Staff Product Designer | Design Systems

Düsseldorf, Germany · Hybrid

• Built sipgate’s design system from scratch and own it end to end: a Figma library with a React codebase, used across 10 product teams. 33 components, 500+ Storybook stories, 1,100+ Figma variants, ~10k inserts a week, with public docs at pandaUI.de.
• Ship production code alongside engineers: 1,000+ commits (top-5 all-time), pairing so the best handoff is no handoff. Built the system’s tooling: a Figma plugin that syncs tokens to GitHub in four clicks (from a brittle 12-step ritual), ESLint/StyleLint plugins, and a WCAG contrast checker for every token pair.
• Architected 500+ tokens (primitive → semantic → component) in Tokens Studio and Style Dictionary, driving theming, dark mode and localization across web, desktop, Android and iOS, then rolled a full rebrand on top, system intact.
• Lead the system’s AI-readiness so agents build with it like designers do: an agent-evaluation harness scored against our standards, exploratory Figma MCP server spikes, a custom MCP server, and machine-readable docs. Built Cursor/VS Code extensions and shipped tickets agentically.
• Shipped its most technical components: a Table/ListView on MUI (Material UI) X DataGrid (sorting, resizable/pinned columns, nested rows, row actions) with a custom virtualization wrapper, inline-edit form-builder patterns, and a responsive, keyboard-accessible navigation redesign.
• Cut design debt with evidence: a 600-screen interface inventory, library-adoption analytics, icons consolidated 456 → 159, and a Chromatic suite trimmed 893 → 321 with better coverage. Moved styling from Tailwind to CSS Modules so any CSS-fluent dev can contribute.
• Onboarded two designers over six months each and mentored a three-year apprentice into a full-time role, ran hiring panels and design-system critiques, led the 2020 company-wide Figma migration, and speak at Into Design Systems. Co-founded the IDEA inclusion newsletter and started the company Pride group, six years running.

University Lecturer and Certified Tutor

Remote

• Teach a user interface and a web development course as live online seminars.
• Supervise bachelor theses as advisor and examiner, and give each student detailed, individual written feedback.
• Run the seminars workshop-style with breakout rooms: students design a site in Figma and build it in Webflow, graded as a project with a live presentation.
• Wrote the official study booklet for the usability module as its credited author, and review other booklets and the module handbook.
• Keep the seminars grounded in real product work, bringing current industry practice to the next group of designers.