Cloud Platform Product Design Senior Director, Product Design Scaling Product Design and UX across a growth-stage cloud platform—strengthening the organization, measurement model, design-system foundations, accessibility, and Product/Engineering partnership behind complex developer experiences. Cloud · Developer Experience · Product Design Leadership · Design Systems · Platform UX The Challenge DigitalOcean was evolving from a simpler developer-focused cloud experience into a broader cloud infrastructure and SaaS ecosystem. As the product portfolio expanded, Design needed to support greater platform complexity while maintaining the simplicity and usability developers expected from the brand. That required more than individual product improvements. The organization needed clearer experience priorities, stronger measurement, scalable design foundations, and closer alignment between Product, Design, and Engineering. The Leadership Question How could Product Design scale with a growing cloud platform without allowing complexity and organizational fragmentation to erode the customer experience? The Transformation I focused on four connected areas of leverage. 01 — Organization Design Capacity → Multidisciplinary Product Design Organization Led and developed a 25+ person organization spanning Product Design, UX Research, UI Engineering, and design leadership, with responsibility for a mid-six-figure experience-design budget. The goal was to create a stronger multidisciplinary capability around the platform rather than have Design operate primarily as a collection of individual product resources. That meant developing leadership, strengthening collaboration across disciplines, and creating clearer alignment around platform-level priorities. Principle: Build the organization around product outcomes, not design activity. 02 — Strategy Product Requests → Platform Experience Direction Led Product Design and UX strategy across DigitalOcean’s cloud infrastructure ecosystem, partnering with Product and Engineering leadership to connect customer experience priorities to the broader platform roadmap. The focus was on reducing experience fragmentation and making design decisions within the context of the complete developer journey—not only individual features. This created clearer experience direction as the platform expanded in both capability and complexity. 03 — Measurement Design Opinion → KPI-Driven UX Established a KPI-driven UX operating model tied to activation, adoption, engagement, satisfaction, and platform scalability. The objective was to give Product and Design leaders stronger signals for prioritization and move experience conversations beyond subjective design review. Research and experience evidence could then be discussed alongside product and business priorities, creating a stronger foundation for decision-making. Principle: Evidence should help determine where Design invests—not just validate what has already been built. 04 — Infrastructure Fragmented Experiences → Scalable Platform Foundations Expanded the global design-system and accessibility foundation while strengthening platform governance and Product/Engineering workflows. The goal was not simply greater visual consistency. Shared foundations made it easier for teams to reuse proven patterns, reduce unnecessary variation, preserve accessibility expectations, and scale delivery without sacrificing experience quality. Design systems became part of the infrastructure supporting a growing cloud platform. Impact at a Glance The strongest evidence from the transformation is organizational and operational: 25+ Product Design and UX organization across Design, Research, UI Engineering, and leadership Mid-six-figure Experience-design budget managed 5 experience signals Activation · Adoption · Engagement · Satisfaction · Platform scalability Global foundation Expanded design system, accessibility practices, and platform governance The work strengthened Product/Engineering alignment, reduced experience fragmentation, and established more scalable systems for managing UX quality as the cloud ecosystem continued to grow. Product work from this period was later featured on Tomorrow’s World Today, an Emmy-nominated series highlighting cloud innovation and developer infrastructure.