# Rakesh Patwari > Design Leadership | Previously at Meta, Salesforce | Startup advisor, Adj. Prof@ UCBx Location: United States, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/rakeshpatwari I'm a systems thinking leader who thrives on simplifying complexity across B2B enterprise platforms, developer tools, AI workflows, and privacy infrastructure. My work has moved the needle, decreasing time-to-task by 85%, improving workflow efficiency by 54%, & contributing to over $3.4B in subscription revenue and ARR. I've led initiatives that shortened dev cycles from 3 sprints to 1, reduced technical response time by 99.97% ↓, and cut deployment time by 82% ↓. I also deeply engage in driving vision projects from strategy to MVP, translating ambitious ideas into shipped, high-impact outcomes through hands-on leadership. Currently, I'm designing AI-powered experiences in B2B SaaS, focused on Product-Led Growth (PLG) and GTM workflows. This includes building agentic interfaces, autonomous orchestration, and real-time insights. I lead with clarity and care, fostering bold thinking and focused execution. I connect vision to execution, align cross-functional partners, and turn ambiguity into measurable progress, often rolling up my sleeves to ensure successful implementation. Beyond my core work, I actively engage with the design community as an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley and advise startups at Berkeley Skydeck. Specialties include strategic design leadership, enterprise UX for B2B SaaS, AI-powered experience design, product-led growth (PLG), go-to-market (GTM) workflows, design systems at scale, developer and privacy tooling, systems thinking, cross-functional alignment, and leading vision-to-MVP initiatives with measurable business outcomes. ## Work Experience ### Director, Experience Design & Strategy @ Walmart Jan 2025 – Present Leading design and experience strategy teams to shape the next frontier of Sam's club-retail. Partnering with business leadership to drive an experience-first approach across digital, physical, and service touchpoints. Leveraging AI and emerging technologies to deliver personalized, intuitive experiences that balance innovation with operational scale. ### Adjunct Professor, Design @ UC Berkeley Extension Jan 2018 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area In my role as Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley Extension, I have been responsible for designing and teaching the Information Architecture segment of the course since 2018. I have developed the IA curriculum, led live and self-paced classes, and provided mentorship to students to enhance their UX portfolios. ### Design, Stealth AI Sales Platform Startup @ Stealth AI Startup Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco Bay Area Collaborating with the founding team on early product design for a B2B AI sales platform. Designing agentic experiences that enable companies to configure AI agents, assemble hybrid teams of humans and AI, and drive product-led growth. Also contributing to dashboards that track ROI and performance of these teams, with a focus on measurable business outcomes. ### Director Product Design and Research @ Cisco Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area Led design organization across multiple product lines, shaping strategic direction and delivering experiences for Cisco's sales, commerce, and customer success ecosystems. Partnered with executives and cross-functional leaders to balance current needs with future visionary work. Implemented systems, frameworks, and design systems strategy to align strategy with execution. Launched AI-literacy program and AI experience framework, accelerating innovation and boosting team morale. ### Design leader, Privacy @ Meta Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 Led a design team for Meta's top privacy initiatives across Privacy Infra ecosystem. Streamlined E2E Privacy experience across the ecosystem(Coverage, Review Efficiency, Regulatory Response, and Incident Management). Overhauled Privacy Review experience, cutting review time by 54%. Partnered cross-functionally to improve regulatory readiness. Expanded design team by 3X, mentoring talent and fostering leadership development. ### Director Of Product Design, Experience Cloud @ Salesforce Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco, California Managed design team for experience platform, enabling enterprises to build customer experiences. Set vision, drove execution, and aligned cross-functional teams. Directed design strategy to integrate acquisitions into next-gen B2B and B2C Commerce Cloud. Fostered authentic, creative team culture while collaborating on vision and roadmap. Streamlined execution, presented team's work, and facilitated team success. Maintained hands-on design involvement, hired diverse talent, and balanced leadership with direct contributions. ### Mentor @ First Round Fast Track Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area Mentoring design leaders ### User Experience Lead @ Juniper Networks Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area ➜ Architecting a design system that empowers the product teams. ➜ Leading the strategic and vision for platform user experiences, enabling the product and engineering teams. ➜ Crafting end to end product experiences for next generation cutting edge security products ➜ Simplified and streamlined designs to clarify complexity and encapsulate sophistication. ➜ Architecture and design to tackle scale ### Principal, User Experience @ SurveyMonkey Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area ➜ Moderated the design sprint and lead the design for the next generation core product. ➜ Collaborated with cross-functional teams including product, engineers, sales, support and senior leadership to gain alignment and spot new features and possible enhancements opportunities. ➜ Crafted solutions from whiteboard concept stage to polished production ready visual designs for the web and mobile web product ### Lead, User Experience @ Aerohive Networks Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Sunnyvale First design hire at this start-up. Lead the design and shipped an award winning cloud-based SaaS mobile network management solution - HiveManagerNG Award: http://www.nfvzone.com/news/2016/03/01/8325295.htm About the product: HiveManager NG, Aerohive’s next generation enterprise-class cloud-enabled network management solution. More - http://www.aerohive.com/cloud/ ### UX Architect - Consultant @ LinkedIn Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 ➜ Collaborated with the stakeholders to solidify the product vision, created mock ups and presentations to share the concepts and achieve alignment. ➜ Did extensive research to uncover user needs and synthesized them with the business goals and came out with wireframes, workflows, interaction design specifications and visual designs. ➜ Defined design guidelines and created patterns, wireframes and mockups for an internal search tool. ### Manager, User Experience - Cognizant Interactive @ Cognizant Jan 2010 – Jan 2014 ### UX and Project Lead - Rich Internet solutions @ Cognizant Jan 2006 – Jan 2010 Responsible for the 70 + team of Web Development (RIA) practice- team growth and pre-sales activities like technology evaluation, solution definition and effort estimation. Ensuring delivery excellence and providing UX consulting services to the clients and mentoring the team. > Solution consultant, defined and delivered exceptional web and mobile based solutions for a leading manufacturing/retail and banking clients > Sr. UX designer for fortune 500 clients across Life sciences, Pharma, Banking and Insurance industries > Pre-sales support and lead for prototype development using RIA technologies > Designed and executed an innovative and highly immersive ecommerce experience leveraging Adobe Flex, LiquidPixels, and .NET system for a large eCommerce organization > Accessibility Consultant for a large health care and leading banking clients > Set up a Rich Internet Application development team, defined dev process, best practices and coding standards and involved in building a large team > Conceptualized and created a Re-usable component repository portal > Crafted solutions and designed experience for multiple executive dashboard projects. > Worked with senior leadership and CXO team in defining experience for a rich and highly immersive web solution ### UX Architect - Interaction Design Consultant @ Apple Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 Experience Design for Business Intelligence Applications Data Visualization Standardizing Experience and Interaction Patterns across multiple Business Intelligence dashboards. ### Consultant, Digital Marketing and UX @ AstraZeneca Jan 2010 – Jan 2013 | Wilmington, Delaware Client - One of the worlds largest pharmaceutical giant. ➜ Led the digital LOB and provide inputs on the strategy, UX and creative design. ➜ Program manager for a large digital transformation program leveraging Adobe WEM tools that consist of Adobe CQ5, SiteCatalyst : ⇢ Providing solutions from both technical and customer experience perspectives ⇢ Manage technical relationships with partners to identify and escalate any issues ⇢ Identify and define innovative solutions to address any gaps and improve platform efficiency and re-usability ⇢ Delivery management and customer engagement ➜ Responsible for strategies design and implementation of digital and interactive marketing experiences. ➜ Worked closely with the brand teams in defining the digital marketing strategies, crafted tailor-made web solutions ➜ Responsible for the account management, client relationship management, business development, RFP and SOW creation ### Designer @ SumTotal Systems, LLC Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 Responsible for enhancing the User experience of a customer facing portal, enabling user adaption of TotalLMS and supporting online marketing initiatives.  UI evaluation and enhancement, Flash, HTML and JavaScript Programming,  Creation of training documentation like manuals, online help and digital learning  LMS administration - TotalLMS ### Project Lead, Designer @ Tech Mahindra Jan 2001 – Jan 2005 Started as a flash designer and developer, slowly graduated to creating UIs, infographics for elearning courses and as a senior visual designer for the corporate strategy group. ### Sr. UI and Visual Designer @ Tech Mahindra Jan 2003 – Jan 2004 Team Lead: 1. UI Design and Development 2. Designing Infographics and content related graphics 3. Creating Graphic Elements for the team to use 4. Elearning Content Development 5. Took part in giving response to the proposals 6. Handled the project of customisation of LMS single handedly and won accolades 7. Also took part during the analysis phase of the project with the project manager while estimating and resource allocation Quality: 1. Testing the whole product for quality, integrity and also with the given requirements. 2. Ensuring that all the documentation is properly done and is signed off by the concerned Administration: 1. Handling the elearning Administrators role for an in bulilt LMS (Learning Management System) ### Developer @ Tech Mahindra Jan 2001 – Jan 2003 UI Design: 1. Junior Visual Designer responsible for UI design and infographics 2. UI Design lead for internal Projects 3. Flash Animator/Programmer Quality: 1. Testing of elearning modules 2. Responsible Member for generating Quality specifications templates and documents for elearning to be used across the organisation (Satyam) which were approved by the Quality Group of Satyam. ## Education ### Executive Education in Product Management University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business ### Stanford Continuing Studies ### Design Strategy Master class in Design Strategy UX STRAT ### CooperU ### UCSC Silicon Valley Extension ### Marketing The Wharton School ### Presenting Data and Information - Course by Edward Tufte Edward Tufte ### BCA in Bachelors of Computer Applications Osmania University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/rakeshpatwari - Website: https://www.rakeshpatwari.design --- Source: https://flows.cv/rakeshpatwari JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/rakeshpatwari/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05