Available for new opportunities

Building products in
complex systems.

  • Principal Product DesignerFifteen years of senior product delivery, taking interfaces from research to release across healthcare, banking, enterprise hardware, retail and automotive. I now run that delivery through AI tools and agentic workflows.
  • US · Working GloballyBased in Rochester, NY — working globally. Work ships to enterprise customers worldwide, with users from clinical coordinators and financial advisors to operators across agriculture, construction, energy and maritime.
  • 15 years2010 to present — Xerox, IDEO, Science37, Rokkan, Xerox PARC, Arvest Bank, Canvas8, and Neue Axiom (own practice, now closed). Currently advisory Head of Design & UX Research at Benchmark Labs.

AI-first product builder that utilizes design and research expertise to deliver memorable experiences.

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Impact made
Benchmark LabsXeroxPivotal LabsWalmart+American ExpressTargetHBOComcastCadillacMerrill LynchScience 37IDEOBloomberg PhilanthropiesU.S. Dept of StateCFPBCanvas8Arvest BankInterbankOevraXerox PARCThe Venetian

Zach’s Work

2026 – presentActive

Leading design, research and AI-native product workflows for everything built on Benchmark Labs’ forecast data, starting with benchmarklabs.com

Head of Design & UX Research, an advisory role at a weather-intelligence company that benchmarks its forecasts against sensors on the ground. The users are operators across agriculture, construction, energy, land management, and worker safety.

Weather intelligenceAdvisoryPublic siteAI-native workflow
Role
Advisory
Ownership
Design
Workflow
AI-native
2026 · early buildActive

Building an always-on agentic engineering system that routes every task to the cheapest capable open model

Hermes Agent orchestrates; OpenRouter routes each task across its model marketplace through a quality-gated cascade; Docker runs the token infrastructure underneath, including the local fallback for when hosted capacity tightens. An experiment in maximizing tokens per dollar, unbounded by any single provider’s limits.

AI infrastructureCascade routingOpen modelsAlways-on
Agent core
Hermes
Scheduler
Cron
Objective
Tokens/$
2024–2025Under construction

Shipped company-critical features across Xerox’s hardware–software ecosystem

Design and research for critical features across Xerox’s hardware–software ecosystem — production work used by enterprise customers globally, from office workers to fleet IT administrators. Design ops alignment and research concerning efficiencies and AI integration.

Enterprise productEnterpriseHardware + softwareWorkflow
Features
Shipped
Customers
Global
Ecosystem
HW + SW
2018–2020

Designed the cadillac.com experience behind new model launches and campaigns

Senior Product Designer on the Rokkan account — new UI patterns and components across cadillac.com for current and unreleased models, services, and promotions. Conversion of online interest to dealership contact rose from 1.2% to 1.8%.

AutomotiveDesign systemsWeb portfolioRokkan
Conversion
1.2→1.8%
Lead rate
+50%
Surface
The .com
Further Work
OevraUnder constructionStaff Product Designer · Platform Design
→
Arvest BankUnder constructionPrincipal Innovation Designer · Digital Banking
→
Canvas8Cultural Forecaster · Trend Analysis & Publications
→

Experience

Advisory role at an AI weather-forecasting company that benchmarks its forecasts against sensors on the ground. Users are operators across agriculture, construction, energy, land management and worker safety.

Selected outcomes

  1. Leading the redesign of benchmarklabs.com end to end — who the site is for, what it says about the product, and what ships.
  2. Standing up the design function AI-native from the start, so its practices, cadence and frameworks let design and research run company-wide.
  3. Building an AI-native design workflow across the product surfaces of a weather-intelligence company.

Design for critical features across Xerox's hardware–software ecosystem — production work used by enterprise customers globally, from office workers at a device panel to IT administrators managing fleets.

Selected outcomes

  1. A four-layer ecosystem — physical hardware, embedded software, cloud services and enterprise fleet management — all had to move together.
  2. Features are in production and actively used by enterprise customers globally — not concepts, not pilots.
  3. Conducted the research initiatives that informed product direction, not just individual screens.
  4. Specific adoption and performance data isn't published here — it's a conversation, not a webpage.

An early-stage startup linking the science behind people's creativity to a new education experience.

Selected outcomes

  1. Brought on to establish foundational design and technology directions for Oevra's creativity-centric education platform.
  2. Provided the platform's design assets from a blank canvas.

An independent practice guiding clients upstream of the design process — aligning leadership during strategy sessions, and building prototypes around complex consumer behaviours, trends and cultural knowledge.

Selected outcomes

  1. Guided clients through research and built experiences across cultural intelligence, business strategy and launched digital products.
  2. Funnelled those learnings strategically and tactically into executable design roadmaps and outcomes.

Led up-funnel UX innovation workstreams for Arvest's growing innovation portfolio, building ready-for-market MVP products and services addressing emerging tech, cultural and business realities.

Selected outcomes

  1. Defined, led and contributed to cross-functional projects spanning design, prototyping and research.
  2. Synthesised and prioritised learnings that supported business cases and investment strategies.
  3. Built relationships across all business areas, including senior leadership.

Science 37 set out to make clinical trials entirely digital — improving data quality and increasing human equity across the trial space.

Selected outcomes

  1. Simultaneously led design outcomes for multiple core product and research initiatives across the platform.
  2. Worked directly with VP of design and across verticals to improve collaboration across development, product, design and clinical/admin teams.
  3. Ran research, prototype tests and design validation inside focused sprints to meet feature deadlines.
  4. The work helped the product achieve better data cleanliness, meet industry privacy and efficiency standards, and opened new revenue streams.

Led research, strategy and UI/UX execution across several client products at once — delivering digital experiences across web and mobile while holding each brand's expression at every point of the build.

Selected outcomes

  1. Worked with UX writers, researchers, engineers, producers and creative directors to bring client brand visions into one multi-channel experience.
  2. Delivered and presented prototypes and final designs to client leadership throughout engagements.

Client engagements03

  1. Created the Walmart+ digital style guide — UI components and interactions — and implemented assets with developers for the membership service's landing and acquisition page, under 4–8 hour design and review cycles.

    View work — Walmart+

  2. Maintained and overhauled Cadillac's UI components across most of its online portfolio, updating the design system from design audits, prototypes and user testing. Also designed brand content for Cadillac events and campaigns, including the Oscars campaign.

    View work — Cadillac

  3. Competitive analysis of business credit offerings plus an audit of Amex's tech and design assets, delivered as wireframed strategic concepts to the Business Trends and Insights team.

Wrote detailed reports on emerging trends in human behaviour and technology across industries for Canvas8's insight platform.

Selected outcomes

  1. Conducted market, product and qualitative research and led the synthesis.
  2. Set up and led interviews with industry experts.
  3. Worked with Canvas8 editors to produce final published reports.

Helped lead, co-lead or be an individual contributor on user research, UX design and design strategy across projects spanning many industries, business types and persona use cases — from "future of" concepts to tactical components for launching apps, for startups and Fortune 500s.

Selected outcomes

  1. Conducted user research with working prototypes, gathering qualitative and quantitative insight.
  2. Crafted both aspirational and tactical UI design across consumer and B2B work.

Client engagements09

  1. Redesigned the annual review meeting between investors and their financial advisors — a reassessment of advisor roles backed by surveys, user journeys, in-context interviews and quantitative analysis. Final recommendations were slated for rollout across all US offices.

  2. Improving the consumer's power against banks. UX/UI design and design research. Under NDA — no detail published.

  3. Research and prototypes with Comcast's user base to find design potential in the smart-home market. Directed contracted in-house animators on interface animation; presented the prototypes to Comcast's board.

  4. Designed, prototyped and tested spatial and digital concepts for Target's future "City Target" locations, staged in a closed set with paid actors and research participants. Concepts went to Target's product steering committee and informed their move into urban retail.

  5. Conceptualised and prototyped new product opportunities for HBO's streaming experience, anticipating the move toward cord-cutting. The high-fidelity prototypes helped steer future HBO streaming initiatives.

  6. Led design of the digital onboarding and submission tools for the first-ever Mayors Challenge. Work was reviewed and approved by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his communications director.

  7. Developed native-app concepts and internal design strategy for the "Shop Small" initiative, built on Amex's transaction data and tested with small businesses. The work steered Amex's future Shop Small membership apps.

  8. Embedded at Pivotal's New York office for over a month on Case Commons — a multi-channel app for foster-care caseworkers, where an error could cause real harm. The result gave caseworkers timely, actionable help for children in vulnerable moments.

  9. Designed the interface for a digital queuing system built for in-person research inside Peruvian banks, focused on in-branch behaviour, queuing and expectations of the waiting area and teller.

Contracted to create functioning prototypes that could become intellectual property, under the banner "The Future of Work" — focused on blue-collar workflows, primarily the workflow of the auto mechanic.

Selected outcomes

  1. Led a team of programmers, graphic designers, interaction designers, industrial designers and mechanical engineers.
  2. Helped build a custom IR touch display, programmed its functionality, and led the UI design and user research.
  3. Explored augmented reality and large-scale touch interfaces; presented to PARC executives and engineers.
  4. The work became a patented intellectual property of Xerox PARC.

Approach

Systems that Ship

  • Ship on time, at scale.

    I take complex products from brief to launch on time, with every role, rule and edge state accounted for.

  • Lower risk in production.

    I build compliance and edge states into the flow, so products pass audit and hold up at scale.

  • Leave teams faster than I found them.

    I leave behind the systems and practices that keep teams shipping after I hand off.

Design for Behavior

  • Design for conversion.

    I design the path from first interest to action, and remove the friction that makes people drop off.

  • Turn visitors into members.

    I build qualification and value into the first screen, so the right people convert and the rest leave intent behind.

  • Turn behavior into strategy.

    I conduct behavioral analysis to understand why people act as they do, then use it to improve the quality of every interaction and the business’s bottom line.

Agentic Growth

  • Output that compounds.

    I build agents that run around the clock and keep what they learn, so repeated work gets cheaper.

  • AI-native teams.

    I build foundational agentic workflows that meet each team’s needs and optimize how the work gets done.

  • Lower cost per task.

    I design AI workflows around cost: the cheapest capable model first, escalating only when quality demands it.

Zach Soudan

Principal Product Designer

Location
Rochester, NY · working globally
Availability
Available for new opportunities

Network

LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)/in/zachsoudan GitHub (opens in a new tab)/zsoudan
SubstackForthcoming
Contact

Let’s talk.

Open to individual contributor roles, collaborative AI startup projects, consulting engagements, and networking.

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