Senior Product Designer Resume Example
The bar for senior product designers: strategic ownership of complex initiatives measured by business impact. Portfolios focusing only on visual polish get filtered out.
This resume is for senior product designers who lead complex, end-to-end design initiatives and mentor junior talent, but aren't yet responsible for headcount planning or department-wide design operations.
- Ownership of complex, cross-functional product initiatives from discovery to launch
- Evidence of mentorship and elevating design quality across the broader team
- Quantifiable business impact through user-centered design and strategic decision-making
- Summary focused on strategic ownership and leadership scope
- Experience bullets categorized by technical feature ownership and team-wide impact
- Skills section grouped by core design competencies and leadership capabilities
Dev Desai
Summary
Experience
- Architected the 'Variables' feature set for design systems, enabling 15+ enterprise customers to automate multi-mode theming and design-to-code tokens.
- Optimized the component property workflow, resulting in a 34% reduction in manual layer overrides and reducing design-to-development rework costs by $185K annually.
- Mentored 3 mid-level designers on systems thinking and technical prototyping, leading to the successful launch of 4 advanced prototyping features in the 2023 release cycle.
- Directed the redesign of the developer handoff experience, decreasing CSS inspection time by 28% for engineering teams through improved property visualization.
- Led end-to-end design for the Lyft Business dashboard, increasing corporate account activation from 22% to 37% through targeted user research synthesis and journey mapping.
- Prioritized a simplified ride-scheduling interface over advanced filtering options after usability testing revealed cognitive overload in high-stress transit scenarios.
- Built 22 reusable components for the 'Legos' design system, adopted by 6 product squads to standardize the driver-onboarding experience across iOS and Android.
- Spearheaded weekly design critiques with 12 engineers and PMs, reducing front-end implementation bugs by 42% through tighter design-to-code alignment.
- Designed the 'Safety Toolkit' interface for the Uber driver app, utilized by 3.5M drivers to access emergency assistance and real-time trip sharing features.
- Conducted 14 usability testing sessions for the Uber Freight carrier app, identifying navigation friction that informed a complete information architecture overhaul.
- Refined the driver earnings visualization and transparency tools, resulting in a 26% decrease in support tickets related to payment inquiries over two quarters.
Education
Skills
Product Design · User Research · Interaction Design · Visual Design · Prototyping · Design Systems · Figma · Design Strategy · Design Leadership · Mentorship · Stakeholder Management · Product Thinking · Design Ops · Team Collaboration · Design Critique
What makes this resume effective
- This resume meets the hiring bar for a senior product designer by demonstrating strategic feature ownership, quantifiable process improvements, and active mentorship of junior staff.
- Notice how Dev’s work on the 'Variables' feature at Figma shows deep systems thinking and the ability to deliver technical tools for enterprise-level customers.
- The resume shows leadership by highlighting how Dev spearheaded weekly design critiques at Lyft, which directly reduced front-end implementation bugs by 42%.
How to write better bullet points
Designed the dashboard for corporate users.
Led end-to-end design for the Lyft Business dashboard, increasing corporate account activation from 22% to 37% through user research synthesis.
It moves from a passive task description to a clear statement of leadership and measurable business success.
Helped junior designers with their work.
Mentored 3 mid-level designers on systems thinking, leading to the successful launch of 4 advanced prototyping features in the 2023 release cycle.
It quantifies the mentorship and ties it directly to successful product delivery outcomes.
Ran design critiques for the engineering team.
Spearheaded weekly design critiques with 12 engineers and PMs, reducing front-end implementation bugs by 42% through tighter design-to-code alignment.
It demonstrates the ability to drive cross-functional efficiency and improve technical quality through design leadership.
Senior Product Designer resume writing tips
- Highlight how your design decisions directly moved a business metric, like conversion rates or support ticket reduction.
- Detail instances where you mentored others or improved team processes to show leadership without a manager title.
- Showcase your ability to handle ambiguity by describing how you prioritized features based on user research findings.
Common mistakes
- Focusing only on visual polish rather than the strategic 'why' behind design decisions and their impact on the business.
- Omitting the impact of mentorship or cross-functional collaboration, which are essential expectations at the senior level.
- Listing generic tasks instead of specific ownership of high-impact features or design systems.
Frequently asked questions
Is this resume right for someone with 5 years of experience? Yes if you have shifted from executing tickets to shaping product strategy and mentoring others, rather than just focusing on UI execution.
Yes if you have shifted from executing tickets to shaping product strategy and mentoring others, rather than just focusing on UI execution.
Yes, if you have moved beyond executing tickets to shaping product strategy and mentoring others. It is less suitable if your work is still primarily focused on UI execution under the direction of a lead designer.
What if my background is in agencies rather than in-house product teams? Yes, by framing agency projects as ownership cycles that influenced the client’s long-term product roadmap rather than just asset delivery.
Yes, by framing agency projects as ownership cycles that influenced the client’s long-term product roadmap rather than just asset delivery.
You can adapt this by framing your agency projects as product ownership cycles. Highlight long-term impact and how you influenced the client's product roadmap rather than just delivering assets.
What if I don't have access to specific conversion metrics? Focus on process improvements, qualitative user feedback, or internal efficiency gains like design system adoption if hard metrics are unavailable.
Focus on process improvements, qualitative user feedback, or internal efficiency gains like design system adoption if hard metrics are unavailable.
You can emphasize process improvements or user feedback instead. In this resume, Dev Desai uses a mix of hard metrics like the 34% reduction in overrides and qualitative outcomes like standardized driver-onboarding.
How much should I change before applying? Retain the ownership-focused structure, but update the design stack and feature types to match your specific professional history and expertise.
Retain the ownership-focused structure, but update the design stack and feature types to match your specific professional history and expertise.
The structure and framing of ownership should remain, but the specific technologies and feature types must match your history. You should ensure your skills section reflects the specific design stack required by the target company.
What do hiring managers focus on at this level? They prioritize candidates who demonstrate independent problem-solving for ambiguous tasks and the ability to scale impact through design systems.
They prioritize candidates who demonstrate independent problem-solving for ambiguous tasks and the ability to scale impact through design systems.
They look for the ability to work independently on high-stakes, ambiguous problems. Evidence of cross-functional influence and the ability to scale design impact through systems or mentorship are the primary signals they seek.
Related resume examples
Get a Senior Product Designer resume recruiters expect
Use this example as a base and tailor it to your job description in seconds.
Generate my resume