Sean Smith - Resume

Sean@seansmithdesign.com • linkedin.com/in/seansmithdesign • seansmithdesign.com

Product design leader with 15+ years shipping AI-native, cross-platform products. Led design for Outlook Mobile and Mac through 2x+ MAU growth, managing a team of 11 including 3 principal designers. Now fractional with early-stage teams, using AI-assisted development to ship native and web products from concept to production. Player/coach approach: hands-on craft, systems thinking, leadership scope.

Sean Smith Design

Fractional Product Designer & Builder

Nov 2025 – Present

Product owner, designer, and builder at a stealth fintech, working hands-on with leadership on product direction.
Building Brukas solo (approaching launch, TestFlight access on request): product and business strategy, design, AI build, chat tuning and evals, and GTM.
Shipping AI workflow tools: Annotie for Mac and iOS, giving AI agents cleaner context through screenshots, video frames, and links; and Ghostties, an open source Ghostty terminal fork for tracking many agents running in parallel.

Microsoft

Microsoft Outlook

2021–December 2025 | Principal Product Design Leader

(previously Senior and Principal Product Design Manager roles)

Led design for Outlook Mobile and Mac, driving 2x+ MAU growth on Mobile and multi-X growth on Mac following the official launch of the new Outlook Mac app. Each semester the team planned 100-150 design work items across AI-powered experiences and core workflows.
Began exploring generative AI for Outlook in mid-2022 with GPT-3. Early prototyping informed how LLMs came into productivity workflows ahead of the broader Copilot push at Microsoft.
Player/coach leadership of a team of 11 across 6+ time zones (US, Australia, China, India, and at times London and Portugal). Included 3 principals (with a fourth on track) and 2 LEAP apprentices, both of whom were promoted from Designer 1 to Designer 2.
Led a rebuild of the Outlook mobile design system (years out of date), moving onto variants and variables, a foundation for AI-era design tooling.

Microsoft MileIQ / SMB Incubation

2015 – 2021 | Senior Designer & Senior Design Manager

First in-house designer at MileIQ (pre-acquisition); guided the transition from startup to Microsoft.
Led design across a suite of SMB and consumer apps including MileIQ, Spend, Visits, and Money in Excel.
Supported hiring and growth of the design team while balancing hands-on execution with product strategy.

Early Career

2015 | Lead Product Designer

MileIQ (Mobile Data Labs)

First in-house designer, partnered closely with founders and peers to refine MileIQ's core experience.
Led vision and design for a suite of SMB apps, supporting funding and acquisition strategy.
Built an early design system in Sketch and prototyped in Principle to streamline cross-team collaboration and engineering handoff.

2012–2015 | Lead Designer & Design Engineer

Best Apps Market & Fetch

Designed Android app store alternative; modernized the UI with Material Design.
Led front-end XML implementation and UI updates for Material design v1.

2009–2012 | Freelance Design

Led branding and UI work for startups.
Launched and ran an apparel business (design, printing, eCommerce).

Contact

Sean@seansmithdesign.com
linkedin.com/in/seansmithdesign
github.com/SeanSmithDesign
x.com/seansmithbuilds
seansmithdesign.com

Professional Development

Future London Academy

Executive Programme for Design Leaders ("Design MBA") | 2025-2026

Designer Fund

Design for Business Impact | 2019

Skills

Leadership & Strategy

Design Leadership, Team Management, Product Strategy, Storytelling, Mentorship, Human Centered Design, Cross-functional Collaboration

Favorite Tools Right Now

Claude Code, Cursor, Figma, v0, Vercel, Wispr Flow, Lovable, Jitter, Remotion

Education

Art Institute of California - San Francisco

Graphic Design | 2007-2010

Academy of Art

Graphic Design | 2006-2007