so nice to meet you
Hi, I'm Dave — a strategic product thinker, Figma expert, and design engineer (Tailwind, Claude Code). In 15 years of leading design at early-stage startups, I've developed a superpower: crafting complex workflows into polished app experiences.
I enjoy the creative process, prototyping in code, architecting systems, working with smart people, and celebrating the wins. Thanks for checking out my work.
Strangeworks
A data-science consulting company for Fortune 500 teams running AI, quantum, and HPC compute
I lead product design across the platform — designing Aura, our AI-assisted workflow app that takes a science team from problem formulation to results on quantum and HPC hardware, plus custom web apps we build for clients.
Figma expert — and for the past year a design engineer in practice, designing in front-end with Claude Code and shipping both prototypes and production code.
Design Engineer / Director of Product
Highlights:
- Promoted from Senior Product Designer to Director of Product in 6 months
- Researched internal process and designed the vision for Aura, our workflow app — then helped build it in production code
- Embedded with engineering, leadership, and the science team to ship across the compute platform, docs, and marketing sites
- Designed dozens of client optimization apps — staff scheduling, fleet routing, and more
flows & templates
prototypes
2,061 GitHub contributions in the last year
QuotaPath
A Series B SaaS platform for sales commission planning and tracking
Commission plans are a tangle of rates, tiers, and edge cases. I designed across teams to make that math clear, shipping features monthly and building the Compensation Hub from scratch so sales teams could explore, compare, and model plans.
Senior Product UX/UI Designer
Highlights:
- Shipped platform features monthly: comp modeling, onboarding, sandboxes, and payouts
- Designed and launched the Compensation Hub, a commission-plan library and modeling tool that drove $1.5M+ in new pipeline in a year
- Co-created the Shape Up process across 4 cross-functional teams and mentored the designers running it
- Kept design and engineering building from the same Figma component libraries
design sprints & prototyping
OpenCourt
Product Design ConsultantA multi-platform app for booking courts, events, and open play at pickleball clubs
A six-month consulting engagement focused on the iOS app, delivered through Figma, Loom walkthroughs, and Zoom design reviews. I designed flows for booking courts, creating events and inviting players, checkout with add-ons, player profiles, and more.
Rodio
Workforce communication for big retail
Led design from first sketch to revenue at this workforce-comms startup, building one multi-platform design system that kept web, iOS, and Android in sync. I ran the sprints and shipped production UI across all three.
Within two years we partnered with Kronos, the Fortune-100 workforce-management company, and signed MarketSource, the staffing agency for Target and Best Buy, reaching millions of daily interactions.
Product UX/UI Design Lead
Highlights:
- Led design for a 20-person team, from early ideas to 20K+ paid users
- Ran design sprints to frame problems and prototype solutions fast
- Built and maintained a multi-platform design system: master, web, iOS, and Android component libraries
- Pitched the demo that closed the Fortune-100 partnership and led to acquisition
ux flows
pitch decks
rodio design system
BnbFinder
A niche travel-listings platform (now Savvy.com)
Designed and coded this travel platform end to end — consumer, owner, and admin apps — on my own design system and custom Tailwind framework.
Whiteboards to 8K subscribers, 4K+ paid, in under a year on a team of 3.
Product UX/UI Design Lead + Front-End Developer
Highlights:
- Coded fully responsive front-ends for all three apps in Elixir and React/Next.js
- Iterated from launch through a 2.0 release
- Demoed every two weeks to leadership, sales, and marketing
bnbfinder design system
pitch decks
Accomplishments
40+ Products
Led design at an agency and multiple startups, shipping across AI, data science, entertainment, travel, fintech and more.
And I've shipped the front-end too — hands-on from first sketch to production code.
#1 iPhone App
At Rocket I designed A Beautiful Mess, a photo editor that shot to #1 Paid on the App Store right after launch (shown below).
It stayed in the top 100 paid apps for over a year and earned millions of downloads.
Millions of Users
Designed apps that reached millions of downloads for Ellen, A Beautiful Mess, Dancefight and more.
And built web apps that thousands of people rely on every day.
Rocket
A boutique digital agency
I co-founded this agency and led design as we grew from two people to twenty over a decade. We designed and built apps and sites for startups and names like Ellen, DreamWorks, and The Economist — and became an ideation and prototyping lab for Warner Bros.
Co-Founder + Product Designer + Front-End Developer
Highlights:
- Hired and led a 20-person team across product, back-end, front-end, iOS, and Android
- Designed and shipped custom apps and websites across 30+ client projects
- Ran sales, marketing, and accounts across dozens of engagements
- Designed and built A Beautiful Mess, the photo editor that hit #1 Paid on the App Store
- Designed and built a multi-million-dollar CRM/CMS for one of the largest US auto-sales organizations
Dancefight
Product Design ConsultantA social voting app
I designed the core UX and final UIs for this seed-stage startup: onboarding, the main feed, the voting flow, and tournament brackets.
Timebomb
Co-Founder + Lead Product DesignerA conditional messaging app
I co-founded this messaging app and led design from whiteboard sketches through a 2.0 release. Native iOS and Android, team of 10.
The product helped us raise $3M from angels including Katy Perry and Warner Bros., and land a marketing partnership with Ellen.
