Jay Sylvester

Product, design, and engineering leader with 20+ years spanning user research, UX design, and full-stack development, including 8+ years managing teams.

As the first design hire at multiple B2B SaaS startups, I've taken complex technical products from 0 to 1 by anchoring decisions in customer research and building the design and research practice where none existed.

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Skills overview

Team Management & Development
Manages, mentors, and scales cross-functional product teams
User-Centered Product Design
Anchors product design decisions to user needs in alignment with business concerns
Data-Driven Decision Making
Drives product decisions via competitive analysis, user research, and usability testing
Stakeholder Management
Guides and influences stakeholders at all levels, from engineers to executive leadership
Full-Stack Engineering
Broad and deep understanding of the complete software stack, from backend to frontend

Work history

  1. 2023 — Present

    Co-founder & Chief Product Officer

    Flisk

    I co-founded a no-code AI startup that enables marketers and data analyists to manage data tracking without an engineer. I led research and discovery through hundreds of customer interviews and usability tests, developed our product strategy and feature roadmap based on the results, and performed all product design. I also built the app frontend and wrote all prompt engineering.

  2. 2022 — 2023

    Lead Product Designer

    Rockerbox

    I joined Rockerbox as their first designer and established a user-centered process in support of their customer-first culture. I led the user interview process within the Product team, designed and tested prototypes in the company’s first usability studies, and created high-fidelity mockups. I developed a framework for displaying marketing data focused on key insights and recommendations utilizing plain language and clear visualizations.

    Read my Rockerbox case study →
  3. 2021 — 2022

    Principal UX Designer

    Equinix

    I was the lead designer on the Equinix Metal team, where we built the interface customers use to manage bare metal co-located hosting services. I designed several major features to enable easier resource deployment and created design concepts for the first iteration of a complete UI redesign.

  4. 2019 — 2020

    UX Manager

    Linode

    I led the UX team at Linode, an innovative cloud hosting provider, where most of our work centered around the Cloud Manager, a browser-based tool for administrating servers hosted on the Linode platform. In addition to supervising interface design for new products such as cloud firewalls and DBaaS, I also drove implementation of the company’s first moderated usability studies and completely redesigned the Cloud Manager based on extensive industry and user research.

    Read my Linode case study →
  5. 2015 — 2018

    UX Lead

    Vidyo

    Vidyo welcomed me to their growing UX team in order to build an internal design practice and help transform the company into a customer-focused organization. I defined the process for user experience research and design and managed the UX designers responsible for the company’s flagship video conferencing systems, including desktop, mobile, and conference room applications.

    Read my Vidyo case study →
  6. 2014 — 2014

    Creative Director

    Fitly

    I led the responsive redesign of a startup incubator product under a tight deadline, implementing a rapid mobile first design process that started with mobile wireframes and then went straight to coding and designing on the fly in the browser. We followed up with design comps for phase two, improving the visual design and proposing feature enhancements.

    Read my Fitly case study →
  7. 2012 — 2013

    UX Lead

    hibu

    While managing a blended UI team consisting of UX designers and front end developers, I promoted a user-centered design philosophy across the organization that established the needs of the customer as the primary consideration in all feature development. We produced wireframes, prototypes, and final production code for hibu web properties.

    Read my hibu case study →
  8. 2010 — 2012

    Manager of Frontend Development

    Abercrombie & Fitch

    I led a large team of UI engineers responsible for all e-commerce frontend development. Building strong partnerships with stakeholders, UX architects, visual designers, and my IT colleagues, I broke down traditional silos and got us working collaboratively. My team overhauled the frontend codebase, drastically improving performance and maintainability.

    Read my Abercrombie & Fitch case study →
  9. 2009 — 2010

    Senior Front End Developer

    WebLinc

    As a hands-on developer, I performed sophisticated front end development on large-scale e-commerce platforms utilizing standards compliant HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Leading several development projects, I mentored junior front end developers and advised designers on appropriate user interface design elements based on their technical feasibility.

  10. 2006 — 2008

    Lead Developer and SEO Manager

    NetPlus Marketing

    I managed the small but highly productive team responsible for all client web site programming, while also assuming responsibility for IA/UX artifacts including sitemaps, taxonomies, flowcharts, wireframes, and HTML prototypes. As SEO Manager, I authored detailed web site SEO recommendations based on extensive reviews of site content and analytics.

  11. 2004 — 2006

    Web Specialist

    Ricoh Corporation

    I redesigned the human resources intranet site, replacing an outdated and confusing layout with vastly improved information architecture and a contemporary look and feel. I also optimized all Ricoh subsidiaries' sites for search engine rankings, writing meta descriptions and page content and proposing information architecture changes.

  12. 2000 — 2004

    Web Producer

    Panasonic Consumer Electronics

    I supervised our interactive agency, reviewing and approving all sites within core product lines including TV, Home Theater, and Home Appliances. Through careful planning with product managers and the advertising department, I coordinated site updates with product introductions, promotions, and events. I also designed and coded the Panasonic Premium sales incentive web site.

Skills inventory