# Pendar Yousefi > Product Design Leader Location: Sunnyvale, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/pendar I’m a product design leader with a deep focus on AI, strategy, and craft. Between 2014-2025, I led product design for Google Translate — growing the product 3x to over two billion users and guiding it through two AI leaps: deep learning and large language models. I’ve defined product strategy, launched industry-leading AI innovations, and achieved growth for some of Google’s most widely used tools — from the Google Translate apps to native integrations in Pixel, Assistant, Chrome, and more. My work is grounded in real-world user needs, and I believe the best AI products are the ones that stay simple, are fast, and solve real user problems. My leadership ethos revolves around inspiring teams, empowering them with autonomy, and recognizing and rewarding craft. I believe good ides can come from anywhere and my default mode is collaboration. Outside of work, I’m a children’s book author, illustrator, and printmaker. You can see my work at www.mahimoto.com. ## Work Experience ### Principal AI Designer @ Slack Jan 2025 – Present Shape the future of work with AI. ### Principal UX Director, Google Translate @ Google Jan 2022 – Jan 2025 | Mountain View As the Global Head of UX at Translate, I led our team through two pivotal AI transitions. First with the shift from phrase-based machine translations (PBMT) to neural network machine translations (NMT), and then through the transition into LLM-powered translation experiences. Under my leadership, usage of Google Translate grew from 600M to 2B+ monthly users, with an 85% global market share despite a wealth of user choice in the machine translation landscape. → Launched Live-Translate, Pixel's built-in translation experience → Launched redesigned translate.google.com and Google Translate apps using Material Expressive → Envisioned using Assistant as an interpreter and motivated executives to fund a new vertical → Launched Pixel Buds translation, voted one of MIT's top technologies of 2017 → Scaled the team 5x, providing career growth coaching and mentorship ### Sr. Staff UX Lead, Google AI Languages @ Google Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 | Mountain View, California, United States Defined and evangelized a strategic shift towards first-party product integration that resulted in a 30% organization growth for Google Translate and a proliferation of coherent translation experiences across Google’s most important consumer and enterprise bets. → Crafted a strategic narrative that resulted in 30% increased funding for our org → Sponsored the Translations Standards initiative to harmonize experiences across Google → Quantified the business & brand value of Google Translate → Launched Contribute (430M+ MAUs) a crowdsourcing product to improve inclusivity → Catalyzed new partnerships and launches that differentiated Google’s strategic bets: • Pixel 21: Directed the launch of Auto-Translate • Youtube: Exponentially increased watch-time-hours for translated videos • Pixel Buds: Created highly marketable moment by launching Transcribe • Workspace: Differentiated enterprise offerings through launch of Translations in Meet ### Staff UX Lead, Google AI Languages @ Google Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | Mountain View, California, United States By driving strategy and innovation in AI translation and language space, I oversaw a 3x growth for Google Translate users (to 1.5B users) and greatly expanded Translate's footprint within Google and outside, all the while doubling down on coherence. Outside of Translate, I designed strategies for personalized conversational recommendations that impacted multiple product areas within the broader Google ecosystem. → Devised and pitched a vision that led to creation of new Translate vertical in Assistant → Launched a modernized translate web app experience → Designed and launched industry-first gender-specific translation to reduce bias → Launched futuristic Translations on Pixel Buds product to much media praise → Modernized Translation results on Google Search → Defined Translate's multi-year speech translation roadmap → Scaled Translate's UX team into a lean global multi-disciplinary organization → Founded internal multilingualism group to coordinate efforts across the company → Defined product directions for Conversational Recommenders ### Senior UX Designer, Google Translate @ Google Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Mountain View Built a world-class design team and launched industry-leading innovations for Google Translate, a marquee global brand with billions of users worldwide. During this period our app rating increased by 0.2 and Translate became #1 app in App Store's reference category. → Started as Translate's designer #1 and built a multi-disciplinary UX team → Invented new "translated suggestions" patterns enabling quicker translations → Launched Google Translate 5.0 (NYTimes coverage: https://tinyurl.com/2sytaz3m) → Initiated, planned, & moderated annual strategy offsites for an org of 70 → Founded Google Translate's Research program, focused on international markets → Launched Tap to Translate; an industry-leading pattern to translate from any app ### UX Designer @ Google Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Mountain View, California, United States As a senior designer on Google AdWords ($XXB annual revenue business), I was responsible for advertisers' experience with Display Ads and played a key role in AdWords Next, a complete modernization of the AdWords product. → Led the framework-level design for a better campaign creation experience in AdWords → Led Audience Insights bringing clarity to advertisers' targeting segments → Led creative automation effort producing richer and more performant ads → Designed and launched the platforms' first visual-forward insights portal → Modernized AdWords' library of display ad templates → Launched Google's presence on Dribbble ### Lead Designer @ Litmus.com Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Cambridge, MA → Relaunched Litmus' beloved web app with a modernized look with strong change adoption → Created a coherent design system across Litmus' products and marketing → Led UX for new product offerings (Scope, Scoop) → Directed design across all marketing channels; website, email, offline ### Director, User Experience @ Fotomoto Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 → Designed Fotomoto’s unique distributed photo-commerce platform from the ground up → Created a design system across seller and buyer products → Established a design language and oversaw creative production across product and marketing ### User Experience Lead @ Kibboko, Inc. Jan 2008 – Jan 2012 User Experience design for Kibboko's family of web apps, including: * Scout: an embeddable content recommendation widget * Appblast: a Facebook app for discovering new applications * myNXNE: an iOS app for the NXNE festival * Shweet: a social contest platform and public website * Carrot: an e-commerce widget Focused on Mockups, Wireframing, Interaction Design, UI Design, front-end XHTML/CSS/JS, and Usability Tests. ### Creative Director @ ICCAC - Tirgan Festival Jan 2008 – Jan 2011 | Toronto Creative director for the Tirgan festival. Created the festival's branding, overall art direction, and oversaw the design and implementation of the festival's apps and website. ### Web/Graphic Designer @ Pegasus Group Jan 2006 – Jan 2008 | Toronto Designed user experience for online gaming applications. Also worked on branding, print, and web design projects for various Pegasus Group properties. ## Education ### MASc in Electrical Engineering University of Toronto ### BASc in Electrical Engineering The University of British Columbia ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/pendar - Portfolio: http://mahimoto.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/pendar JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/pendar/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13