# Elyse Holladay > design systems engineer, chasing innovation, technical generalist Location: Berkeley, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/elyseholladay I’m a technical generalist, Design Systems expert, and builder. 10+ years experience in design, software development, and product management on cross-functional teams, with a focus on Design Systems, at Indeed, RetailMeNot, Square Root (acquired), Bazaarvoice. I was tapped to start the first Design System team for Indeed, building the system that enabled Indeed eng teams to move from Java to React. As a PM, I validated and managed the introduction of a new technical Design System solution, rolled out to 150+ internal teams. Prior to Indeed, I created design system/component library projects at three companies, built curriculum for and taught hundreds of hours of technical training content, and was invited to speak at well-known industry events CSSConf Berlin and Clarity Conference. I spent the last two years on a solo entrepreneurship adventure, building a personal style coaching business from the ground up, hitting $80k in year one, with a conversion rate of 15%. In 2023, I helped launch Hello Generalist with an ex-Yelp CoS, wearing design and eng hats. HG is a flexible job marketplace for startup operators that generated a profitable $175,000 in our first six months, with companies repeat hiring 4+ operators from the platform. As a generalist, I pride myself on possessing hands-on experience in every step of the product development process. I can flex from wireframing and building a feature, to writing OKRs and driving product initiatives. As a natural big-picture thinker, I do my best work in the ambiguous place between design and dev, customer and business, vision and tactics. I’m a clear communicator with high EQ, excellent at conveying complex topics clearly. I’m extraordinarily organized, with an intuitive sense of the next right steps—and the ability to define and communicate them to bring a team along with me. ## Work Experience ### Staff Design Engineer @ Color Jan 2023 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States Owning the Design System, enabling Color's Design and Engineering teams to build intuitive, localized, and accessible UI that helps people understand their cancer risk and get support through their cancer journey. Working to establish Design System best practices and metrics, create excellent frontend architecture, improve components in React and Figma, create excellent references and documentation, and expand a11y and front-end skillsets across the org. ### Founding Engineer & Designer @ Hello Generalist Jan 2023 – Present ### Founder/Owner @ unfolding.style Jan 2020 – Jan 2023 — Created a personal style development program that teaches people how to define their personal style, shop strategically, and feel confident in their clothes. — Grew the business from 0-100k with <5000 person audience, no paid ads, in 1.5 years. Program conversion averages 14.78% from application to enroll. — Built a product customers love. Developed program curriculum and tools that 60% of program alumni continue to use after 6 months. 30% of clients renew their program access. — Solo entrepreneur, handling product design and development, positioning, marketing and content development, sales, operations, and finance. ### Product Manager @ Indeed.com Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Austin, Texas, United States Validated a rewrite of an outdated component library used by 150+ internal projects. Employed qual and quant validation methods including user research sessions, technical and UX design reviews, plus system usage metrics (components used, components overridden, versions in use). As sole PM, defined team metrics and OKRs alongside UX/Eng directors, maintained product roadmap and progress reports, and ran team ceremonies for a mixed design/development team. ### Software Engineer @ Indeed.com Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Austin, Texas, United States — Architected and built CSS and Sass primitives and components for the initial Design System that enabled Indeed eng teams to move from Java to React. — Coordinated content creation and logistics for internal trainings in Austin and Tokyo with 2 weeks notice, allowing team members to deliver 40+ hours of training content. — Wrote developer-facing technical documentation for components and front-end best practices. ### Senior User Interface Engineer @ RetailMeNot, Inc. Jan 2014 – Jan 2017 | Austin, Texas, United States Led creation of internal Design System that enabled a complete visual redesign of retailmenot.com. Contributed 41% of code committed to the component library, written documentation, and training materials. ### Bootcamp Instructor @ MakerSquare - School of Software Engineering Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 Curriculum development and lead instruction for the front-end web development course. Acquired by HackReactor. As a front-end developer, delivered design, code, and copywriting for a redesigned makersquare.com. Created development team processes and workflow. ### Frontend Developer @ Square Root, Inc. Jan 2012 – Jan 2014 | Austin, Texas, United States Built a modular, responsive CSS framework for Rails app for retail franchise operations. Led a major redesign and rearchitecture and created a component library. ### Senior User Interface Designer @ Bazaarvoice Jan 2009 – Jan 2012 Design, CSS, research, and prototyping. Developed SmartDisplay templates, reducing development time from 35 hrs to 12. Clients included Best Buy, Nike, Golfsmith, Ford, Microsoft. Redesigned product search UI, reducing successful time to results by 65%. ### Graphic Designer @ BMG Jan 2008 – Jan 2009 ### Graphic Web Designer @ Imarc Jan 2008 – Jan 2008 ## Education ### Bachelor of Science - BS in Graphic Design Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/elyseholladay - Portfolio: https://elyseholladay.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/elyseholladay JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/elyseholladay/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-11