# Oscar Ko > Making design accessible Location: San Jose, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/oscarko I identify gaps, I figure out patterns that work and patterns that don't. In so doing, I move projects forward. I make products better. I level team cultures up and glue cross-functional teams together. I redefine what's better. ## Work Experience ### Staff Product Designer @ Horizon3.ai Jan 2026 – Present | San Francisco, CA ### Design Mentor @ Designed.org Jan 2020 – Present ### Principal Product Designer @ Palo Alto Networks Jan 2023 – Jan 2026 | Santa Clara, CA Product areas: Digital Employee Experience Management (ADEM), Compliance Management, Network Security Posture Management, Web Application Firewall, Data Security, Identity Security, AI Copilot, and AI Access Security. ### Senior Staff Product Designer @ Palo Alto Networks Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | Santa Clara, California, United States ### Design Manager @ Nova Credit Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area First design hire and built the design organization and processes from the ground up. ### Design Manager @ Poll Everywhere Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco, California Managed and mentored a team of three cross-functional designers Elevated design to participate and impact product planning and organizational planning Collaborated with cross-functional leaders to establish design-driven initiatives to revamp core and foundational product UI and UX All things related to design system ### Senior Product Designer @ Poll Everywhere Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco, California Inspire pragmatism and consistency by example by always working within the design system When the design system can’t solve a problem, able to zoom out and evolve it in a way that solves the problem at hand, and solves problems in other areas of Poll Everywhere Curating the design system, always looking for ways to trim it down, throw stuff out, and always be refactoring Mentor peers on established process and empower them with tried-and-true tools Optimize for speed and high quality over perfection ### UX Designer @ Alliance of American Football Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco, California Defined the strategy for our design system as well as set the roadmap and delegated tasks to meet design needs Created components for the design system in collaboration with the product design and engineering team and leaders to scale consistency across the organization Participated in design critique and product feedback with stakeholders in order to grow collective design sense and user empathy Partnered with engineers as they built and shipped mobile apps to ensure that designs were implemented within time and technical constraints Worked closely with designers, product managers, engineering and leadership in a fast-paced environment to facilitate, lead, challenge and build consensus on product strategy, vision and roadmap Conducted user research using UserTesting.com to identify key pain points and validate design solutions to guide product development Led the effort to create and organize assets for Apple’s Featured Content in the App Store ---Short tenure due to company filing bankruptcy and other questionable company practices. More details in The Guardian article below.--- ### Product Designer @ BitTorrent, Inc. Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Generated design specs weekly using Sketch, Zeplin, Adobe XD and Framer X to deliver mobile UI designs to our engineering team Ran usability testing with UsabilityHub and in-person interviews with paper and digital prototypes to get user feedback and validation Organized and carried out surveys, user tests, A/B tests and evaluation of analytics for design direction and validation throughout product cycles Presented competitive research and product-market fit analysis of existing and upcoming products to inform executives about proposed design vision Trained product team and fellow designer in design sprint and design thinking practices, including growing empathy and user-centered design approach, to help run quarterly product planning meetings efficiently Collaborated closely with the product manager, engineering team, and Ads team to meet technical challenges and tight deadlines Project Highlight - BitTorrent Play - Sync media files from computer to phone Iterated and tested on product landing page: - Increasing download rate from 15% to 55%, - Increasing user understanding of the product from 9.2% to 18.8% - Decreasing product ambiguity from 68.2% to 32% Completely redesigned and user-tested both the BitTorrent Play mobile apps and desktop companion app with an overall satisfaction rate of 8.2 out of 10 ---Short tenure due to company CEO's illegal and unethical business dealings and other questionable company practices. More details in The Verge article below.--- ### User Experience Designer @ Copper Cow Coffee Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Website - Designed UI layout, information architecture, and content (with copywriter). - Iterated through prototypes and refinements. - Built the website on Shopify using PageFly. ReCharge Customer Portal - Designed high-fidelity prototype for better UX Design Coaching - Conducted design thinking training sessions - Evangelized user-centric and customer-centric product strategy - Performed brand and content strategy design sprint Facebook Ads and Mailchimp Campaigns - Designed ad campaign landing pages - Executed A/B tests on various ad campaigns ### UX Designer / UX Engineer @ Boeing Jan 2013 – Jan 2018 | Pleasanton, California Secure Computing Solutions - Developed firmware, front-end architecture, UI design and UI implementation for classified projects ### Business Development Associate @ Apacer Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Milpitas, California Industrial and Military Spec SSD ### APT Inventory Classification Analyst @ Yahoo Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Sunnyvale, California, USA Developed and identified inventory bundling strategies for foreign markets Interacted and cooperated with various players in sales planning/strategy, operations, product engineering, project management to resolve issues and complete tasks Managed and led as the point of contact during manager’s business trip, prioritized and delegated tasks for a team of 16 analysts with a dataset exceeding 200k unique items Quality analysis of Yahoo! owned and operated web content – such as Sports, Travel, News, etc. across U.S. and International websites Utilization of classification methodologies including taxonomy and validation testing to make logical judgments Web research for content validation and data relevance determinations ### After-School Instructor @ Fremont Unified School District Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Fremont, California, USA General computing topics for grade level 1-6 ### Student Ministry Intern @ Bridges Community Church Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 Creating and Implementing small group curriculums with Bible studies, game and reflection activities tied in with Sunday teachings. Planning and Teaching 25% of the Sunday lessons, as well as outlining sermon series, created and co-created other series that incorporated media, drama, stories, and object lessons. Organizing and leading outreach events for students as well as local missions projects and raising global missions awareness. Overseeing and facilitating Wednesday night program, including leading small groups during the school year. Assisting and supporting the planning process for winter and summer camps, including designing and refining the themes for the camps as well as the topics for the talks. Designing and creating graphics for events, camps, and teaching series. ### Software Engineer @ Mercedes-Benz R&D North America, Inc. Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 | Palo Alto, CA. Prototyping and implementing research concepts into real-world applications, including Adobe AIR applications and iPhone applications Contributing and implementing new iAP specification with Apple engineers for product research and user experience analysis Designing and implementing user interface using Adobe Flex as well as the human-machine-interface with automobile hardware inputs using C with Eclipse Planning and clarifying multiple, concurrent development deadlines as well as managing performance (both work and product) expectations in conjunction with senior engineers from Mercedes and Apple iPhone Application Development – iPhone SDK 3.0 (March 2009 – April 2009) – Envisioning new concepts to incorporate new and existing application functionalities to be implemented in the iPhone for integration with automotive usage as well as refining the user interface for safer and more user friendly operations while driving Product prototyping – C, ActionScript 3.0 (June 2008 – April 2009) – Collaborating with senior engineers in Germany to clarify prototype features and programming deadlines while combating timing and expectation ambiguities. Took initiative and acquired 3+ programming languages, 3+ IDEs, several programming protocols and various working prototypes presented to Mercedes and Apple managements in the span of 10 months. ### System Engineer @ Intel Corporation Jan 2008 – Jan 2008 | Folsom, California SSD system integration and validation ### Co-Founder @ Gracepoint Ministries, Hsinchu Jan 2007 – Jan 2008 Church planting Public relations Event planning Documentation localization Conversation translation ### Software Engineer @ LucidPort Technology Inc Jan 2007 – Jan 2007 | Mountain View, CA. Designing and implementing Certified Wireless USB device firmware with Visual Studio 2005 and integrating with existing code and API adaptation. Porting, maintaining, and understanding existing drivers, WiMedia protocols, NEC MAC interface, Certified Wireless USB protocols and fundamental hardware design and specifications. Communicating and interacting with co-workers to coordinate various responsibilities and learning from each other to solve existing technical issues. Writing documentations and specifications of various projects, and releasing them to the customers Windows CE Platform Building – C (July 2007 – Oct 2007) – WinCE5.0 and WinCE6.0, CEPC configuration and bring-up, WinCE & Certified Wireless USB API development, MDD & PDD interface implementation, interrupt thread handling, USB driver and USB storage class implementation, and WiMedia UWB protocols Certified Wireless USB device firmware – C (July 2007 – Oct 2007) – Implemented Wireless USB device firmware for Still Image class, Video class, and Mass Storage class, developed debugging environment and API library for customers and interfaced USB host driver with device peripheral Wireless USB chip L800 by LucidPort Technology Incorporated ### Programmer @ UC Davis CAES Genomics Facility Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 PHP, MySQL and HTML ## Education ### B.S. in Computer Engineering University of California, Davis ### Professional Program in UX Design in User Experience Design UC Berkeley Extension ### Master of Divinity (M.Div.) Fuller Theological Seminary ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/oscarko - Portfolio: https://oscarko.design --- Source: https://flows.cv/oscarko JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/oscarko/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13