# Sonakshi W. > Product Design Lead at Netflix | ex-Google Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/sonakshi I’m a product designer focused on reimagining technically complex spaces to create business and user value. I use my software engineering background to deeply understand technical spaces and my design skills to distill complexity into high impact solutions. I currently work on designing experiences that power the Netflix Ads platform. Previously, I was redefining policy experiences for millions of advertisers on the Google Ads ecosystem. Before I got into ads, I was all about developer experiences. I led design of the machine learning, security, and marketplace products on the Firebase developer platform. ## Work Experience ### Product Design Lead @ Netflix Jan 2024 – Present | Los Gatos, California, United States Netflix Ads Platform - Finance and Billing, Live, and some other fun stuff. ### Advisor @ Shippie Jan 2024 – Present ### Senior Product Designer, Ads Privacy and Safety @ Google Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area I redefined the strategy for Google Ads account suspensions, focusing on improving revenue and operational cost metric. I led the redesign of a complex internal data exploration tool to scale and expand the tool’s user base, including incorporating generative AI features. The redesign reduced millions of policy violating incidents (such as clickbait ads). ### Product Designer, Firebase @ Google Jan 2018 – Jan 2023 I led the design and development of the Firebase Extensions Marketplace (extensions.dev), where developers can find new and existing Firebase Extensions to help make Firebase work better with tools from the open ecosystem. 187K+ extensions installed by app developers and 100+ extensions published by companies like Twilio, MailChimp, Stripe, Algolia. Previous work: Firebase Machine Learning, Firebase App Check ### Product Designer, Google.org @ Google Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 I shaped the UX for a Crisis Contact Simulator, an AI powered chatbot that helps train more volunteers, working closely with another designer. The conversational AI chatbot can simulate what a youth in crisis might say when reaching out to a Trevor Project counselor. With this tool, the Trevor Project plans to grow their team of 700 digital volunteer crisis counselors by 10x. ### Graduate Student Instructor @ University of Michigan - School of Information Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Ann Arbor Graduate Student Instructor for SI 364 - Building Interactive Applications ### Graduate Student Instructor @ University of Michigan - School of Information Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Ann Arbor Graduate Student Instructor for SI 506 - Programming I ### User Experience Design Intern @ Google Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area Designed user-centred experiences for the Actions on Google developer console. Collaborated with designers, researchers, engineers and project managers to deliver features. ### Academic Innovation Research Fellow @ University of Michigan Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Greater Detroit Area Worked on a research plan and conducted interviews to understand privacy perceptions, expectations, and concerns in learning analytics tools used at the University of Michigan. ### Application Developer @ ThoughtWorks Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Bengaluru Area, India Worked on agile development of a private banking application for iPhone, iPad and Web. ### Software Engineer @ Juniper Networks Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Bangalore Worked in the IPv4/v6 space to bolster the network stack. This involved design, development, and unit test of new code features in C and continuous revamp of the existing code base. ### Intern @ Juniper Networks Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 Wrote code in C for the high-availability feature, In-Service Software Upgrade to Clear Channel SONET/SDH Modular Interface Cards. This feature ensures that downtime is minimal during software upgrades. ### Intern @ National Informatics Center Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 Contributed to the development of the RNI (Registrar of Newspapers for India) website. Developed an online shopping website using ASP.NET and SQL Server Management Studio. ## Education ### Master’s Degree in Human Computer Interaction University of Michigan - School of Information ### Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering Manipal Institute of Technology ### Delhi Public School - Mathura Road ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/watel --- Source: https://flows.cv/sonakshi JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/sonakshi/resume.json Last updated: 2026-02-23