Product Design Leader · Hybrid Barcelona & London, or Remote · UK & EU right to work · ● Open to roles
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.
About
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 →Years
18
Enterprise, scaleup, startup, agency
Reports led
3 → 9
Design org scale
Range
UK · EU · US
Product, brand, research, AI labs
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.
Current thinking
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.
The Audit Agent Doesn't Get Bored
2026Engineering
The Audit Agent Doesn't Get Bored
I built an agent whose only job is to catch when my autonomous pipeline breaks. It worked perfectly for two weeks straight. The thing it caught was me.
The Skills That Only Worked On One Machine
2026Engineering
The Skills That Only Worked On One Machine
I opened Claude Code on my phone mid-task and /pickup didn't exist. The cause was a submodule nobody had initialized, and the fix taught me why --recursive is the wrong default.
The Research Problem I Solved with a Slash Command
2026Engineering
The Research Problem I Solved with a Slash Command
A Claude Code skill that turns URL pasting into three persistent artefacts: a public essay, an internal signal log, and roadmap backlog items.
Stateless and Blind: Two Gaps Every Agent Eventually Hits
2026Engineering
Stateless and Blind: Two Gaps Every Agent Eventually Hits
TinyFish and Hermes Agent represent the two gaps most agent stacks hit: real-time web access and persistent cross-session learning.
Learning by Archiving Projects
2026Engineering
Learning by Archiving Projects
What three retired systems-thinking projects taught me about AI agents, publishing loops, and the difference between scaffolding and learning.
ArticleDiscovery without the sprint
Product opportunities don't wait for your next research sprint. NVSBL is a test of whether autonomous agents can keep scanning while you're building.
ArticleBuilding a Portfolio Web App: Agents, HITL, and 99 RES
How I rebuilt my portfolio as a real web app, what the HITL + agent development loop actually looks like, and what 99 RES means when you own your stack.
ArticleMonospace Design System
A calm, mobile-first design system — tokens, components, nine interactive patterns, and a shadcn registry theme.
Moirai: Orchestrating Thin LLM Agents Without the Bespoke Wiring
2026Engineering
Moirai: Orchestrating Thin LLM Agents Without the Bespoke Wiring
How I extracted two LLM agents — Curator and Auditor — into independent repos, then built an orchestrator that lets any of my projects install them with one command.
AgentCurator
A scheduled read-only agent that scans the codebase overnight and files GitHub issues for dead exports, oversized files, and stale placeholders — without ever touching the code.
