Katy Harris

An accomplished design leader and product development strategist with extensive experience growing and managing multi-disciplinary teams in design, engineering, and product roles. Expertise spans UX and product design, team and roadmap leadership, complex product launches, content systems, data visualization, and technical consulting across both enterprise and startup environments.

Austin, TX, USA

Remote + Hybrid Preferred

Senior leader in the IT Design and Research group.

• As Design Partner: On paper this role is to work with executive leaders to anticipate and evaluate design needs then connect the right practitioners to the project. In practice, I am a professional Gap Filler: part design manager,strategist, coach, program manager, scrum master, and design lead — whatever is called for to support an engaged and productive product design team at enterprise scale.
• As Design Manager: Centralized people manager for 8-13 practitioners who were embedded in product teams across the IT space. Coached on skills, career development, and process optimization as my team tackled consumer, enterprise, and generative AI use cases.

Design Partner

Apr 2023 – Present

Product Design Manager

Mar 2023 – 2025

Founding executive team member of Atlas, a highly configurable content editor and workflow application for business-critical content in the enterprise. Acquired by Archer Integrated Risk Management in 2022.

• Served as interim Head of Product from 2020 to 2021 after departure of founder and CEO
• As Head of Product, responsible for strategic roadmap as well as managing 2 technical product managers and an external research vendor
• As Head of Design, managed a team of 2 while executing product design from conception to launch for two core products and one design system
• As a founding exec team member, planned for company-wide team health, resource allocation, project prioritization, and operations

Head of Design

Aug 2019 – Feb 2023 (3 yrs 7 mos)

Advanced from Senior Designer to lead the design function at Carbonite for two years, recruiting and managing a team of 8 full stack designers to support 5 product lines, 300 customer facing properties, and 34 scrum teams.

• Developed UX strategy for the mid-market product suite and executed across five acquisitions in three years
• Originated skill development plans and processes so team could handle complex use cases: multi-tenant, multi-channel software targeted to consumers, mid market, and enterprise, both on prem and in the cloud
• Initiated Carbonite's first product design system and component library
• Responsible for overall team health, career development, resource allocation, project prioritization, and operations

UX Manager

Mar 2019 – Aug 2019 (6 mos)

Principal UX Designer / Design Manager

Jan 2018 – Mar 2019 (1 yr 3 mos)

Senior UX Designer

Jul 2016 – Jan 2018 (1 yr 7 mos)

Adjunct lecturer focusing on information design and data visualization in the College of Arts, Media, and Design.

Adjunct Lecturer

Sep 2015 – Aug 2019 (4 yrs)

Design consulting practice focused on providing entrepreneurs and academics with information design, data visualization, and design advisory services.

Principal

Sep 2006 – Aug 2019 (13 yrs)

"Less couch, more culture."

We co-founded Trill to disrupt the arts and culture scene by creating tools to connect performers, venues, presenters, and audiences in Boston and beyond. Trill was a semi-finalist in the 2014 MassChallenge accelerator and a winner at the 2014 Berklee School of Music's Venture Day competition.

• Spearheaded design and product development, transforming ambiguous ideas into four working MVPs within the first year.
• As Head of Product, I built and maintained roadmaps aligned with strategic goals.
• As Head of Design, I led all creative efforts, from user research and wireframes to final visual design and prototyping.

Design Advisor

Sep 2016 – Dec 2017 (1 yr 4 mos)

Co-Founder, Head of Design + Product

Jan 2014 – Sep 2015 (1 yr 9 mos)

Designed and delivered impactful projects from hands-on data analysis to creative direction to development support for clients such as Thomson Reuters, the World Bank, and GE.

Project Awards:

• 2013 Data Journalism Award (winner)
• 2013 Innovation by Design Award (finalist)

Lead Visualization Designer

Sep 2010 – Jan 2014 (3 yrs 5 mos)

Curriculum development, critique, and teaching in a studio setting.

Critic + Lecturer

Feb 2011 – Feb 2012 (1 yr 1 mo)

Responsible for transforming a mid-fidelity concept into a net new product, collaborating closely with the machine learning, engineering, and sales teams to create actionable visualizations grounded in actual data. Acquired by FIS in 2012.

Lead Interaction Designer

Aug 2009 – Sep 2010 (1 yr 2 mos)

Frontend development team for a network of ecommerce sites including networksolutions.com

Software Engineer (Frontend)

Sep 2002 – Sep 2006 (4 yrs 1 mo)

Information architecture, web design, web development, and 508 compliance testing for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Web Developer

Sep 2001 – Sep 2002 (1 yr 1 mo)