Product design leader · player-coach · AI-native since 2022

Flagship products at platform scale,
0→1 at founder speed.

Fifteen years of product design across fintech, HR tech, education, and enterprise SaaS — leading design at $290B scale on BILL's Accountant Console, founding designer on seven 0→1 products, and shipping AI-native products solo in weeks. I lead the team and still ship the work.

$290B+

Payment throughput, BILL

$32M→$40M

ARR grown, performance product

7×

0→1 products as founding designer

15 yrs

Designing & leading teams

Today

Selected flagship work

$290B scale Senior Lead Product Designer Player-coach

Turning a feature backlog into a centralized insights system at $290B scale.

BILL's Accountant Console served 700+ firms, but reporting had grown as a queue of one-off features. I treated it as a single surface — designing the framework before the polish, for the firm size that hurts most, then scaling up — and led the design team that shipped it.

Unified reporting into one insights system across 700+ accounting firms
Lifted report view-frequency 62% by designing for real firm workflows
Led the design effort as a player-coach — set direction and shipped pixels

View case study

0→1 · AI co-pilot Founding designer Napkin → ~$1M pre-seed

Designing an AI co-pilot for product teams — napkin to ~$1M pre-seed in 11 weeks.

Verdi packaged a sharp product methodology into a multiplayer co-pilot. I picked the methodology, made it multiplayer-first because the product was useless solo, and built AI that captures the team's thinking instead of replacing it.

Napkin sketch to a funded product in 11 weeks
Helped raise ~$1M pre-seed as the founding designer
Set the product's methodology, IA, and multiplayer model end to end

View case study

History

Enterprise scale · design systems · 0→1

Kuali — standardized UI across product teams

KualiDesign Manager · Player-coach

Standardizing the UI across six product teams.

Hired to coach a growing design team. The system became the work — a shared UI language and the "Kuali UI Guild" that outlived me.

6 product teams · UCSD renewal saved

audience.ioDesign lead · 2-yr retainer

One system, every client's brand.

Built a white-label design system from scratch while advising the CEO and Head of Design — what flexes per client, what stays locked.

Design system · multi-tenant theming

Bridge Skill Assessments — Admin, Manager, and Employee surfaces

Instructure · BridgeProduct designer

Adding skill assessments to a learning platform.

Designed three users as one system — learner, manager, and admin — and made the org chart the navigation, validated with paying prospects before code.

New product line · LMS + HR

Sendola

SendolaDesign lead · 2023–24

Building the shipping engine for a funded fintech.

Sendola moves money across borders for migrant workers. I joined a small in-house team — brand and a junior designer, but no shipping engine — set the direction, organized the work, and led them to ship across web, mobile, and the admin console.

Web · Mobile · Admin · under NDA

About

Lāʻie, Hawaiʻi

Hi, I'm Aaron.

A product designer, builder, and team leader — about fifteen years in. I work the whole range: platform scale at BILL, Kuali, and Instructure, and 0→1 as a founding designer on seven products that raised more than $2M.

I'm a founder too. I co-founded ikongo (a BPO in the Philippines, ~$8M first year), built and sold an LMS, and run Spaceketeer Studio — my design-lead and founding-designer practice since 2022. AI-native since the start: I've shipped a live iOS app, a JLPT SaaS, and this kind of work solo, in weeks.

I believe AI doesn't replace taste — it makes taste the only thing still scarce. The designers who learn to ship at founder speed and operate at platform scale get to build whatever they want next. I'm one of them.

Enterprise SaaS Fintech HR tech Education Design systems AI-native 0→1

Let's build something worth shipping.

Looking for a product design leadership or design management role on a team that values craft and leadership in the same person. Based in Lāʻie, Hawaiʻi — remote, open to relocation for the right team.

Get in touch → Download résumé

Flagship products at platform scale,0→1 at founder speed.