Work in progress This site is under construction while I learn to build and ship with Cursor — thanks for your patience.
SJ Jennings 2026 UX Design Manager

Selected work · leadership · craft

SJ Jennings

I build teams and products people actually want to use — balancing strategy, org health, and a stubborn love of good UX.

View projects Say hello

HELLO!

Replace with your voice: where you’ve led, what industries you know, and what you optimize for — clarity, velocity, inclusive teams, brave research, or design systems that don’t rot.

Domains of interest

  • Design leadership
  • Product & UX strategy
  • Research & experimentation
  • Design systems
  • Cross-functional partnership

About Me

EXPERIENCE

Workday

June 2016 — Present · 9 yrs 2 mos

Enterprise finance and HR cloud software — progressed from intern through senior IC roles into UX design management.

  • UX Design Manager May 2025 — Present

    People leadership, UX strategy, and partnership across product and engineering.

  • Associate UX Design Manager May 2024 — May 2025

    First management scope: team health, delivery, and raising the design quality bar.

  • Product Designer III May 2020 — May 2024

    Senior IC ownership of complex workflows, systems thinking, and design mentorship.

  • Product Designer II May 2018 — May 2020

    End-to-end product design: discovery, iteration, and shipping with PM and Eng.

  • Product Designer I April 2017 — May 2018

    Feature work from concept through launch; research, prototyping, and usability.

  • UX Design Intern June 2016 — September 2016

    Summer program supporting product teams on interaction and visual design.

City of North Bend

June 2014 — September 2014 · 4 mos

Summer civil engineering internship with a small Washington city — field observation, plan sets, and support for public works and capital projects.

  • Civil Engineering Intern June 2014 — September 2014

    Summer program assisting city engineering staff with site visits, documentation, and project coordination.

EDUCATION

  • Bachelor of Science, Human Centered Design & Engineering University of Washington · 2016
  • Certification or course Provider · Year

SKILLS

  • Figma
  • Design ops
  • Workshopping
  • Hiring & leveling
  • Research ops
  • Storytelling

HOBBIES

Tiny framed moments — swap for your own doodles or photos. Icons below are placeholders.

  • Reading
  • Hiking
  • Sketching
  • Music

CONNECT

SELECTED WORK

Grid of thumbnails + spotlight (like a zine spread). Link each thumb to a case study or PDF when ready.

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

Featured project title

  • Product
  • Research
  • Systems

Problem → your role (IC vs manager) → what you did → outcome. Keep it scannable; link out for the long version.

Open case study →

LEADERSHIP

Replace each card with a real story: team size, what changed, and the result — qualitative or metric.

Team & craft

Coaching, crits, leveling, hiring — raising the bar without burning folks out.

Operations & rituals

Roadmaps with PM/Eng, design QA, and documentation people actually use.

Influence & alignment

Exec storytelling, tradeoffs, and protecting focus when everything feels urgent.

HOW I WORK

Phases beat a manifesto. Say where you inject managerial judgment — staffing, risk, sequencing, quality bar.

  1. 01 Align — goals, constraints, success signals with partners.
  2. 02 Explore — diverge, prototype, test with real users.
  3. 03 Decide — narrow, document tradeoffs, earn buy-in.
  4. 04 Ship — stay through build, launch, and learning.

LET’S TALK

Recruiters, hiring managers, collaborators — glad you’re here. Pick a channel; I’m friendly.

you@example.com LinkedIn