01

Profile

Design systems practitioner with eleven years across product design and front-end engineering, currently leading a systems team that serves seven product squads. I work in the space between the two disciplines: tokens, components, contribution models and the governance that stops a library from quietly forking.

My approach is documentation-first. A component is not finished when it renders; it is finished when a designer and an engineer can each reach the same decision from the same page. I have led two library migrations, written accessibility criteria adopted as release gates, and run the review forum where teams propose changes.

I like teams that treat the system as a product with users, not as a folder of assets.

02

Selected work

Design system · 2024—2026

Meridian, a multi-brand component library

Rebuilt a fragmented UI kit into a single tokenised library serving three product brands from one codebase, with theme layers rather than forks.

Outcome — squads now adopt a new brand theme without touching component internals, and visual drift between products is caught in review instead of after release.

Accessibility · 2023—2024

Baseline: an accessibility release gate

Defined a plain-language conformance checklist for every component, paired with keyboard and screen-reader test notes engineers could follow without specialist training.

Outcome — accessibility moved from a pre-launch scramble to a routine step, and the checklist became the shared vocabulary for design review.

Documentation · 2022—2023

The contribution handbook

Wrote and maintained the guide that explains how a team proposes, prototypes and merges a new pattern — including when the answer should be "compose what exists".

Outcome — proposals arrive better scoped, and the systems team spends its review time on the genuinely new cases.

Front-end · 2021—2022

Token pipeline and theming

Built the pipeline that publishes a single source of design tokens to CSS custom properties, native platform formats and the design tool, in one release step.

Outcome — a colour or spacing decision is made once and lands everywhere, ending the long-running mismatch between design files and production.

03

Experience

2023 — PresentLisbon · Remote

Design Systems Lead

Halcyon Product Group

  • Lead a team of four designers and engineers owning the shared library, token pipeline and public documentation site.
  • Chair the fortnightly contribution forum where product squads propose patterns and retire ones that no longer earn their place.

2020 — 2023Porto · Hybrid

Senior Product Designer, Platform

Fieldnote Software

  • Designed the admin and permissions surfaces used by every customer team, and wrote the interaction specs engineering built from.
  • Introduced the first token set and component audit, which became the case for funding a dedicated systems function.

2018 — 2020Berlin

Product Designer

Kestrel Labs

  • Shipped the onboarding and account areas of a workflow tool, working directly alongside two engineers in a three-person squad.
  • Ran the recurring usability sessions and turned findings into a prioritised backlog the team actually worked through.

2015 — 2018Manchester

Interface Designer & Front-end Developer

Studio Ambrose

  • Designed and hand-built responsive interfaces for cultural and education clients, owning work from wireframe through to production CSS.
  • Established the studio's reusable markup patterns, shortening the setup phase on every subsequent project.
04

Capabilities

Practice

  • Design systems
  • Design tokens
  • Component APIs
  • Governance
  • Accessibility (WCAG)

Craft

  • Interaction design
  • Typography
  • Semantic HTML
  • Modern CSS
  • Prototyping

Collaboration

  • Technical writing
  • Design review
  • Mentoring
  • Workshop facilitation
  • Roadmapping
05

Education & certification

BA (Hons) Graphic Communication

Northgate School of Art. Final project on typographic systems for long-form reading on screen.

Graduated 2015

Accessible Interface Practice

Continuing professional certificate covering assistive technology testing and inclusive component patterns.

Completed 2022