Resume

Born and brought up in the coastal city of Mangalore in a Roman Catholic household, I pursued a career as an engineer until, by a spot of luck, I came across the field of design. After a Master's degree in Information and Interface Design from the National Institute of Design, I began my practice as a digital product designer.

My first job as a designer was at Practo (opens in new tab), an Indian healthcare startup, working on their doctor facing products like Practo Pro (opens in new tab) and Practo Ray (opens in new tab). then I worked at Gojek(opens in new tab), the Indonesian SuperApp, heading design for their Merchant SuperApp aka GoBiz (opens in new tab).

Recently, I was a senior design manager at Jiva (opens in new tab) (2022-2025), an Agritech startup, where I built and led the product design and research team, working on a suite of mobile apps and web apps for users in rural Indonesia. You can read about the work we did in our Medium publication, Notes from the Fields (opens in new tab).

As a product design leader, I have built remote-first, diverse teams across countries. I believe in building a culture where you can feel supported while being yourself. I believe in learning by doing, even in failure. And that good design isn't possible without a sponsor.

In my spare time, I like to travel to new places, make coffee content (opens in new tab), read non-fiction and contemporary fiction (opens in new tab), collect graphic art, and write short stories and travelogues (opens in new tab). I currently host designdemonights.com (opens in new tab), where designers can showcase the projects they are working on.

Want to work with me or discuss a cool project that you are working on?

Write me an email at kennethmdesouza [at] gmail [dot] com or DM me @kenneth (opens in new tab).

Leadership and Organizational Impact

• Built and scaled design teams across Practo, Gojek, and Jiva (from leading the GoMerchants design function in a 100+ designer org like Gojek to building the product design team at Jiva.ag)
• Defined performance ladders for Product Design and UX Writing, and authored annual reviews, growth plans, and promotion recommendations.
• Established weekly design critiques, biweekly cross-functional product reviews, and documentation systems to improve alignment, cross-pollination and decision velocity.
• Led end-to-end hiring across multiple roles, including campus hiring (NID, IIT-G) and product management interview panels.
• Directed design systems work across web and mobile, including Jiva’s multi-platform Akar design system.

Selected Writing and Speaking

• An insider’s guide to a Job hunt (opens in new tab): A short talk I give to design school students, from the perspective of a hiring manager, who are about to sit for their college placements.
• Near, far, wherever we are (opens in new tab): Transcribed from a talk that Feby (researcher) and I (designer) gave during the pandemic about working in teams across international borders.
• Gamify DesignOps with human connection (opens in new tab): I spoke to Kavan Antani, CEO of Indiefolio, as part of the podcast series 'DesignOops' centring around design operations and management.
• What is a product designer? (opens in new tab): A reflection of what it means to be a product designer in the software industry.
• Squads as a growth engine for designers (opens in new tab): Wrote about how we leveraged squads to help designers in the team grow.
• Archive of my newsletter for Design Managers (opens in new tab): Between 2020-2023, I wrote 22 newsletters on the topics like building career ladders, hiring designers, building inclusive processes and much more.

Work Experience

Senior Design Manager

Jiva AG • Jan 2022 - Sept 2025

• Led the product design function across five mobile apps and internal tools serving Indonesia’s agriculture supply chain.
• Designed products for 100k+ farmers, 5,400 collectors, and 4,900 retailers.
• Co-led Jiva Lite, a WhatsApp-based assistant that helped farmers improve their sales by $180 on avg.
• Led design for Crop Doctor, an AI-powered interface inside the Farmer App for diagnosing crop disease.
• Directed the design system, Akar, and oversaw it’s implementation across Jiva’s ecosystem of apps.

Senior Design Manager

Gojek • Dec 2017 - Jan 2022

• Headed the Merchant Platform design team across multiple merchant-facing products; ads, pos, payment gateways and merchant platforms.
• Led the redesign of GoBiz as it evolved from a restaurant management tool into a broader merchant platform.
• Improved information architecture across products serving 1.5M+ merchants.
• Designed for regional expansion across Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore.
• Introduced team rituals and cross-functional alignment practices as the organization scaled.

Senior Designer

Practo • Apr 2014 - Nov 2017

• Worked on doctor-facing products including Practo Ray and was the design owner for Practo Partner.
• Led the Material redesign of the Practo Partner Android app and oversaw the redesign of the iOS app.
• Helped unify multiple provider-facing products into a more cohesive platform.
• Grew with the team from design intern to senior designer as the practice scaled from 4 to 32 designers.

Assistant Systems Engineer

TCS • Nov 2010 - May 2012

• Started in engineering, working with Java and middleware applications before moving toward HTML, CSS, JavaScript frameworks, and Visual design with Photoshop.

Workshops

• Interactive DataViz Using AI Coding at VizChitra 2026 (opens in new tab) (July 3, 2026): A sold-out workshop at VizChitra 2026 on building interactive data visualizations with AI coding tools.
• Agentic Coding Workshop at CEC, Mangalore (opens in new tab) (April 29, 2026): Introduced Computer Science and Design students to Agentic Coding at Canara Engineering College. My second IRL workshop on the topic.
• AI Workshop at NID (opens in new tab) (March 5, 2026): AI workshop hosted at the National Institute of Design, India.

Education

Certifications

Elsewhere on the Internet

• On Designing team growth on the 'NewCampus blog' (opens in new tab) (2023): Saloni and I were interviewed about how the NewCampus courses have impacted our working style at Jiva.
• Creating a stand-out portfolio: Advice from design leaders on the 'Obvious blog' (opens in new tab) (2021): A summary writeup of a twitter space a few of us did with Obvious regarding hiring designers.
• Challenges with Transitioning to a Design Manager from an IC role on the 'Ownpath blog' (opens in new tab) (2021): This is an excerpt from my fireside chat with Ownpath in 2021.
• What Designers Want on 'The Hard Copy' (opens in new tab) (2019): Quoted: “I treat the interview process as a reflection of the org. Are they using a generic job description? Are they able to communicate well during the process?” — Kenneth D’Souza, Product Designer, Gojek