# Matt W. > Sr Director of Product Design @ Upwork | Dynamic, people-first design leader. Expert in marketplaces, growth and core product. Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/mattw5 At Upwork, my leadership in Product Design spans across vital business units, where my role encompasses steering design strategy and enhancing user experiences that have significantly contributed to our marketplace's growth. With a focus on collaboration, I've led marquee initiatives have generated millions in revenue and strengthened how we work together along the way. My approach to leadership is people-first; fostering a culture of mentorship, coaching, and professional development within my teams. I guide my teams with a strategic perspective, a bias for action, an eye for detail and a can-do attitude that builds momentum, design craft, and results. My teams deliver impactful work they’re proud of, sustainably, while growing in their roles—ready and excited for the next climb. * Areas of Expertise * - Design Leadership - Interaction & Visual Design - Conversion design (CRO) - Marketplaces - Growth— strategy & frameworks for acquisition, activation & retention - Information Architecture - Messaging & Copy writing - Design Operations - Talent Recruiting & Mentorship - Workshop Planning and Facilitation - Remote Collaboration - User Research - Roadmap Planning and Execution - Product strategy - Agile Methodologies ## Work Experience ### Sr Director of Product Design, Talent Marketplace and Payments Business Units @ Upwork Jan 2023 – Present • Design leader across 10 teams in 2 Business Units. Contributed to product strategy. Responsible for design and user experience across roadmaps for Search, Browse, Client & Talent Growth, Payments, Tax, Work Management, Ads, Monetization and more. Continued to improve our team and UX practice through people-first leadership, hiring, right-sized process, design reviews, upskilling, coaching and sponsorship. • Marquee initiatives: a centralized dashboard redesign that drove $60M in incremental GSV, search experience improvements $24M (annualized); and a new visit to hire flow that is driving insights across many dimensions. ### Director of Product Design, Core product and platform teams @ Upwork Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | Remote • Leading design strategy and workflows from top of the funnel and across core product teams with an amazing team of 4 Design Managers and 25 designers, researchers and writers. Hired 3 managers and many designers for the team. • Worked hard to mentor and coach and to create an open, collaborative atmosphere, solid processes and opportunities for growth for my team. Stepped up with fellow directors to steady the wider 60+ person design team during design leadership and org changes • Orchestrated the multi-workstream delivery of a UX vision. Brought in for foundational concepting. Took on the role of Driver: coordinating working teams, audits, and helping stage the roll our upgraded design system. Created many communications for leadership and teams to help keep the work clear, on track, and prioritized. ### Director of Product Design, Acquisition and Onboarding @ Upwork Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 • Strengthened the design leadership and workflows for our top of funnel work stream. Managed a team of 3 talented designers and their work on our key conversion experiences. Stood up sprints to improve work sustainability, visibility and tracking. Coordinated a mix backlog and prioritization for research, writing and design. • Drove a rebrand across our entire logged out site with aggressive deadlines. Assembled a team of 4 talented freelance designers to knock out 25+ page templates and 100s of pages. Stood up a weekly sprint & review process. Coordinated tightly with eng partners and teams across the company. Delivered with enough time to test our top converting landing pages and de-risk launch. ### Lead Product Designer - Growth @ Upwork Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 Selected to be a founding member and design lead for Upwork’s first growth product team. • Set up the cadence and process. In tight partnership with PM, Eng and Analytics, developed a lean, highly resilient & collaborative team workflow that enabled us to hit our velocity goal of one launch per week. Built up design operations and brought the user insights and perspective into our experimentation process. • Expanded the team. Built out design capabilities as we expanded to 3 squads. Brought on 2 additional designers. Both guided their work and mentored their growth and development. • Impact: $1.9M in revenue growth from experiments, launched two new product lines and shared many insights. Led design direction and hands on design work. Managed tight deadlines by setting clear scope & staging work for iteration. Ensured fit & finish for a quality launches and landings. ### Art Director @ Upwork Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area Expanded my scope as designer for logged out experiences, cross-funcatinal partner & collaborator for core product teams and paid acquisition design lead with a team of 3 designers, 1 project manager and copywriter. • Led a variety of projects for acquisition, conversion, mobile app adoption and content strategy including an improvement to the discovery and engagement of educational content across the user journey. Coordinated multiple work streams and partners across Marketing & Product, revamped our information architecture, redesigned our existing content site as well as in-product help and other touchpoints. • Paid acquisition lead. Strategized our creative roadmap to drive more clarity & efficiency. Organized user insights and test results by creative to better enable repeatable successes. Continued to innovate our formats for improved performance across display ad projects, direct mail projects, and YouTube direct response • Served as interim lead for the Creative team for 3 months during the search for a new Sr Creative Director ### Senior Interaction Designer @ Upwork Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area • Creative lead for a $500K integrated brand campaign that increased awareness by 9% and boosted brand favorability. Responisble for concepting, refinement and execution with external creatives. Organized, designed and art directed 3 other designers for the delivery of >200 assets for our campaign (a photoshoot, post production, develpoment of static and animated ads, social media, landing pages, out of home and print.) • Took on more responsibility as the creator & owner of the digital display roadmap. Iterated and streamlined strategic & creative production processes, and improved our core ad metrics. Managed two designers and one project manager. Continued to execute on conversion design projects for our logged out site and campaigns. ### Interaction Designer @ Upwork Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Designer @ Upwork Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 ### Circus Artist @ Various shows, companies, and media events Jan 2007 – Jan 2016 | U.S. and Europe Trained in San Francisco and Montreal in Hand to hand balancing, chinese acrobatics, hand balancing, aerial straps, tissue and group acts, like teeterboard and human pyramids. Oct 2007–Dec 2016 Sweet Can Productions, Circus performer and company member 1999–2016 Various touring shows: Teatro Zinzani, Variete, New Pickle Circus, numerous corporate galas across the U.S. as well as, TV (Disney, History channel, etc.) and print · ### Designer @ Elance-oDesk Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco, California - Strategized and delivered multiple complex interactive projects: the redesign of our Enterprise Microsite, Q1 integrated campaign design, SEO page optimization, and more. - Designed a component library with atomic elements, responsive layouts and image assets for our marketing emails which greatly increased efficiency for the CRM team. - Key contributor to the success of our brand launch. Created a roadmap with deliverables, organized multiple vendors and delivered design work for both print and interactive projects with challenging deadlines ### Designer @ oDesk Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Redwood City, California, United States ### Freelance Designer @ Various Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 Contract identity and product design work for a variety of startups and clients ### Pilates Instructor @ Sanchez Street Studios Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 ### Trainer @ Red Hawk PT Jan 2006 – Jan 2012 ### Circus Artist @ Teatro ZinZanni Jan 2009 – Jan 2009 ## Education ### Associate of Arts (A.A.) in Graphic Communications City College of San Francisco ### Hand-to-Hand Balancing in Hand-balancing, Acrobatics Circus Center ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nowcookingwithgas --- Source: https://flows.cv/mattw5 JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/mattw5/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13