# David Cotton > Product Manager | Product Designer | Music (software) industry sage Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/davidcotton ‘Workflow first’ approach to user-centric design. Dedication to crafting elegant, frictionless, and intuitive experiences for customers regardless of the platform. System-level thinker with vast experience in designing purpose-built features and services for desktop, web, and mobile, as well as helping to architect and stand-up entire ecosystems. Product owner who can drive designs from conception through to completion. Incredible track record for shipping products on time and within scope. Great to have on a team, can wear many hats, and is incredibly collaborative and nice. ## Work Experience ### Sr. Product Manager @ Antares Audio Technologies (Auto-Tune®) Jan 2024 – Present Leading cross-functional teams to drive product development from conception to completion with a user-centric focus • Collaborating with designers and developers to design and deliver innovative solutions. • Utilizing deep industry domain expertise and data-driven analysis to continuously refine our products and meet the needs of an evolving and inspiring collection of personas. ### Lead Product Designer @ Avid Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | Berkeley, California, United States Drove a strategic vision to court and acquire a new generation of musicians and creators by crafting innovative new products, features, and services that appealed to these new persona. Applied a persona-driven, user-centric design approach to prototype, wireframe, and validate new capabilities. Gathered technical requirements, wrote definition, and led the SCRUM team(s) efforts along with other cross-functional groups as the product owner, taking these ideas all the way from conception thru completion. • Created the Sketch Window in Pro Tools, along with the companion iOS application, to bring non-linear editing to the feature-set in a clever and unique fashion. • Designed and drove development of the GrooveCell and SynthCell plug-ins to bring simple yet powerful synthesis and rhythm programming to all Pro Tools customers • Released the Pro Tools scripting SDK, an open, language independent API that gives users access to control the application to perform tasks automatically. • Pro Tools to Sibelius interoperability allows bi-directional communication between these two flag-ship Avid products. ### Sr Principal Product Designer @ Avid Jan 2015 – Jan 2022 | Berkeley, California, United States Made Pro Tools the most full-featured audio application by adding innovative new capabilities or by identifying workflow deficiencies and providing best-in-class solutions. • Designed features, captured requirements, wrote definition, and drove SCRUM team activities. • Interfaced with customers, studios, a large well-curated beta community, and partners, while also leveraging decades of industry experience and resources to help identify new strategic innovations to bring to market and legacy pain-points to address. • Responsible for countless features, such as: ARA2.0 support and Melodyne integration, Clip Effects, Ableton Link support, EQ curves, Continuous music creation, and retrospective MIDI. ### Producer @ Leapfrog Jan 2006 – Jan 2015 | Emeryville, CA Designed software applications and services for connecting web-enabled toys and devices to the Leapfrog ecosystem. • Designed and defined requirements for the ‘Leapfrog Connect’ application (which has become the longest running product in the company portfolio due to the innovative plug-in architecture). • Prototyped and user-tested all designs for software, services, and interactive content using HTML/CSS/JS or Flash/Actionscript. ### Test Engineer @ Digidesign Jan 2004 – Jan 2006 | Daly City, CA Using the assets acquired from Rocket Network, helped to develop the ‘DigiDelivery’ internet appliance for network and internet based media distribution and sharing. • Validated the correct/best server hardware for OEM. • Validated both client-side and server-side software. • Joined the plug-in group and helped design and validate a plethora of Avid audio plug-ins. ### Test Engineer @ Rocket Network Jan 1999 – Jan 2004 Helped to build a dynamic system to allow musicians to collaborate on projects over the internet. It was a classic start-up roll where everyone wore lots of hats. • Blackbox testing of the Rocket Network server and client application. • Client integration testing with host software DAWs by: Steinberg, Emagic, MOTU, and Avid. ### Recording Engineer @ Infinite Studios Jan 1998 – Jan 1999 small studio recording hip-hop, rap, and some gospel... ### Recording Engineer @ Studio 880 Jan 1997 – Jan 1998 Big rock and roll studio... ## Education ### Saint Michael's College ### HTML/CSS/JS Bay Area Video Coalition ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/daveyc - Portfolio: https://www.time-ruler.com - Portfolio: https://www.time-ruler.com/design-portfolio --- Source: https://flows.cv/davidcotton JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/davidcotton/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13