# Marc Caldwell > Product Designer Turned Product Design Talent Partner | Lead Product Designer (15+ yrs) | Empowering Designers to Get Hired and Thrive | Design Hiring & Mentorship Location: Santa Cruz, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/marccaldwell Lead Product Designer turned Product Design Talent Partner, with 15+ years of experience designing intuitive, emotionally intelligent digital products across consumer, security, healthcare and emerging platforms. Over time, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to the people behind the work. Having walked the road myself, I empathize with design candidates, understanding how daunting, intimidating and exhausting the search can be. My goal is to be a trusted advocate and bridge between design candidates and hiring teams, helping designers land roles where they can thrive. I’ve mentored designers, reviewed portfolios and conducted numerous product design interviews, developing a strong ability to identify what makes a designer truly effective — not just in craft, but in how they think, communicate and collaborate. I care deeply about empowering designers to do their best work and land roles where they can thrive. I’ve spent years helping designers refine their portfolios, strengthen their storytelling and navigate the hiring process with more clarity and confidence. I’ve worked closely with product and hiring teams to evaluate design candidates and understand what actually translates into success in real product environments. I’m now exploring opportunities to apply that lens more directly: • Contributing to design hiring and candidate evaluation • Optimizing candidate pipelines • Helping companies build diverse, high-performing product design teams As a seasoned Lead Product Designer pivoting to talent sourcing, I speak the language of Product Design hiring managers and Product Design candidates alike. ## Work Experience ### Freelance Product Designer @ Unknown Jan 2010 – Present As a freelance Product Designer, I have collaborated with a diverse range of clients — from startups to global brands — to deliver user-centric design solutions that drive business outcomes. Over the past decade, I’ve led end-to-end design processes for digital products across various industries, including technology, e-commerce, sports and health tech. Key contributions include: • User-Centered Design: Conducting research to deeply understand user needs and translating insights into intuitive, engaging interfaces. • Product strategy: Partnering with cross-functional teams to align design decisions with business goals, ensuring seamless product-market fit. • Scalable solutions: Assisting in establishing scalable design systems and design frameworks to support the rapid growth of digital platforms. • Accessibility advocacy: Championing inclusive design principles to ensure equitable experiences for all users. • Mentorship: Guiding junior designers and cross-functional partners to foster creativity and elevate design quality. Whether it's designing a product from 0 to 1 or jumping in at the eleventh hour, my ability to adapt to unique client challenges while consistently delivering impactful results has established me as a trusted partner in designing digital experiences that resonate with users and achieve measurable success. ### Lead Product Designer (Contractor) @ McAfee Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 | San Jose, CA - Design Hiring & Mentorship - Leading UX, UI and interaction design for AI-powered consumer security tools focused on scam detection and prevention, creating emotionally-aware experiences that build trust and user confidence - Partner closely with product, UXR and engineering teams to humanize machine-driven outputs — ensuring feedback loops feel supportive and empowered users to make safer decisions - Advocate for emotionally-cognizant design at every touchpoint, helping position McAfee’s consumer tools as not just protective, but deeply personal and humanized ### Freelance Product Designer (Project Contract), Identity VR + MR @ Meta Jan 2024 – Jan 2024 • Designed authentication experiences for Virtual and Mixed Reality environments, improving cross-platform user security and usability. • Delivered seamless authentication flows for VR headsets and mobile applications, reducing onboarding time. ### Freelance Senior Product Designer (Project Contract) @ DoorDash Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 - Led a 12-week initiative to improve perceived speed, responsiveness and discoverability within DoorDash's iOS and Android apps. - Designed and prototyped a consistent spatial navigation model and interaction guidelines that reduced layout shifts and increased gesture predictability. - Created north star prototypes, progressive loading standards and a motion style guide, collaborating closely with engineering, design and product teams to deliver realistic, adoption-ready solutions aligned with customer and business goals. ### Lead Product Designer + Design Hiring & Mentorship @ DraftKings Inc. Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 As a Lead Product Designer at DraftKings, I had a pivotal role in shaping the company's marketing platform product design initiatives. • Revamped the Promotions experience, reducing promos-related customer service tickets, increasing the cross-product opt-in rate and increasing the overall promotions completion rate, within the first 90 days after rollout - through intuitive design validated by 3 rounds of usability testing throughout the initial design process. • Championed an inclusive design culture that improved team output by integrating accessibility standards and mentoring junior designers, resulting in a more resilient and productive team. • Designed scalable loyalty and rewards experiences across iOS, Android and mobile/desktop web platforms that enhanced cross-platform consistency. • Collaborated closely with product managers, researchers, and engineers to align on KPIs, define design roadmaps and streamline user-centered decision-making. • Created user research artifacts, including personas, journey maps and usability test scripts that contributed to user-centric design improvements. • Streamlined cross-functional communication, ensuring timely of high-quality designs that supported marketing and product strategy goals. ### Senior Product Designer @ Hero Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 • Led the end-to-end design of Hero Health’s digital platform, improving the medication management experience for users and caregivers. • Partnered with cross-functional teams, including product managers, engineers, and healthcare professionals, to design intuitive solutions that addressed user needs while meeting compliance and safety standards. • Conducted user research and usability testing to understand customer pain points and iteratively improved the platform’s user experience, focusing on medication adherence and engagement. • Delivered high-fidelity designs, prototypes and interaction flows for Hero’s mobile and web applications, ensuring seamless user experiences across platforms. • Advocated for a user-first approach in a highly regulated healthcare environment, balancing complex technical constraints with accessibility and usability principles. • Collaborated with engineering teams (both hardware + software) to define and contribute to Hero Health’s design system, improving the efficiency and consistency of design implementations. • Spearheaded initiatives to improve onboarding, notifications and daily task flows, enabling users to stay on top of their medication schedules and build healthier habits. • Focused on designing for inclusivity, ensuring the platform met accessibility standards and provided value to diverse audiences, including older adults and caregivers. ### Senior Visual UI Designer @ ResMed Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 • Designed and optimized user interfaces for ResMed’s digital health solutions, empowering patients and healthcare providers to manage sleep apnea, respiratory conditions, and other chronic illnesses. • Collaborated closely with product managers, developers (iOS + Android eng teams) and clinical experts to create interfaces that balanced clinical accuracy with ease of use across web and mobile platforms. • Conducted usability studies and A/B testing to gather feedback, iterate on designs, and enhance the overall user experience, leading to improved user satisfaction and engagement. • Developed and maintained a scalable design system to ensure consistency across ResMed’s suite of products, streamlining the development process and improving time-to-market. • Delivered high-fidelity mockups, prototypes, and interaction designs for patient-facing apps and clinician dashboards, supporting critical workflows like patient monitoring, data analysis, and treatment adjustments. • Focused on designing for accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring ResMed’s solutions met industry standards for usability, regulatory and compliance with global healthcare regulations. • Advocated for a user-centered design approach, leveraging data and user insights to guide design decisions that improved patient adherence and clinician efficiency. ### UX Designer @ Telepathy Design Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 ### UI Designer @ SmugMug Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 ## Education ### Diploma Lockport Township High School ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/marccaldwell55 --- Source: https://flows.cv/marccaldwell JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/marccaldwell/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13