Building high-performing
design teams

Seven years of hiring, developing, and retaining world-class product design and research talent at BigCommerce — through hypergrowth, layoffs, global restructures, and a pandemic.

During my time at BigCommerce, I scaled a design and research org from a small SF team to a global function of 16— and then navigated attrition while still able to promote several members of the team, founding the Platform Design team, and keeping the culture intact.

Great teams don't happen by accident.

They need the right hiring infrastructure, the right structure, and the right conditions to grow.

Hiring & coaching

Building the infrastructure for great talent

When I became Product Design Manager, very little structure existed.

I developed the interview loop, take-home challenge, and rubrics — then created separate challenges for UX writers and design manager candidates. I also built the UX Research and UX Writing career ladders from scratch.

On the career side, I wanted people to be able to move like a jungle gym, not just climb a ladder. As most of the team reached Senior level and started asking what came next, I worked with my two manager reports in FigJam to redefine what Lead Designer actually meant — so that performance and promotion conversations were grounded in shared definitions, not whoever you happened to ask.

Coaching is a daily practice: I've consistently pushed designers toward work that stretches them, helped team members develop storytelling and be more proactive partners to engineering, and positioned research to be more influential and strategic.

Some accomplishments

Hired the org's first UX writer — built the case, wrote the JD, designed the whiteboard challenge
Pathways built for IC, Manager, UX Research, and UX Writing tracks
$300/person learning budget secured for two consecutive years
Promoted 60% of the team during my time at BigCommerce