# Daniel Kalafus > Director of User Experience, Product Design Manager | Product Strategy & UX Strategy | Service Design & Design Thinking | Stakeholder Alignment | User research & data-driven design | Mentorship | Avid Bicyclist Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/danielkalafus I'm a UX design leader who specializes in delivering creative solutions for complex problem spaces. I've worked in areas ranging from IT systems observability to operational risk analysis to fixed-income trading systems. Whether as a designer or manager, I enjoy the challenges of learning about new domains and understanding systems, and helping teams create solutions for them. I thrive in highly collaborative environments, with a culture of learning and continuous improvement. I believe the best products come from places where people feel safe taking risks, and where teams have the agility to release quickly and adjust based on customer data and feedback. I'm looking for a hands-on "player-coach" management position in User Experience or Product Design, leading a small (<10 person) team that's looking to scale, in numbers and/or impact. I’m focusing on small-to-midsize companies (250-2000 people), particularly B2B and enterprise companies with technical or data-driven products. Open to remote roles, or in-person and hybrid roles in the SF Bay Area. ## Work Experience ### Leader, UI/UX Engineering @ AppDynamics Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area Led experience strategy for Cisco’s next-generation observability product, helping to rescue a stalled project and bring it to launch. * Reduced initial configuration time from 3-6 months to 30-60 minutes, allowing customers to get immediate value from the product * Aligned product, engineering, design and marketing teams with end-to-end narratives that focused teams on delivering user value instead of feature lists * Built and managed team of four senior-level employees across multiple time zones, and created effective collaboration processes with Engineering and Product teams ### Principal Product Designer @ AppDynamics Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area Delivered product designs and experience strategy for a leading observability company. * Established vision for the company’s next-generation observability product (as co-lead) * Created a guided IT troubleshooting feature, collaborating with data scientists to use "explainable AI" to support expert decision making * Organized and led a cross functional hackathon team, helping create an AI-based feature that increased alert specificity by over 20x ### Principal User Experience Architect @ Lab49 Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Greater New York City Area Product design and strategy consulting for financial industry clients, from initial research and product definition through detailed design and development. Projects included: * Citigroup: Led discovery and design in a ground-up redesign of The Yield Book, the industry-leading bond analytics platform. Guided developers and business owners in an Agile process, employing user research to ensure a quality working product. ­ * Risk analytics platform: Defined product roadmap for iterative release of a platform for assessing enterprise risk across a major international bank. Led team designing interactive data visualizations, dashboards and reporting tools. ­* Bond Trading workflow: Designed tools to streamline workflow for users on a fast­-paced trading floor by aggregating bids and offers with contextual analytics data ­* Design Thinking workshops: Led efforts to improve knowledge sharing and employee engagement at Lab49, while teaching consultants the tools of Design Thinking ### Senior User Experience Architect @ EMC Consulting Jan 2010 – Jan 2015 | New York, NY Experience design and strategy consulting for clients across a range of industries, specializing in complex transactional systems and enterprise social networks. Engagements varied from short 6-week design/concepting projects to in-depth engagements of over a year, spanning the entire product life cycle. Clients included JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley and Lightstorm Entertainment. ### Information Architect @ Gerson Lehrman Group Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 | New York, NY Information architecture and interaction design for a system of web applications supporting GLG's core business. Worked with a team of product managers, developers, designers and QA in an Agile (Scrum) environment to create and improve tools for customers, consultants and internal users. Created interactive prototypes and conducted user tests to improve product usability. ### Information Architect @ Deutsch Jan 2007 – Jan 2008 | New York, NY Information architecture of websites and web applications, from requirements gathering to creation of wireframes, site maps, multi-channel campaign flows, and functional specifications. Clients included Verizon, Ortho, Novartis, Sanofi Pasteur, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. ### Senior Producer & Information Architect @ Wechsler Ross & Partners Jan 2005 – Jan 2007 | New York, NY Designed marketing websites and portals for clients in the financial services industry. Managed projects from requirements gathering through design and production, including supervising freelancers. Clients included Chase Home Finance, AARP, Bear Stearns and Metalmark Capital. ### Web Manager @ Stanford University School of Earth SciencesS Jan 2002 – Jan 2005 | Stanford, CA * Transitioned the school’s web offerings from a group of uncoordinated, isolated websites to a user-centered, centrally-managed website and intranet * Improved user access and navigation by utilizing user research and visitor log analysis to inform a complete information architecture redesign * Conducted user research, employing card-sorting and one-on-one interviews to identify usability issues and validate nomenclature and content categorization * Created and executed usability testing plans, employing paper and HTML prototypes * Supervised end-to-end development of new web applications * Improved usability and system stability by designing a permissions-based security model for human resource directory and inventory database web applications * Coordinated efforts with web authors to ensure usability and Section 508 accessibility compliance ### Information Architect and Section Lead (Volunteer) @ Burning Man Web Team Jan 2001 – Jan 2005 * Led user experience projects, designing architectures for new and expanded features and managing volunteer efforts to implement new plans * Conducted user research to communicate visitor needs to design and development teams * Managed content and architecture of a 280-page section of the Burning Man website * Active in core team decisions regarding site design, architecture, and management ### Intranet manager / Web developer @ Incyte Genomics Jan 2000 – Jan 2001 | Palo Alto, CA * Created automated reporting tools for supplying data pipeline status information to management and scientific teams * Designed and built intranet interfaces to data repositories for genomic data production projects * Created and optimized user interface designs for intranet CGI web applications * Fixed chronic web server stability problems, achieving 100% uptime for production and development documentation servers ### Bioinformatics Analyst @ Incyte Genomics Jan 1999 – Jan 2000 | Palo Alto, CA Computational analysis of human genomic DNA sequence data as part of an effort to discover novel pharmaceutically relevant genes. Created software tools using Perl, sed/awk and Unix shell scripting. ## Education ### B.S. in Cellular & Molecular Biology University of Michigan ### M.S. in Biomedical Sciences (Molecular Biology) UC San Diego ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dankalafus --- Source: https://flows.cv/danielkalafus JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/danielkalafus/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13