# Soma Bhakta > UX Design Leader | Scaling Teams & Crafting AI-Driven, Cloud, Security, DevOps Experiences | 0→1 & Enterprise B2B UX Strategy Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/somabhakta Hi there, I’m Soma, a UX & Product Design Leader passionate about scaling UX teams, driving design strategy, and delivering intuitive enterprise experiences. I thrive in both 0→1 product environments and mature design functions, helping organizations shape their UX vision and embed user-centered design into the product lifecycle. With a career spanning startups and Fortune 500 companies, I’ve led UX for DevOps, SecOps, FinOps, Security, Cloud, Healthcare, and Business intelligence products, making complex workflows simple and seamless. My sweet spot is working at the intersection of UX, technology, and business strategy, ensuring that UX is not just about aesthetics but a core driver of product success. What I Bring to UX Leadership: ✔ Building & Scaling UX Teams – Hiring, mentoring, and developing design talent while creating clear career growth paths ✔ Leading UX Strategy & Execution – Partnering with C-level executives and cross-functional leaders to align UX with business goals ✔ Designing 0-1 & Enterprise UX – Leading UX for early-stage products while scaling mature design systems ✔ Fostering Design at Scale – Establishing company-wide design systems and a culture of design operations & efficiency ✔ Embedding UX Research & Data-Driven Decision Making – Integrating user research & experimentation into product development ✔ Championing Collaboration & Inclusion – Driving a product trio culture, enabling co-creation with engineering, product, and customers I believe great UX leadership is about empowering teams, fostering innovation, and driving measurable impact. Whether it’s building a UX function from scratch, leading enterprise-grade UX, or scaling design systems, I’m focused on making UX a strategic advantage. 📢 I’m currently exploring UX leadership opportunities! If you’re hiring or looking to collaborate, I’d love to connect. Let’s chat! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 🔹 Expertise: UX Leadership, UX Strategy, Design Strategy, Design Leadership, Enterprise UX, Developer Experience, Product Design, DevOps UX, SecOps UX, FinOps UX, Cloud UX, AI UX, Cybersecurity UX, API UX, UX for AI & ML, Design Thinking, User Research, Usability Testing, B2B SaaS UX, Enterprise Software, Digital Transformation, Human-Centered Design, UX for Security, UX for Infrastructure, UX for Developer Tools, Design Systems, Accessibility, Interaction Design, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Product-led-growth, PLG UX ## Work Experience ### Head of UX (Founding member) @ Stealth Startup Jan 2025 – Present Design function at stealth. ### Adjunct Professor (UX) @ UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Jan 2025 – Present | Santa Clara, CA Collaborative Design: Enhancing UX with AI ### HCI MS Mentor @ Baskin Engineering at UCSC Jan 2024 – Present I have the privilege of mentoring aspiring HCI professionals at the UCSC Baskin Engineering MS program, sharing industry insights, hands-on learning experiences, and foundational guidance in human-centered design. My goal is to support the next generation of UX leaders and help them bridge the gap between academia and real-world applications through practical design thinking, user research, and product strategy. It’s incredibly rewarding to nurture talent, foster curiosity, and contribute to a growing UX community, empowering students to design impactful, user-centered experiences for the future. ### Head of UX Design & Research, Cloud Edge Infrastructure @ Equinix Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | Redwood City, California, United States As a Design Leader at Equinix, I oversee UX strategy and execution for the Cloud Edge Services business line, encompassing computing, storage, and networking solutions such as Network Edge, Solution Builder, Bare Metal Server, Cloud Adjacent Storage, Observability, and Platform Services. - Established and scaled the UX function within Cloud Edge, embedding research, design processes, and a structured UX career growth path. - Lead a multidisciplinary UX team of designers, researchers, and content strategists (10+ members, including dotted-line relationships), fostering a collaborative and high-impact design culture. - Streamlined design operations, ensuring seamless integration of UX with engineering, product, and business objectives. - Championed design thinking and inclusive leadership, aligning UX efforts with company OKRs to drive measurable business and user outcomes. - Shaped the future of enterprise cloud UX, improving networking, compute, storage, and platform experiences such as IAM, Billing, Observability, and Support experiences for global customers. ### Sr. UX Manager, Design System | Driving Scalable Design System & Platform UX Efficiency @ Equinix Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 At Equinix, I founded Quix, a company-wide design system for the Cloud and Data Center portfolios, fostering a Design at Scale culture and helping build a thriving UX tribe within a Fortune 500 company. This initiative transformed how 50+ UX professionals, hundreds of engineers, and product managers collaborate across global teams. - Drove end-to-end strategy, execution, and adoption of Quix, creating a unified design language and scalable UI framework across multiple enterprise products. - Enabled cross-functional efficiency, streamlining design-development workflows and enhancing consistency, accessibility, and scalability across platforms. - Delivered a $1.5M ROI within six months, significantly reducing design debt, engineering inefficiencies, and time-to-market. - Fostered a Design at Scale culture, aligning UX efforts across global teams and establishing governance models for long-term scalability. - Built a strong UX tribe within a Fortune 500 company, empowering designers, researchers, and content strategists through collaboration, mentorship, and shared vision. - Demonstrated leadership in strategy execution, guiding Quix from concept to launch, showcasing vision, collaboration, and measurable business impact. ### Founding UX Leader | Scaling DevOps, AI, and Cloud Cost Management UX @ Harness Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area At Harness, I successfully built and launched products from the ground up, driving adoption and customer acquisition. As the first UX hire and a founding member, I worked closely with C-level executives, engineering, and sales teams to launch and scale flagship DevOps products, contributing to Series A to C growth. - Bootstrapped the UX function, implementing Lean UX, research cycles, and a scalable design system to drive innovation across multiple product lines. - Led UX across six scrum teams, delivering a Continuous Delivery as a Service platform, driving 5X ARR growth. - Defined and executed UX strategy for DevOps, AI ML SecOps, and Analytics, shaping user experiences that expanded product vision and accelerated adoption. - Founded the Cloud Cost Management (FinOps) product, applying Lean UX with 25 Beta Customers, progressing from inception to GA in 6 months. - Democratized cost visibility & optimization for Kubernetes clusters and overall cloud costs, achieving 70+ customer onboardings by GA (Q2 2020). ### Principal UX Designer | Advancing Data Protection & Hyper-Converged Storage UX @ Veritas Technologies LLC Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Mountain View, California, United States As a Principal UX Designer at Veritas, I collaborated with a global team of 50+ UX professionals to drive user experience innovation across hyper-converged storage and data protection solutions within the Veritas Enterprise Data Services Platform. ✅ Led UX for enterprise-grade storage & data protection products, ensuring intuitive and scalable solutions for large-scale IT environments. ✅ Designed and enhanced key products, including NetBackup - optimizing backup, recovery, and data resiliency experiences. ✅ Contributed to the Veritas Design System, bringing modernization, consistency, and scalability across the entire product suite. ✅ Collaborated with cross-functional teams, aligning UX strategy with product management, engineering, and research to deliver seamless enterprise experiences. ✅ Applied design thinking and user research, improving efficiency, usability, and adoption for Veritas’ data protection and storage solutions. ### UX Design Manager | McAfee Consumer Innovation Lab @ McAfee Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Santa Clara At McAfee’s Consumer Innovation Lab, I established User Research and Design Thinking practices, leading end-to-end UX strategy for futuristic security and enterprise solutions across business units. ✅ Built and scaled UX research & design maturity, driving systems thinking, process optimization, and next-gen interface design. ✅ Led cross-functional UX initiatives, enhancing product innovation and delivering seamless security experiences for both consumers and enterprises. ✅ Designed UX for McAfee’s Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) solution, enabling real-time threat detection and network security enhancements for enterprises. ✅ Shaped the UX for McAfee Antivirus Protection, optimizing malware detection workflows and improving user trust in security alerts. ✅ Led UX for McAfee’s Smart Home Security, designing intuitive interfaces for IoT protection, ensuring seamless device security for consumers. ✅ Conceived, established, and led the UX team, delivering engaging, intuitive, and high-impact user experiences across multiple security products. Through strategic UX leadership, I helped shape McAfee’s consumer and enterprise security solutions, driving design innovation, user trust, and enhanced threat intelligence capabilities. ### UX Design & Research Lead | Driving Enterprise Security UX & Product Growth @ Vera Security Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Palo Alto [SOLD TO HELPSYSTEMS Dec 2020] Vera secures any data wherever it goes. Your need to protect confidential data extends past the borders of your business. With Vera, you can protect data and track, audit, and manage access in real time, no matter how far they travel. As a UX Lead at Vera Security, I spearheaded the end-to-end UX design for enterprise security products, including Secure File, Secure Email, and Data Classification, driving Series A to B growth by 40%. ✅ Led UX for Vera's Enterprise Security suite, recognized as one of the industry’s easiest-to-use security products. ✅ Architected multi-platform experiences (Web, Desktop, Mobile, Mac & Windows), ensuring seamless security workflows across devices. ✅ Drove UX research, usability testing, and data-driven design, enhancing user satisfaction & product adoption. ✅ Launched several key products, including agentless solutions like Secure Document, Data Encryption and Classification tools, Secure Email, and the industry’s first Secure Editing in Browser. ✅ Set product strategy & envisioned complex UX ecosystems, collaborating with PMs, engineers, and QA to push design boundaries. ✅ Led design collaboration with customers like Coca-Cola, GE & Cisco, conducting frequent user studies & A/B testing to refine security experiences. ✅ Developed POCs & prototypes to validate new security UX concepts and ensure high-quality execution. ✅ Mentored and led Vera’s UX team, maintaining design consistency, innovation, and seamless cybersecurity experiences. Through visionary UX leadership, I transformed enterprise security into an intuitive, user-friendly experience, solidifying Vera Security’s reputation as a leader in secure collaboration. ### Senior UX Architect | Driving UX Strategy for Virtual Office & Enterprise Tools @ 8x8 Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Jose, CA At 8x8, I played a pivotal role in the Engineering R&D team, driving UX strategy, information architecture, and user experience transformation for Virtual Office products, including Virtual Office Analytics, Salesforce, and Zendesk integrations. ✅ Led the end-to-end UX redesign of Virtual Office Analytics & administrative tools, modernizing workflows for enterprise users. ✅ Architected & redesigned the legacy "Account Manager", significantly improving usability, navigation, and customer experience. ✅ Collaborated with cross-functional leaders, including the Director of Product Management & Chief Software Architect, to align UX with technical and business goals. ✅ Implemented data-driven UX enhancements, boosting customer satisfaction & NPS scores, earning the Supporting Collaborator Award for impact. ✅ Enhanced enterprise communication experiences, designing scalable and intuitive solutions for business-critical tools. Through strategic UX leadership, I transformed complex enterprise workflows into seamless, intuitive experiences, driving product efficiency, adoption, and user engagement. ### Head of UX Design and Research | Driving Health Tech Innovation @ BaseHealth, Inc. Jan 2012 – Jan 2015 | Redwood City, CA As Head of UX Design at BaseHealth, I played a pivotal role in transforming health management and behavior-change solutions, contributing to the company’s growth from seed stage to Series C funding. ✅ Owned end-to-end product design for BaseHealth’s Web & Mobile app, delivering a data-driven, ML-powered disease prevention platform that personalized patient care. ✅ Led UX for wearable device integration, enabling seamless health tracking by connecting Withings & Fitbit, driving increased engagement and compliance. ✅ Designed and implemented enterprise solutions, including Zendesk CRM & customized provider workflows, improving patient data accessibility and clinical decision-making. ✅ Conducted 100+ user research & usability studies, refining UX strategies to enhance adoption, engagement, and retention across patient & provider segments. ✅ Established & scaled the first internal UX team, introducing Lean UX, research cycles, and industry-leading design practices to elevate product quality. ✅ Collaborated on brand identity & corporate website, strengthening BaseHealth’s market positioning and investor confidence, contributing to Series A, B, and C funding rounds. Through human-centered design, deep research, and UX innovation, I helped shape BaseHealth’s product vision, driving health tech advancements, patient engagement, and scalable business growth. ### Human Computer Interaction Researcher & Designer @ Samsung Electronics Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | San Jose At Samsung UX Lab, I was part of an interdisciplinary R&D team, creating futuristic concepts in convergence, smart devices, and next-gen mobile experiences. My work focused on shaping the future of seamless, multi-platform interactions across Android, Smart TV, Galaxy Tab, and Air Applications. ✅ Designed & prototyped smart home applications for context-aware, family-driven interactions in Future of Social Sciences (Family Social Network, LifeLog). ✅ Built timeline-based data visualization systems, enabling intuitive information aggregation & retrieval across smart ecosystems. ✅ Developed interactive prototypes for web aggregators, scrap tools, and AI-driven contextual awareness to enhance user experiences. ✅ Pioneered multi-platform UX innovations, ensuring seamless interactions across mobile, TV, and smart devices. Through UX experimentation & innovation, I helped shape Samsung’s vision for connected living, advancing how users interact with Smart Home ecosystems and next-gen digital experiences. ### UX Designer & Developer | Transforming Startups Through User-Centered Design @ Independent Consultant Jan 2007 – Jan 2010 As an Independent UX Designer & Developer, I partnered with multiple startups (Clickatell, Beanstalk Media, Mental Models, Cravat, Zippie, Goiart, Riasolve, and more) to design and develop user-centric digital experiences, helping early-stage companies scale their products. ✅ Led end-to-end UX design & front-end development, crafting seamless, high-impact user experiences using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, and jQuery. ✅ Worked closely with founders, product teams, and engineers, translating business goals into intuitive and scalable digital products. ✅ Designed user interfaces and interactive prototypes, improving engagement, usability, and conversion rates for web and mobile applications. ✅ Built and optimized front-end architectures, ensuring fast, accessible, and responsive experiences tailored to each startup’s needs. ✅ Drove UX strategy & research, aligning design decisions with user behavior insights to enhance product adoption and customer satisfaction. Through strategic UX design and hands-on development, I helped startups bring their vision to life, improve usability, and accelerate product-market fit. ## Education ### Master's Degree in Journalism & Mass Communication University of Calcutta ### User Experience Design UCSC Silicon Valley Extension ### Design Leadership Cooper Professional Education ### Bachelor's degree in Journalism & Mass Communication University of Calcutta ### Diploma in Multimedia & Web Engineering in Field of Study:Graphic Design, Animation, Interactive Technology, Video Graphics, Web Development Arena Multimedia, Aptech Ltd. ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/somabhakta --- Source: https://flows.cv/somabhakta JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/somabhakta/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13