# James Valladares > Product Designer Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/jamesvalladares Experienced product designer and product design manager. I'm proficient with Figma, building design systems, as well as helping to mature product design within an organization. My design journey has taken me through a number of fields such as e-commerce, telco, insurance, and cybersecurity, and my portfolio includes both consumer-facing startups and large enterprise B2B products. I believe in a holistic approach to design that encompasses visual design, interaction design, user research, and information architecture. I'm also a strong advocate for applying design thinking within agile product teams through the use of design sprints and workshops and believe that great ideas can come from anywhere within an organization. I'm always open to hearing from new connections, so feel free to shoot me a message. I'd love to chat and see how we can work together. Portfolio: www.jvalladares.com ## Work Experience ### Senior Product Designer @ SmithRx Jan 2025 – Present ### Founder @ Pixie Dust Labs Jan 2015 – Jan 2023 | Remote Pixie Dust Labs is a software design agency where I have passively designed numerous mobile apps and responsive web applications since founding it in 2015. ### Senior Product Design Manager @ Synack, Inc. Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area Player-coach role where I managed and grew a team of designers as well as led key product initiatives. • Managed and scaled up a strong design team in a competitive hiring environment. • Spearheaded the Synack Design System, achieving Synack's first scalable, mature React-based system, boosting product consistency and efficiency. • Matured and standardized design processes along with alongside breaking down silos between teams through regular design feedback sessions and critiques. • Played a key role in the strategic transition of our product from a white-glove service to a consumer-grade platform, aligning development with market needs and user accessibility. • Advanced the user research function by integrating evaluative research and new customer feedback channels, and implemented UX tools like Hotjar for insightful user behavior analysis. ### Principal Product Designer @ Synack, Inc. Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area As a design lead for Synack's missions journey team, we transformed a compliance-focused framework into a diverse, self-service marketplace. Through user research and iterative design, we expanded mission types beyond compliance, creating a digital storefront that addressed various customer needs. This initiative significantly increased missions revenue and helped pivot Synack from a pen-testing company to a comprehensive cybersecurity platform. ### Product Design Manager @ Walmart Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | San Bruno, California, United States In my second role at Walmart, I managed four mid- to senior-level designers on the User-Generated Content (UGC) team. The UGC team also included seven product managers and multiple engineers distributed across the U.S., Dublin, Tel Aviv and IDC. In this role, I worked to create an open and collaborative working environment. I worked closely with product leadership to always closely define problems so that our team could diverge and converge, exploring and rapidly testing multiple ideas. Day-to-day, my responsibilities included collaborating closely with individual designers to help provide feedback, facilitate brainstorms, remove roadblocks and overall ensure each project is following a design-thinking approach. I also engage regularly with leadership on all sides to ensure expectations are aligned and that our work is able to contribute effectively towards organizational goals. Our team was responsible for multiple areas, with the largest domain being ratings & reviews. We shipped robust features such as the review image gallery, redesigned write-a-review flow, and also worked closely with Aspectiva (a Walmart acquisition) to experiment in solving customer problems through newly acquired sentiment and language-analysis technology. ### Lead Product Designer @ Walmart Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Bruno, California When I began working at Walmart, I led the design for home services. Walmart offers home services in two forms: attached services, such as adding TV wall-mounting to the purchase of a TV, and standalone home services. This was an end-to-end role that required close collaboration with other product teams responsible for areas such as the product page, cart and checkout, and communications. I was the only designer dedicated to home services, and I worked with two product managers and multiple engineers in IDC and Sunnyvale/San Bruno. ### Senior Product Designer @ Asurion Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | San Mateo, California Asurion is a multi-billion dollar private company that drives a large percentage of its business through white-labeling its products and services (including phone insurance) through the major phone carriers. At Asurion, I am the design lead for the Asurion Sales Portal, which is the point of contact that Asurion has with carrier sales reps from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. • Product design lead for the Asurion Sales Portal, which is the point of contact between carrier sales reps at the point-of-sale and Asurion. • Redesigned the entire Asurion Sales Portal in React to improve visual aesthetics, better conform to users existing mental models and lay a foundation for a multi-carrier platform with an expanded feature set. • Manages discovery backlog for dual track sprint cycles to validate problems and hypotheses and map them to business goals. • Helped scale the portal across AT&T, Sprint and Verizon corporate stores and indirect stores • Helped to foster a team-based approach to research by introducing weekly local cross-functional store (customer) research trips. • Conducts qualitative research across the country to help identify user needs/problem, compensating behaviors and gauge user sentiment. This primarily takes the form of in-person contextual interviews and focus groups. • Leads moderated and unmoderated usability testing across the product. ### User Experience Designer @ Build.com Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | Chico, California Area Build.com is the fastest-growing online home improvement retailer and is consistently ranked in Baymard's top 25 ranking of e-commerce sites for best User Experience Performance (ranked ahead of other top-performing e-commerce sites such as Apple, Nike, Gap, Overstock, Etsy, and IKEA). • UX designer on the “Find Team”; responsible for simplifying the process of finding the right product out of Build’s one million+ products. • Redesigned functionality for all search facet types (filters). • Redesigned the Build Help Center to improve page architecture and usability. • Designed a site-wide autocomplete component with product suggestions. • Led research around rewards program that led to millions in increased annual profit. • Redesigned the Build mobile app onboarding process using After Effects and Lottie. • Redesigned the pro-signup process which accounted for 40% of Build’s revenue. • Recreated advanced brand awareness survey in-house, which directly saved $120k/year. ### Product Designer @ White Rabbit Group Inc Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Chico, California Area As a contractor for White Rabbit Group, a software development agency with a diverse portfolio of clients including Nike, Disney, Red Bull, PayPal, and AMD, I had the opportunity to work on various projects while also working at Build.com. My role focused on designing user interface interfaces for a range of companies, including: Firestorm - As one of the nation's leading private firefighting companies, I was tasked with redesigning their existing web application and developing new features such as an inventory management system. Abouttrees - I was responsible for designing a native iPhone and iPad application, as well as a web app counterpart for one of California's largest tree servicing companies. The app aimed to improve communication between office administration, estimators, and crew leads. DapIt - A mobile app startup in the gift-card space, I was responsible for designing the mobile app from the ground up, and working with the client to iterate on the business concept to arrive at a minimum viable product. ### UX Researcher @ Calculated Industries Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Carson City, NV • Dual-focus role where I reported to the VP of Marketing and Product Development Manager to discover and match customer needs with business goals. • Managed internal innovation effort in coordination with Innosite Consulting through a jobs-to-be-done framework. • Determined the viability of various prototypes and product concepts. • Worked closely with subject-matter-experts in various industries. • Conducted user interviews to uncover prototype usability insights. • Created use cases and user personas to determine marketing requirements for new products. ### Market Research Analyst @ Calculated Industries Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Carson City, NV • Launched surveys in coordination with multiple departments. • Oversaw app store optimization for line of top-grossing mobile apps. • Managed cross-functional team for mobile website implementation. • Created and optimized ad campaigns through A/B testing. ## Education ### BS in Business Administration, Entrepreneurship & Marketing UNH Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics ### Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Product Management University of Nevada, Reno ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jamesvalladares - Website: http://www.jvalladares.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/jamesvalladares JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/jamesvalladares/resume.json Last updated: 2026-02-23