I'm Derry Birkett, a Design Director who builds teams, systems, and product-quality habits.
I have spent 18 years moving between enterprise software, scaleups, startups, and agencies: Oracle Netsuite, CloudBees, Exabyte / Mat3ra, Telanto, Hugo Boss, Esprit, Bikesoup, IESE, and Technogym.
My work is usually at the point where craft alone is not enough: hiring needs a clearer loop, research needs a cadence, design systems need adoption, and product teams need design judgment early enough to change what ships. I'm based in London and work globally.
18
Enterprise, scaleup, startup, agency
3 → 9
CloudBees design organisation growth
Oracle
UI Catalog, UI Library, adoption
EU + US
Product, brand, research, AI labs
I make design useful at organisation scale.
That can mean taking an in-house leadership role, advising a founder or product leader, or helping a team install the operating model around research, systems, reviews, and shipping quality.
At CloudBees I inherited Head of Design responsibility, grew the team from 3 → 9 designers, and helped move UX upstream into product strategy.
At Oracle Netsuite I led a 3–4 person team through a design-system refresh, documentation site, designer library, and progressive adoption.
Across Exabyte / Mat3ra, Telanto, Hugo Boss, Esprit, Technogym, Bikesoup, and IESE, I have moved between product, brand, research, content, and art direction without treating those as separate worlds.
“I've only been working with Derry for 2 months, noted strengths thus far include but are not limited to:”
- Design management — ability to lead designers through complex initiatives.
- Design systems — strong grasp of design-system strategies, principles, and best practices.
- Takes initiative — stepped into the Honey product management role and leads complex Honey initiatives.
- Team player.
- Positive attitude.
- Adaptable.
- Clear communicator.
I write about design leadership, systems, AI agents, and research maturity. I also keep a studio archive for demos, videos, and build-in-public experiments.