# Ron Severdia > Design Leader | User Experience Designer | Product Strategist Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/ronseverdia My design journey began with a challenge: simplify an airplane cockpit so anyone could land safely. This lesson from Professor Nahler—who once worked alongside Dieter Rams—shaped my career philosophy: great design transforms complexity into intuitive solutions. For over 20 years, I’ve applied this approach to craft engaging user experiences that solve real problems and delight customers. Today, I’m the VP of Design at NinjaTrader, a Kraken company, where I’m taking on big challenges in FinTech—building world-class UX foundations, leveling up teams and systems, and turning complex, high-stakes workflows into experiences that feel clear, fast, and trustworthy. Previously, as Global VP of Design at Optimizely, I led product design teams to achieve measurable business outcomes while nurturing a world-class design and experimentation culture. At Mindtickle, I helped integrate AI to redefine enterprise UX, significantly elevating product quality and user satisfaction. Throughout my career leading nearly 100 designers, researchers, and product managers across global organizations, I’ve consistently delivered innovation that drives business growth. Whether in startups or Fortune 500 companies, I blend visionary strategy with hands-on execution to create experiences that resonate emotionally with users. Beyond leadership, I’ve authored two bestselling technology books, published numerous articles, and hold several technology patents. I remain passionate about combining creativity, strategic thinking, and deep user empathy to build exceptional products that people truly love to use. ## Work Experience ### VP, Design @ NinjaTrader Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area • Designing clarity from complexity – transforming pro-level charting & strategy tools into intuitive, confidence-building experiences. • Building a world-class design org – growing a diverse team where high craft and measurable business impact coexist. • Championing customer empathy – weaving real trader stories into every product bet we make. ### VP, User Experience Design @ Mindtickle Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area • Led an international UX team across design, research, content design, and design systems, driving alignment with product and engineering goals • Defined and implemented a UX vision and strategy for enterprise that elevated product quality and user satisfaction • Directed a comprehensive product UX re-architecture, incorporating artificial intelligence (A.I.), and improving user flows and feature alignment to optimize user engagement and outcomes • Introduced data-driven best practices for decision-making and product development, fostering a culture of evidence-based design • Developed team infrastructure, collaboration practices, and career growth frameworks, enhancing performance and professional development • Established cross-functional processes and feedback loops to drive alignment, communication, and continuous improvement, including design thinking, prototyping, analytics, and qualitative research ### Global VP, Design @ Optimizely Jan 2018 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area • Led a product design team of 20, drove measurable team performance with OKRs, & developed an industry leading, world-class design culture • Prioritized key roadmap efforts with Product & Engineering stakeholders to execute quick wins for customers & prospects, resulting in a 13% increase in sales (based on win/loss analysis) • Created & collaborated on a multi-year vision & cross-functional transition to a seamless product suite (CMS, CDP, CMP, Commerce, A/B Experimentation) & developer platform, including instituting & exceeding key growth metrics (breadth, depth, & velocity) by 7% • Navigated the company through an acquisition, large organizational transformation, & ongoing culture shift, while lowering annual team attrition to less than 5%. • Attracted, nurtured, inspired, & retained top talent; with a people-first approach; elevated, mentored, & empowered user experience, design systems, & user research teams to exceed company goals in diversity, equity, & inclusion by 150% • Drove two product portfolio rebranding initiatives end-to-end, led the effort to establish a common visual language & cohesive product portfolio experience for 16 products, resulting in a mean 1.4 NPS increase • Established processes & feedback loops to improve cross-functional alignment, communication, & collaboration; including design thinking, continuous improvement, design socialization, qualitative & quantitative research methods & synthesis, prototyping, usage analytics & insights, & overall setting the bar for design st&ards & elevating design aesthetics • Empowered enterprise / SMB customers & partners by evangelizing methodologies for design, data visualization insights, & hypothesis experimentation based on the scientific method • Evangelized current trends, emerging technologies, & customer-centric innovation by speaking at industry conferences & providing thought leadership & expert guidance to enterprise customers, partners, & industry analysts ### Lead Product Designer @ Apple Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area • Confidential Apple project ### Head of Product Design @ Metrodigi, Inc Jan 2010 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area • Responsible for the product vision, driving strategy, roadmap, and user experience design for a high-growth global startup, including building and managing a team of over 90 people • Built a B2B / B2C SaaS product platform from concept to launch, maximizing minimal resources and budget, resulting in 200k+ users and $19MM+ in revenue • Led hands-on a product team of product managers, UX designers, engineers, quality managers, subject matter experts in the Agile development process of product features and apps to develop a $15MM+ product ecosystem • Established an engagement program to build customer and stakeholder alignment, increase key growth revenue metrics by 20% YoY. • Drove and inspired a culture of innovation and collaboration across the company; awarded 6 key technology patents in artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and advanced machine learning • Developed mobile products & strategies for Salesforce sales enablement & Dreamforce initiatives • Partnered on interactive mobile solutions for Apple and Amazon to advance technology standards as well as extending the Star Wars franchise with Lucasfilm to mobile • Regularly assessed product performance and created strategies to achieve and exceed measurable business goals ### Director of Product Design, Developer & Analytics Platform @ eBay Jan 2007 – Jan 2010 | San Francisco Bay Area • Led the product development and strategy of eBay’s DataHub application, integrating massive Big Data systems (Teradata, Tableau, Hadoop, MicroStrategy) into a powerful BI and data visualization product • Built and led a team of 35 product managers, UX designers, and engineers, established Agile processes, defined standards and best practices for user-centered design, prototyping, and metrics • Aligned with stakeholders across 28 internal teams and collaborated to develop 8 enterprise apps with over 52+ Petabytes (3.5+ trillion rows) of data into an integrated product experience • Increased user engagement, collaboration, and efficiency of insight development for 12,000+ BI analysts, while eliminating processing redundancy, and reducing on-boarding costs, resulting in a savings of $2MM+ annually • Developed data-driven recommendations and insights for executives to inform the roadmap, anticipate problems, seek opportunities, and validate new feature ideas ### Digital Creative Director @ Landor Jan 2004 – Jan 2007 | San Francisco Bay Area Clients: Accenture, Citi, HP, Intuitive Surgical, Visa • Spearheaded the first digital creative team • Led a team of seven designers and engineers in the development of a digital asset management (DAM) platform for Citi, saving the client and its partners $10MM+ annually • Designed and built a learning app for Intuitive Surgical used to train surgeons on robotic surgical devices and successfully surpassed targets for implementation company wide • Drove the digital program of Citi’s overall brand harmonization, streamlining their brand and increasing internal brand engagement by 46% ## Education ### Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/severdia - Portfolio: http://www.severdia.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/ronseverdia JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/ronseverdia/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13