Derry Birkett · Resume

Product Design Leader

Systems · AI · Platform UX

18 years across enterprise software, scaleups, startups, and agencies. I sit at the intersection of craft and leadership — setting design direction and growing teams while staying inside the hard work. Most recently Head of Design at CloudBees, where I led the platform redesign, built the design system, and prototyped AI-native tooling.

Hybrid Barcelona & London, or Remote · UK & EU right to work · Open to permanent, fractional, or consultancy

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Barcelona / EUSaaS scale-up and platform rolesLondon / UKDirector and Head of Design framingUK FreelanceFractional and contract engagements

Experience

CloudBees

6 years
Head of DesignEnterprise SaaS · DevOps · Platform
  • Grew and led the design organisation from 3 to 9 designers
  • Led platform-wide redesign across CDRO and the Unify SaaS platform
  • Architected and shipped the CloudBees UI (CBUI) design system
  • Built and prototyped AI-native tooling during CloudBees AI Week
  • Owned UX strategy, navigation architecture, and research operations

Oracle NetSuite

UX LeadEnterprise SaaS · ERP
  • Led a team of 4 designers across NetSuite product surfaces
  • Contributed to Oracle's UI Catalog and UI Library
  • Drove design system adoption across the product organisation

Exabyte / Mat3ra

Product DesignerDeep Tech · Materials Science
  • UX and product design for scientific simulation platform

Agency & Freelance

~2008–2018
Art Director · UI Designer · UX LeadAgency · Brand · Digital
  • Art direction and digital design for Technogym, Hugo Boss, Esprit, and Telanto
  • UI design lead at L3 — Dribbble Design Award nominee
  • Designed and launched Lean Themes — a commercial WordPress theme business
  • UX lead at InEdicola, Lead Designer at Carro.me and Bikesoup

Skills

Design Leadership

  • Team building & mentoring
  • Design org structure
  • Hiring & growth frameworks
  • Cross-functional alignment
  • Research operations

Product Design

  • Platform & workflow UX
  • Information architecture
  • Interaction design
  • UX research
  • Prototyping

Design Systems

  • Token architecture
  • Component library design
  • Figma organisation
  • Documentation strategy
  • Adoption & enablement

AI & Tooling

  • AI-native UX design
  • Agentic workflows
  • Claude Code / LLM tooling
  • Evaluation frameworks
  • AI prototyping

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