# Konstantinos Giannakis > Product design leadership at NEXT Insurance | Ex-Meta, Gusto, Bill.com | PhD Human-Computer Interaction Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/konstantinosgiannakis For the past 15+ years, I've been leading and growing high performance product design teams at high growth startups and large organizations in a diverse range of application domains, including both business and consumer-facing products. My experience has allowed me to evolve those teams from a handful of folks to teams of 10+ members, spanning product design, research, and content strategy. Our hard work has made a positive impact on people's lives while delivering exceptional business results. Working cross-functionally, I have significant experience articulating a compelling vision, effectively advocating for design, and engaging executive leadership across an organization. I've also been building experience hiring and empowering other senior leaders since 2018. ## Work Experience ### Head of Product Design & Research @ Next Insurance Jan 2023 – Present | Palo Alto, California, United States ### Senior Product Design Manager, Commerce @ Meta Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | Menlo Park, California, United States Led teams of 10+ members, including managers and individual contributors, responsible for new advertiser tools and the onsite buyer experience on Facebook and Instagram. Directly contributed to Commerce exceeding top-line goals, helping Meta mitigate signal loss and establish a new multi-billion revenue stream. Delivered the long-term vision for the onsite buyer experience across Meta’s family of apps, ensuring strong buy-in from senior cross-functional leadership. Enabled successful execution of product roadmaps by addressing capacity gaps, resolving conflicts, streamlining partnership models, improving team operations, and promoting design excellence. Helped land quality programs across several Commerce teams, meaningfully improving key buyer experiences. Achieved strong team health during very demanding and challenging times, creating a culture of inclusion, psychological safety, and empowerment. Successfully contributed to people's career growth and building a leadership bench. 90%+ manager favorability results as measured biannually through employee Pulse surveys. Significantly contributed to Meta’s PD recruiting efforts (65% higher than department average). Successfully mentored design managers and senior individual contributors. ### Head of Product Design (Growth, Payroll, CX, Design Systems) @ Gusto Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area Led multiple design teams, including senior managers and individual contributors, across several high-impact missions (Growth, Payroll, CX, and Design Systems). Recognized for scaling Gusto’s design team the most in a single year through strong recruiting and hiring practices. Led efforts to articulate a compelling vision and strategy for Gusto’s design team. Made positive impact on team culture, morale, retention, and overall efficiency. Made the design function a key driver in up-leveling the company’s overall growth practice with a strong focus on advancing the team’s data literacy and approach to experimentation. Improved the usability of key product experiences, making users more effective, efficient, and satisfied. Working cross-functionally with partners and stakeholders, transformed the way users seek help with a strong focus on empowering them to help themselves and enabling Gusto to scale its business more effectively. ### Head of Product Design & Mobile Product Lead @ Bill.com Jan 2014 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area Built a scalable and highly effective UX team with a very strong customer-centric focus (went from a team of 1 to a team of 10+ design and research professionals, incl. 2 managers). Led the company's user experience efforts across all product distribution channels (direct SaaS, accountants, banks, and other fintech partners). Led the UX vision for a high profile business partnership with Intuit, enabling small businesses to use Bill.com within QuickBooks Online, the leading accounting platform. This vision was a catalyst in completing the contract that led to the launch of the service in December 2016 that continues to be a strategic investment for both parties to date. Led the UX vision for Bill.com Connect (an innovative business payment platform for banks), that has received raving reviews from numerous financial institutions, and had significant contribution in signing business partnerships with top-tier banks and financial institutions in the US (Chase, American Express, and more). Led a complete redesign of Bill.com’s core product user experience that has been shown to consistently outperform the competition in periodic usability evaluation studies. Transformed the company’s product development process by ensuring that all efforts receive early user validation prior to development, using a fast and more nimble design process, that is driven by strong user research. Mobile Product Lead, responsible for developing and executing the company's mobile strategy. Launched the company's debut native mobile apps for iOS and Android that have been adopted by thousands of customers and received numerous industry awards. Employee of the year for 2016. ### Vice President, User Experience Design @ Phigital, Inc. (Acquired by Gimbal, October 2015) Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | San Francisco Bay Area Responsible for all aspects of user experience design for the company’s experiential content platform (web-based visual editors and mobile apps for iOS and Android). Led a team of on-shore and off-shore UX professionals. Created a visual language strategy that achieved brand and user goals. Led the implementation of product prototypes in order to test design aspects in a hands-on fashion. ### Director of User Experience Design @ Velti Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco Bay Area Built the company’s UX team (went from a team of 1 to a team of 6 designers). Established a clear, user-centric design vision and direction across the company’s global footprint and product development initiatives (ad campaign management, buy-side and sell-side ad platforms, CRM, analytics dashboards, content authoring tools, and more). Created vision, strategy, and led product management for 5ml, an award-winning HTML5 rich media authoring platform. Principal member of the company’s Innovation group, drove the ideation process for various novel interaction design concepts, incl. storyboarding and rapid prototyping. ### Head of User Experience Design @ Velti Jan 2008 – Jan 2012 | Athens, Greece ### User Interaction Manager @ Velti Jan 2006 – Jan 2008 | Athens, Greece ### Project Coordinator @ Foundation of the Hellenic World Jan 2004 – Jan 2006 | Athens, Greece Project management for various web-based and Virtual Reality applications. Prepare and craft various EU and state grant applications. Author reports and represent the company in project steering and evaluation committees. ### R&D Consultant @ Lambrakis Press Jan 2002 – Jan 2004 | Athens, Greece Research and development for E-Commerce and E-Preserve applications. ### Part-Time Lecturer @ Middlesex University Jan 1998 – Jan 2001 Taught lab and seminar classes in the areas of: Computer Architectures and Operating Systems, Educational Multimedia, Interactive Multimedia, IT Basic Skills ## Education ### PhD in Human-Computer Interaction Middlesex University ### MSc with Merit in Cognitive Science & Intelligent Computing University of Westminster ### Erasmus student Universidad Carlos III de Madrid ### BSc in Economics National & Kapodistrian University of Athens ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/konstantinos-giannakis-268a675 - Portfolio: http://kgiannakis.myportfolio.com - Portfolio: http://pointzero.substack.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/konstantinosgiannakis JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/konstantinosgiannakis/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13