The job title that doesn't exist

“Und was studierst du dann?” — the question that assumes my path is already set, by asking what I’ll study. It’s not a difficult question, as I love what I do and I have been designing and coding since I was 10 years old, so it’s logical to just study what’s fun to me. But is it really that simple? Not when neither path on the list was built for what I actually do.

The false binary

The German school and study system is built on disciplinary boundaries that predate the work I actually want to pursue. In my case I could either choose an art/design degree that is gatekept by analog portfolios with specific skills that I never specialized in or a computer science degree, where code is treated as the whole craft, when in reality it’s just a material for me and not the whole point. But I have to study, right? That’s what everyone kept telling me at least.

The decade-long preparation

I’ve been on this path since I was 10 years old. I want to do something different. I want to think different. Over the past few years I’ve been learning more about design and coding than ever before. Taste is also something I trained, as I talked about in my last post.

The discovery that reframed everything

Observing the tech and digital design industry online over the past few years, I started noticing the binary system loosen its grip. Design and functionality were never actually separate problems and companies like Ikea and Apple built entire identities on combining them, decades before anyone needed a word for it. What changed is that the startup and tech world finally gave that combination a name. That's where I found "Design Engineer" as a real, hired-for title. For the first time, the job described me instead of asking me to split myself in two.

It's not just the big names, either. Smaller companies building for themselves and their own users are proving the same point at a smaller scale. Wooting, for example, has made a real impact in the keyboard industry by treating their physical product and software as one combined ecosystem that just works. Different industries, same throughline: design and functionality were never two skills to choose between. The tech industry just finally gave that throughline a name: Design Engineering.

So what’s next?

I want to jump straight into the industry, while keeping the option to study open alongside my work. I'm making this bet based on observation, not certainty. Betting on a title that's still establishing itself is a risk. But the bigger risk, to me, is detouring onto a path that was never built for what I do, just because it looks safer on paper. I'm not looking for a degree to legitimize me, but a team or company already operating in the world where this title exists. Somewhere that will allow me to not just be on one end of a hand-off, but part of the decisions.