Just being a web developer/UX expert - if you are really good at both - is already a pretty defensible position, although perhaps not a very rare one. Leveling

Just being a web developer/UX expert - if you are really good at both - is already a pretty defensible position, although perhaps not a very rare one. Leveling up in HCI will help. Another part to consider for your career strategy: if you can convince your boss that it's in his/her best interest to send you to a course or conference in topic X, that will give you both more knowledge and a semi-official "local expert" status. Once you're recognized as the local expert at X, people will bring all the hard/educational X problems to you, letting you level up quickly. (This works best if the topic comes up quite often, but not so often that everyone has an opinion. Every web dev has some basic UX skills, but consider e.g. Information Architecture, A/B Testing, etc. - or some kind of clear "needs more-than-basic UX" category. Someone who actually knows his HCI would be in a better place to help you define the latter category, I'm afraid.)