UX, UI, Front End, Back End: Website Project Roles Explained

A website project usually involves up to six distinct roles: a UX designer who plans structure and user flows, a UI designer who designs the screens, a graphic or brand designer who supplies visual assets, a front end developer who builds what visitors see, a back end developer who builds the systems behind it, and sometimes a full stack developer who covers both sides of the code. Knowing what each one does helps you read proposals, spot gaps and avoid paying twice for the same work.

This guide explains each role, what it produces, how the roles hand work to each other, and which ones a typical project actually needs.

Design roles

UX designer

The user experience designer works out how the site should be organized before anyone decides how it looks. They define the audiences, map the paths each audience takes, plan the navigation and content hierarchy, and test whether people can complete key tasks such as finding a service or sending an enquiry.

Typical output: sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, clickable prototypes and usability findings.

UI designer

The user interface designer turns wireframes into finished screens. They choose typography, color, spacing, iconography and component styles, and design every state a component can be in: hover, focus, error, empty, loading. On good projects they also define the responsive behavior for phones, tablets and desktops.

Typical output: high fidelity mockups and a design system or component library, usually in Figma.

Graphic or brand designer

Graphic designers are not web specialists, but websites depend on their work: logos, illustrations, icons, photography direction and campaign visuals. If your brand is new or dated, this work should come before or alongside UI design, not after it.

Typical output: brand guidelines, logo files, illustration sets and image treatments.

Development roles

Front end developer

The front end developer builds everything that runs in the visitor's browser using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, often with a framework such as React or a CMS theme layer. They turn the design system into reusable components, make the site responsive, handle interactions, and are responsible for much of the site's speed and accessibility.

Typical output: page templates, components, interactions and front end performance work.

Back end developer

The back end developer builds what runs on the server: the content management system, databases, user accounts, form handling, APIs and integrations with payment gateways, CRMs or ERPs. They also look after security, data validation and the hosting setup. Common languages include PHP, Python, JavaScript on Node.js and Java.

Typical output: CMS configuration, data models, APIs, integrations and deployment pipelines.

Full stack developer

A full stack developer works across front end and back end code. On small projects one full stack developer can build the whole site. On larger projects full stack developers often take ownership of a feature from database to screen. Full stack does not mean they also design, so check that separately.

The roles at a glance

How the roles work together

It is rarely a choice between design and development. The quality of a website depends on how well the roles hand work to each other.

1. Discovery

Design and development should both join discovery. The UX designer gathers user needs; the back end developer checks what data, integrations and platforms are involved. Finding a difficult integration at this stage costs far less than finding it after the design is approved.

2. Wireframes and technical plan

While the UX designer produces wireframes, developers choose the platform and outline the data model. Each side reviews the other's work: developers flag layouts that will be hard to build or slow to load, designers flag technical choices that limit content editors.

3. Design system and handoff

The UI designer builds components rather than one off pages. The handoff includes spacing, type scales, colors, every component state and responsive rules. Front end developers inspect the files directly in the design tool and raise questions before they build, not after.

4. Build and review

Developers build in small pieces and share them early on a staging site. Designers review on real phones and browsers, not just in screenshots. This is where most quality is won or lost.

5. Testing and launch

Before launch, the team tests forms, integrations, speed, accessibility and content on every key template. The MDN learning area is a useful shared reference for both designers and developers on how web standards behave across browsers.

Where projects go wrong

• No UX work. Teams jump straight to visual design, so the site looks good but visitors still cannot find the right service.
• Pages instead of components. Designing every page from scratch makes the build slower and the site harder to extend.
• Late developer input. Designs get approved before anyone checks that the CMS or integration can support them.
• Missing states. Designs show the happy path only, and developers guess at error messages, empty lists and loading screens.
• Accessibility left to the end. Contrast, focus states and semantic structure are cheaper to get right in design than to fix after build.

Which roles does your project need?

A simple brochure site on a standard CMS can work with one designer covering UX and UI and one developer who builds the theme. A site with accounts, payments or integrations needs a dedicated back end developer. A larger platform, a marketplace or a site in several languages usually needs every role, plus a project manager to keep the handoffs moving.

If you are comparing whether to hire a designer or a developer first, the deciding questions are how much custom functionality you need and how much your brand depends on the site's look. For a deeper look at that decision, Codeeo's design services and web development services pages explain how we split the work.

Codeeo brings these roles together in one team of 80+ across Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi, with 200+ projects delivered across the UAE and the US. Work like the EGL Aesthetic website, a WordPress site with a custom child theme and widgets designed for the brand, depended on design and development working from the same plan. If you need extra hands on an existing team, our team options let you add specific roles, or you can start with a product scoping session to see which roles your project needs.