About
Product designer with deep engineering experience · Developer platforms · Design systems
I'm a product designer with deep engineering experience, working at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, and developer experience. At Pulumi, I lead product design for a platform used by engineering teams building and managing cloud infrastructure at scale. I started Pulumi's weekly UX critique and design team meeting in 2024, mentor engineers daily on product and user experience, and recently drafted the vision document for Pulumi Governance. My engineering runs across the stack: TypeScript and React on the front end, Go and Node services and REST/GraphQL APIs on the back end. That means I prototype in the real stack, speak fluently with engineers, and collapse the distance between Figma and shipped product. I build with AI every day, with Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf, and I run a GenAI creative pipeline across Midjourney, Firefly, ComfyUI, Runway, and ElevenLabs alongside the full Adobe ecosystem. Previously at Microsoft, I helped take the Immersive Reader from a concept to 46M monthly active users, including shaping the public Immersive Reader SDK, originated the Microsoft Education assignments schema, and shipped Fresh Paint in-box on Windows. At Eightfold, I built the Octuple design system from zero to 10,000+ implementation points in eight months. I'm at my best on hard, ambiguous problems, the kind where design, engineering, and product strategy have to move together.
Principles
How I approach the work
AI, with guardrails
I build with LLMs and agents every day, and I design for the moment they're wrong: drafts instead of decisions, approvals that show what will change, and an off switch. Sandcastle and Vibr are where I practice it.
Systems over screens
Design tokens, primitives, and patterns multiply velocity. Octuple grew from zero to 10,000+ touchpoints in eight months because the system carried the weight.
Deep engineering, in service of design
I prototype and ship in the real stack: TypeScript and React on the front end, Go and Node services and REST/GraphQL APIs behind them. Code is how I test a design against reality before anyone builds it twice.
Figma to shipped, in one head
Figma for systems, specs, and exploration; the full Adobe ecosystem and GenAI pipelines for editorial, motion, and creative; the codebase for the result. The handoffs people normally chain together happen inside one workflow.
Design as a team habit
In 2024 I started Pulumi's weekly UX critique and design team meeting, and both still run. Research starts with internal stakeholders, moves to support and sales, then to customer calls, and I work the findings through with engineers and product managers.
Hard, ambiguous problems
I'm at my best where design, engineering, and product strategy have to move together, in the seams nobody else has time for.
Skills
Tools & craft
AI-native practice
How I work: substrate, not tooling.
- LLM-powered Interfaces
- Agentic Workflows
- AI-augmented Design Systems
- Anthropic Claude
- OpenAI
- Google Gemini
- Meta Llama
- Claude Code
- Cursor
- Windsurf
- GitHub Copilot
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- Prompt Engineering
- Retrieval-augmented Generation
- Evals & Guardrails
- Low-code / No-code Workflows
GenAI creative workflows
Image, video, and audio pipelines I build with.
- Midjourney
- Adobe Firefly
- Stable Diffusion
- ComfyUI
- DALL·E
- Sora
- Runway
- Veo
- ElevenLabs
- Suno
- Asset Pipeline Automation
- Brand-conditioned Generation
Design
How I think about people, problems, and form.
- Systems Design
- Design Systems
- Design Tokens
- Prototyping
- Information Architecture
- Interaction Design
- Motion
- Accessibility (WCAG 2.2)
- Typography
- Visual Design
- Print Design
- Editorial Design
Creative tools
Where the pixels and frames come from.
- Figma
- Figma Variables & Tokens
- FigJam
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe After Effects
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe XD
- Adobe Firefly
- Framer
- Storybook
Engineering, front end
What I reach for to ship the surface.
- TypeScript
- React
- React Native
- Next.js
- Web Components
- Tailwind CSS
- CSS Architecture
- Storybook
- Vite
- Playwright
- Jest / Vitest
- Git
Engineering, full stack
What I reach for behind the surface.
- Node.js
- Go
- C#
- Python
- REST API Design
- GraphQL
- OpenAPI / Swagger
- SDK Authoring
- OAuth / OIDC
- PostgreSQL
- Background Jobs & Queues
- Telemetry & Live-site
Platform
Where things run.
- AWS
- Azure
- Google Cloud
- Pulumi (IaC)
- Vercel
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- PostgreSQL
Practice
How I work with others.
- Research Strategy
- Cross-functional Leadership
- Agile / Scrum
- Workshop Facilitation
- Mentorship
- Product Strategy
- Design Critique
- Regression Testing Methodology
Experience
Timeline
Jul 2024 – Present
Pulumi
Senior UX Designer
Lead product design for the Pulumi platform. Shipped Insights (now Governance) from beta through GA. AI-native infrastructure tooling and agentic developer workflows for platform engineers, DevOps/SRE, and application developer personas.
See case study →Feb 2022 – Jul 2024
Eightfold
Lead UX Engineer
Founded and led Octuple, Eightfold's open-source design system, from zero to 10,000+ production implementation points in under eight months. Winner of the 2022 Eightfold Innovation Award.
See case study →Mar 2017 – Feb 2022
Microsoft
Design Engineer 2
Final of three roles at Microsoft Education. Owned UX engineering for Immersive Reader at scale and OneNote web accessibility.
See case study →Jun 2016 – Mar 2017
Microsoft
Design Developer 2
Transition role between UX design and engineering leadership for Microsoft Classroom and School Data Sync.
Aug 2014 – Jun 2016
Microsoft
Senior User Experience Designer
First role on the direct Microsoft Education team. Originated the assignments schema in 2014.
Through Aug 2014
Aquent
Microsoft & Amazon contracts · Design Integrator · Prototyper · Creative Technologist · Media Author
Consecutive embedded contracts across Microsoft and Amazon. Sole UI dev on Fresh Paint shipping in-box on Windows 8 (1B MAU). Moved Amazon's brand advertising from Flash to HTML5 via the Cover Girl × Hunger Games: Catching Fire campaign. Invented the BoundsType property during the Windows 8 Metro era. Concluded with Office Mix design integration, transitioning directly into the direct-hire Microsoft Education role.
See case study →Through Oct 2012
Metia
Interactive Designer (Microsoft account)
Owned the Microsoft Dynamics creative platform, a multi-channel design system across video, web, and presentations.
See case study →Ongoing
Beneficialmedia
Designer · Creative Technologist
Independent design practice. The through-line across product design, creative technology, and AI-integrated workflows. Current focus: AI-native design tooling, GenAI creative pipelines (image, video, audio), experiences created on demand with agent harness workflows, and interaction design consulting.
Education
Where I trained
Harvard Extension School
Master's, Computer Software Engineering
The Art Institute of Seattle
BFA, Graphic Design
The Defense Information School
Diploma, Digital Video Production and Documentation