Derry Birkett

Design Director & Design Engineer

I design and I build. 20+ years shipping products — from research to React, from wireframes to working code. I lead design teams, architect design systems, and get my hands dirty with AI agents, prototypes, and production frontends. Currently exploring where design meets engineering meets AI. See demos at monospace.studio/blog

Professional Experience

Designer, Manager & Head of UX

CloudBees

2019 — Present
  • —Grew design team 3 to 9 across product UX, design systems and AI/agents
  • —Led core-product redesign customers called a 'quantum leap' — 100% adoption
  • —Built first AI Chatbot Dashboard (Beebop) at hackathon; prototyped agentic onboarding

Design System Lead

Oracle NetSuite

2016 — 2019
  • —Led team of 4 (2 UX, 1 Visual, 1 Content Strategy)
  • —Ran design sprint to define refresh; shipped UI Catalog and UI Library
  • —Documentation became canonical cross-org reference for 300+ engineers

Lead UX Designer

Freelance

2011 — 2016
  • —Telanto: 2-person team, shipped design system, brand refresh, full marketing site
  • —Exabyte/Mat3ra: Solo designer, reframed product from tool to platform onboarding
  • —IESE: Persona review, story-mapping, IA, wireframes and working prototype demos

Founder

ShortStayApartment

2007 — 2011
  • —Bootstrapped SaaS rental platform to 500+ property listings
  • —Successful acquisition exit in 2011

Creative Web & UX Designer

Various Agencies

2001 — 2006
  • —UX design for agencies in London, Barcelona and Dublin

Education

BA Systems Analysis & Design

University of the West of England, Bristol

1995 — 1999