Human-Centered Technology
Design and Development
From advertising & marketing to senior frontend software engineering.
A career focused on building accessible experiences that serve everyone.
Career Timeline
Indeed Journey: Scaling Impact
Design Engineer of Design Technology (2018-2019)
In this role, our team coordinated with global product teams to implement improvements for internal software, delivering changes for Leadership Objectives and Key Results (OKR) initiatives in a quick-growth-phase environment.
One of our most impactful projects was improving company-wide internal accessibility of test statistics. We created visual representations of statistics for "at a glance" readouts with a pattern + color pairing to support Positive, Neutral, and Negative measurements across contrasts and vision types.
UX Developer of Internal Platforms (2019-2022)
Our team facilitated component adoption through a growth-oriented quick response team. We deployed upgrades and design system adoption, enabling teams with knowledge of design system components for swift development.
Our team of UX Developers took on ownership of the Internal Tools Component Library (IntCL) for Internal UX initiatives. From early stages of the project we worked with our UX designers to improve upon the existing components. We met with individuals working daily with the internal applications to discuss the changes to the components. From those sessions we prototyped and tested the updated components and worked with teams to adopt the changes through documentation, training, or direct contribution to their codebases.
Senior SWE, Frontend (2022-2025)
The next step of my Indeed journey came when our cross-functional team tackled one of our biggest challenges: reducing customer support "Swivel Seat" and tool workflow inefficiencies. Overall leading to reduction in time to resolution metrics by 3-6 minutes while improving CS survey responses.
As the Lead UX Developer, our team partnered with Design and Research to interview CS Reps and CS management to understand bottlenecks and workflow inefficiencies. We worked to plan changes through Figma and Lean UX Practices and reviewed our approach with other SWEs on the team.
Leadership & Mentoring: Lifting Others Up
Throughout my career, I've found that the most rewarding aspect of leadership is connecting with others and helping lift one another up. Working through my own challenges and imposter feelings has helped me communicate with others who may be on a similar path.
One of my proudest moments was helping a colleague transition from QAAE into a SWE role. She was a long-term team member who asked for help with JavaScript and TypeScript training. We discussed her training lessons directly as she worked through her course. We discussed concepts verbally; through this I was able to knowledge share and help analogize the idiosyncrasies of syntax to physical world examples, which helped solidify her understanding.
The most rewarding part was seeing the smile and pride she had when she passed her assessment and joined the team as a Software Engineer. It's moments like these that remind me why ensemble building, trust, and communication are the most important parts of working with others to tackle challenges.
Accessibility: Building for Everyone
My focus on WCAG accessibility stems from a fundamental belief: differences in physical, visual, auditory abilities and experience (temporary, or otherwise) should never be limiting factors. We can do nearly anything we put our minds to with technology and the skills and patterns therein. I believe we can and should strive to help everyone have access to digital experiences.
The pattern+color system I built for statistical measurements in an internal application exemplifies this philosophy. Used throughout Indeed by executives, managers, and employees, this system helped the visually impaired and colorblind understand data at a glance. It also improved accessibility for everyone viewing presentations on low contrast or uncalibrated displays in conference rooms where colors might be "washed out" on projectors or TV monitors.
Adding the patterns created a visual "texture" experience so it could be understood through multiple perception points and therefore have more cognitive clarity in representation.
The Future: Human-AI Collaboration
Looking ahead, I hope to continue my journey in leading and developing meaningful human-computer interactions. I'm especially excited about working with robotics and AI-adjacent technologies to improve how we will all interact with technology in the future.
I want to help build a better future where humans can have a platinum age of creative flow, and work with quality AI to assist in goals and missions. I hope to see our humanity evolve away from "mastering robotics and AI" to growing as a race that can work together with technological intelligences; continuing to reach distances across star systems and beyond.
Like a sculptor can carve with a chisel as well as a surgeon can operate with a scalpel, it takes practice and understanding the tool to use it effectively. I approach working with AI as Generative Design, or as code assistants through practice and measured approaches. It's like working with a chisel or a carving knife; how you practice, understand nuance, and work with a tool will help determine and improve the outcomes.
Key Learnings
Over the years, I've found that the most important thing is to understand the problem you're trying to solve. Work with a great and reliable team of mindful people, and leverage the tools you have at your disposal. When you build trust and ensemble, when you measure scientifically your hypothesis in design and development, you can achieve great results to propel the human race forward. We don't need blame culture in our industry. We need to solve for issues and deliver measured improvements/results.
The journey from marketing to senior frontend engineering has taught me that technology is at its best when humanity learns to wield it well, and for the good. Whether it's making government services more accessible, improving customer support workflows, or mentoring the next generation of developers, the goal remains the same: Build experiences that improve lives, and work for everyone.