# Philip LaPier > Design Leadership · Design Staff Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/philiplapier Currently Head of Design at Rippling leading our Finance Cloud team. I lead design for a portfolio of products including Global Payroll, Spend Management, Travel, Cashflows, Variable Compensation, Scheduling, Time & Attendance, among others. As Head of Design at Pilot, I successfully built a thriving design function within Pilot's organization. During my time I built an effective talent pipeline, establishing a healthy design culture, crafting shared design principles, and developing a unified design system.

 I led teams to build automation technology that increased business margin by shaving off hundreds of hours of manual operating costs. In addition, I spearheaded one of Pilot’s most beloved products—the Customer Portal—through design execution and vision setting. During my time, I hired over 10 high-performing individuals spanning Product Design, Brand Design, and UX Research. As Head of Design, I was responsible for setting our design vision and strategy, overseeing project execution, and ensuring high-impact results from the team. ## Work Experience ### Member of Design Staff @ Perplexity Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco, CA Personal Computer for macOS. Building the future of AI search ### Design Leadership Advisor @ Pave Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 ### Head of Design, Finance Cloud @ Rippling Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States Leading a team of 9 high-performing product designers across Rippling's suite of financial products, including Global Payroll, Spend, Corp Cards, Travel, Bill Pay and more. The portfolio is a cornerstone of Rippling’s success, generating substantial revenue and fueling growth across the platform. ### Head of Design @ Pilot.com Jan 2018 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area Successfully built a thriving design function within Pilot's organization. My accomplishments include building an effective talent pipeline, establishing a healthy design culture, crafting shared design principles, and developing a unified design system.

 I led teams to build automation technology that increased business margin by shaving off hundreds of hours of manual operating costs. In addition, I spearheaded one of Pilot’s most beloved products—the Customer Portal—through design execution and vision setting. During my time, I hired over 10 high-performing individuals spanning Product Design, Brand Design, and UX Research. As Head of Design, I was responsible for setting our design vision and strategy, overseeing project execution, and ensuring high-impact results from the team. ### Product Design Lead @ Dropbox Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Led the long-term design strategy and vision setting for numerous teams including Desktop Experience, Cloud File System, and the Ecosystem team. 
Designed and launched the Dropbox Gmail app, which achieved over 2 million installs and 4.1 stars on Google Marketplace. Dropbox Hack Week Award — Led a team of 3 engineers to build an innovative desktop experience that resulted in winning the coveted Hack Week Awareness award in 2018. ### Senior Product Designer @ Dropbox Jan 2014 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area Founded a tiger team that built and launched experimental desktop technology which led to a 62% increase in desktop sharing metrics. Awarded a patent for inventive new UI patterns. Designed new features and workflows for Desktop and Web Sharing, and Dropbox Paper. Dropbox Hack Week Runner Up — Runner up for two award categories, HAX and The Human Factor, in 2016. The project was later staffed on Dropbox’s product roadmap after pitching the executive team. ### Product Designer @ thoughtbot, inc. Jan 2010 – Jan 2014 | Boston, MA Designed web and mobile experiences for diverse clients, including the Swedish fintech giant, Klarna. Created a popular open-source CSS framework called Bourbon, achieving over 22 million total downloads. It was nominated for “Open-Source Project of the Year” by .net magazine in 2014. ## Education ### Bachelors of Science in Electronic Media Arts & Communications in Graphic Design Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lapier - Portfolio: http://lapier.me --- Source: https://flows.cv/philiplapier JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/philiplapier/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13