for $60/hour. Lasted 8 months. Quality was inconsistent, communication was painful, nothing got done quickly.
What they tried next: Junior designer + figuring it out
Hired a junior designer at $75k. Poor kid was overwhelmed. No mentorship, making mistakes, producing work that needed constant revision.
What they’re doing now: Junior + senior partnership
They kept their junior designer (who’s grown a lot) and brought in a senior design advisor who works with them 10-15 hours per month.
The senior designer’s role:
- Weekly 90-minute strategy session with the junior designer and PM
- Reviews major design work before it goes to development
- Helps solve complex UX problems the junior designer isn’t ready for yet
- Mentors the junior designer on systems thinking and design strategy
- Available for async feedback and questions
Cost breakdown:
- Junior designer: $80,000/year
- Senior design partnership: $8,000/year (10 hours/month at $67/hour equivalent)
- Total: $88,000/year
What they get:
- Junior designer who’s building deep product knowledge
- Fast iteration on day-to-day design work
- Senior strategic thinking when they need it
- A junior designer who’s actually learning and getting better
- No communication overhead from traditional outsourcing
The founder told me this setup has been “transformative” – their design quality improved, their product velocity increased, and their junior designer is actually becoming a strong mid-level designer through the mentorship.
Why This Model Works Better Than Traditional Outsourcing
The key difference between this hybrid model and traditional UI design outsourcing is context and continuity.
Your in-house designer has:
- Continuous product knowledge that compounds
- Real-time context from being in meetings
- Relationships with your developers and PMs
- Investment in your product’s success (not just deliverables)
Your senior design partner provides:
- Strategic thinking and systems-level design
- Mentorship that improves your team over time
- Quality oversight without micromanagement
- Expertise in areas your junior team isn’t ready for yet
Traditional outsourcing gives you neither. You’re paying for design execution without context, and paying repeatedly for knowledge that never sticks.
The Signs You’re Ready to Bring Design In-House
Not every company needs to make this shift immediately. But here are signs that traditional UI UX design outsourcing isn’t working for you anymore:
Your product velocity has slowed
Every design change takes days or weeks instead of hours because of communication overhead.
You’re spending more time managing design than doing design
Your PMs and developers spend hours every week in meetings with outsourced designers explaining context.
Design quality is becoming a competitive issue
Users are complaining about confusing interfaces. Your competitors are shipping better experiences.
You’re re-explaining the same things repeatedly
Context doesn’t stick. You’re constantly re-onboarding outsourced designers to your product.
Your team is frustrated
Developers are tired of designs that don’t account for technical constraints. PMs are burned out playing telephone between designers and engineers.
If you’re experiencing 3+ of these, the math on outsourcing has probably already tipped against you – you’re just not tracking all the costs.
What About AI and Design Tools?
I need to address this because it comes up constantly: “Can’t AI tools replace the need for expensive designers?”
Short answer: No, but they change the equation.
AI tools make execution faster. A junior designer with Figma AI and ChatGPT can produce more screens more quickly than ever before.
But AI doesn’t solve the strategic problems: understanding user needs, making system-level design decisions, balancing business constraints with user experience.
If anything, AI tools make the hybrid model more attractive. Your junior in-house designer can execute faster with AI assistance, while your senior design partner provides the strategic thinking that AI can’t do.
The companies getting this right are using AI to amplify their human designers, not replace them. And that works way better with in-house teams than outsourced ones.
The Cultural Shift That’s Happening
There’s something bigger happening here beyond just the math of outsourcing UI design.
In 2022-2023, the startup narrative was “stay lean, outsource everything that’s not core.”
In 2025-2026, the narrative is shifting to “build internal capabilities in things that actually matter.”
Design is increasingly seen as something that matters. Not a cost center to minimize, but a competitive advantage to invest in.
Companies are realizing that in a world where AI can generate code and everyone has access to the same tools, quality design and user experience are major differentiators.
You can’t build a design-led competitive advantage through outsourcing. The companies that win on design are the ones where design is embedded in the product development process, not bolted on through external vendors.
How to Actually Make the Transition
If you’re currently outsourcing design and thinking about bringing it in-house, here’s a realistic path:
Phase 1: Hire your first in-house designer (1-2 months)
Don’t wait for the “perfect” senior designer you can’t afford. Hire a promising junior or mid-level designer who has potential and cultural fit.
Phase 2: Establish senior design partnership (immediate)
Bring in someone like the team at DNSK.WORK to provide strategic oversight and mentorship. This prevents your junior designer from drowning.
Phase 3: Transition knowledge (2-3 months)
Have your senior design partner and your in-house designer work together to document product knowledge, design decisions, and system patterns while you’re winding down your outsourced relationships.
Phase 4: Gradual handoff (3-6 months)
Slowly transfer work from outsourced teams to your in-house designer, with senior design partner providing quality oversight and strategic direction.
Phase 5: Evaluate and expand (6+ months)
Once your first in-house designer is established and growing, evaluate whether you need to hire a second designer or if your current setup can scale.
The key is not trying to do everything at once. You don’t need to hire a full senior design team immediately. Start with the hybrid model and grow from there.
What This Costs vs. What You Get
Let’s get specific about the actual numbers, because this is where decision-makers need clarity:
Traditional full outsourcing:
- Design agency: $75,000-100,000/year
- Internal communication overhead: $20,000-30,000/year (in hidden time costs)
- Knowledge transfer losses: $8,000-12,000/year
- Total real cost: $103,000-142,000/year
- What you get: Designs with minimal context, slow iteration, zero institutional knowledge
Hybrid in-house + senior partnership:
- Junior designer: $70,000-85,000/year
- Senior design partnership: $6,000-12,000/year
- Total cost: $76,000-97,000/year
- What you get: Fast iteration, compounding product knowledge, growing team capability, strategic expertise when needed
You’re spending 25-30% less for significantly better outcomes.
And critically: your junior designer becomes a mid-level designer over time. Your investment appreciates. With outsourcing, you’re renting capability that never builds equity.
The DNSK.WORK Model (And Why It Works)
I want to talk specifically about how companies like DNSK.WORK are enabling this hybrid model, because I think they’ve figured out something important.
Traditional design agencies want to own your entire design function. They want to be your design team.
Senior design partnerships like DNSK.WORK take a different approach: they want to make your internal team better.
What this looks like in practice:
Strategic design leadership Regular sessions with your team to work through complex UX problems, define design systems, and make high-level product decisions.
Hands-on mentorship Your junior designers get coached by senior practitioners (like Tanya Donska) who’ve solved these problems hundreds of times.
Quality oversight Senior review of major design work before it ships, catching issues that junior designers might miss.
Problem-solving partnership When your team hits a design problem they can’t solve, they have senior expertise available without needing to hire full-time.
The goal isn’t dependency – it’s capability building. Over 12-18 months, your junior designer becomes a strong mid-level designer through this mentorship model.
That’s completely different from traditional UI UX design outsourcing, where the agency has no incentive to build your team’s capabilities because they want you dependent on them.
Why Senior Designers Are Choosing This Model Too
Interestingly, this trend isn’t just being driven by companies – it’s also being driven by senior designers who are tired of traditional agency work.
I’ve talked to several senior designers who’ve left agencies to do this kind of strategic partnership work, and they all say similar things:
“I was tired of being brought in to do work that would get thrown away because the company had no internal design capability.”
“I wanted to actually make companies better at design, not just deliver designs.”
“The model of selling hours and hoping companies stay dependent felt gross. I’d rather build their capability and have them outgrow me.”
This is creating a growing ecosystem of senior design practitioners who work in this partnership model rather than traditional employment or agency work.
For companies, this means you have access to senior design expertise that wasn’t available before – designers who are excellent at their craft but also genuinely good at mentorship and strategic advising.
The Companies That Are Winning
Let me tell you about three companies that made this transition and what happened:
Company A: B2B SaaS, 50 people
- Outsourced design for 2 years, spent ~$120k annually
- Brought in junior designer + senior partnership model
- 9 months later: Design quality dramatically improved, product velocity increased, junior designer promoted to mid-level
- Current spend: $92k annually
Company B: Consumer app, 35 people
- Tried to hire senior designer, couldn’t afford it ($180k+ in their market)
- Hired mid-level designer + senior strategic partnership
- 6 months later: Shipped major redesign ahead of schedule, mid-level designer handling most work independently with strategic oversight
- Current spend: $105k annually
Company C: Enterprise software, 80 people
- Had junior designer struggling without mentorship
- Added senior design partnership for 12 hours/month
- 12 months later: Junior designer now functioning at mid-level, handling complex projects, company promoted them and gave raise
- Current spend: $95k annually (was $75k with just junior, but designer is now worth it)
The pattern is consistent: companies spend slightly more than basic outsourcing, but get dramatically better outcomes and build permanent capabilities.
What’s Coming Next
I think we’re at the beginning of a bigger shift in how companies think about design capabilities.
The 2015-2020 model was “hire senior designers in-house or outsource everything.”
The 2020-2023 model was “outsource aggressively to stay lean.”
The 2025+ model is emerging as “build in-house capabilities with strategic senior partnerships.”
This is part of a broader trend away from “rent everything” toward “build capabilities in things that matter.” Design is increasingly being recognized as something that matters.
We’re also seeing new types of senior design roles emerging:
- Design advisors who work with 3-5 companies strategically
- Fractional design leads who provide leadership without full-time commitment
- Design coaches who focus on building team capabilities
This is creating more options for companies at every stage, making it easier to access senior design expertise without the full cost of senior design hires.
What You Should Actually Do
If you’re reading this and recognizing your company’s situation, here’s my honest recommendation:
If you’re currently outsourcing and it’s working well: Keep doing it. If your current setup provides quality work without major communication overhead, don’t fix what isn’t broken. This article isn’t for you.
If you’re outsourcing and it’s painful: Time to consider the hybrid model. The communication overhead and knowledge transfer costs are probably killing you more than you realize.
If you’re planning to start outsourcing: Think hard about whether you’re making this decision based on real math or spreadsheet math. Calculate the hidden costs before you commit.
If you have junior designers without senior support: Find a strategic design partnership to provide mentorship and quality oversight. Your junior designers need this to grow.
The common thread: if design matters to your product (and for most companies, it does), you need design capabilities that are contextual, continuous, and compounding. Traditional outsourcing provides none of these things.
The Bottom Line
The shift away from traditional UI design outsourcing isn’t about outsourcing being evil or wrong. It’s about recognizing that design is too important to your product to be treated as a commodity service.
The companies bringing design in-house aren’t necessarily spending more money. They’re spending money more strategically:
- Building permanent capabilities instead of renting temporary ones
- Investing in designers who get better over time
- Creating design knowledge that compounds
- Accessing senior expertise through partnerships rather than expensive full-time hires
The math works. The outcomes are better. The teams are happier.
And critically: you don’t need to be able to afford a full senior design team to make this work. The hybrid model – in-house execution plus senior strategic partnership – is accessible to companies at almost any stage.
If you’re struggling with traditional outsourcing, or considering hiring your first designer, this is the model worth exploring.
Because the goal isn’t just getting designs made. It’s building design capability that grows with your company.
And that’s something you can only build in-house.
P.S. – If you’re thinking about making this transition and want to understand how the strategic partnership model actually works, DNSK.WORK has been helping companies build their in-house design capabilities for years. They’re particularly good at the mentorship and strategic oversight piece that makes junior designers successful.