Product Design Leadership for SaaS, AI, and Enterprise Products.
Hi, I'm Derry Birkett. I help SaaS and AI companies simplify complex products, scale design systems, and deliver measurable product outcomes. Previously I led UX at CloudBees and delivered design systems and enterprise product initiatives for Oracle NetSuite.
18 years. Enterprise, scaleup, agency, 0→1.
I work best where depth matters: untangling information architecture, building research rigour, and setting the quality standards that make the team around me better.
About me →18
Enterprise, scaleup, startup, agency
3 → 9
Design org scale
UK · EU · US
Product, brand, research, AI labs
Selected work
All cases →Designed at scale. Led, hired, and shipped.
Four anchor cases show the through-line: organisation design at CloudBees, enterprise systems at Oracle Netsuite, 0→1 product work at Exabyte, and full-stack UX leadership at Telanto.
Building a UX function inside a pre-IPO DevOps enterprise
Head of Design · 3 → 9 reports
Designing a design system inside an enterprise that already had one
Lead Designer · 3–4 designers
Designing the platform when the product is a research tool
Solo Design Lead · 1 designer in a 4-person startup
Lead UX, content, brand and design system as a team of two
Lead UX · 2 (Derry + 1 engineer)
The work is shifting again.
I write about design systems, UX maturity, and AI-assisted product work, and keep a blog archive of demos and experiments when the idea needs to be felt rather than explained.
