How an engagement works, what I own, and how it ends.
How an engagement works
Half-time, on retainer, capped. Twenty focused hours a week, which is what running the function takes when your design leader isn't also sitting in every standing meeting. As the team stabilizes, the hours narrow to named ownership (hiring, vendors, a specific project). A set exit date from day one. I don't go full-time for anyone; if you need a full-time design leader, you need your permanent hire, and I'll help you make it.
Ownership, not advice. I make the calls a design leader makes: assignments, hires, tool contracts, tradeoffs. You get a leader, not a recommendation memo.
Handoff is the deliverable. From the first week, I'm writing for my successor. If the permanent hire is already in the pipeline, I'll help close them and overlap with them.
Cash, not equity. The retainer is billed monthly and paid in cash. I don't take options in place of fees. If you want me on your cap table, that's an advisor conversation, and it comes after the engagement, not instead of the invoice.
AI-native by default. I bring my own AI tooling for hiring analysis, research synthesis, and documentation, calibrated to your company; you keep everything it produces, plus the process rules that keep designers thinking instead of prompting. The tooling itself stays mine.
Hiring
Am I a recruiter? No. I work with your recruiters and sourcers and open my network to them. If you don't have one, I bring my recruiting partner; she has run every product design search I've led in the past year. Either way, what I own is the process they run inside: the role bars, the screens, the rubrics, and the calibration.
Do I coach recruiters? Yes. At Bubble the recruiter ran first-round screens against a written bar across 1,700+ applicants and scored candidates I never had to re-screen. That's the goal: a recruiting team that can read a portfolio without getting bamboozled by shiny screens.
Will I participate in the interview process? Yes, as hiring manager. I run the HM screen, sit on portfolio panels and crits, and write the debrief. I'll also interview for adjacent roles (PMs, for example) when the design perspective belongs in the loop.
How long will I be involved? Long enough to close the roles and hand the process to whoever runs it next. Hiring is usually the last thing I scale down, because it's the thing most likely to stall without an owner.
Interim and fractional leadership
How many hours per week? Twenty, on a monthly retainer, and that's the ceiling. At Bubble, the engagement ended at roughly 10 hours a week, scoped to hiring and research tooling, until the permanent Director started.
Will I become a full-time employee? No. The engagement ends when your permanent leader is in the seat. I'll help hire them, overlap with them, and stay on as an advisor afterward if you want one.
Do I set up research?
Yes. I will do vendor evaluation, platform rollout, recruiting workflows, participant segmentation, incentive budgets, and consent. The goal is PMs and designers running studies themselves, not a research queue.
Which research vendors do I work with?
I have working relationships with Maze, User Interviews, Listen Labs, Great Question, Voice Panel, Rally, and Figma. I don't take referral fees from any of them. What the relationships buy you is speed: pilots set up in days, pricing that reflects what I know the tool is worth, and an honest read on where each tool is headed; if a platform won't connect to the AI stack you're building on, I'll say so to the rep before you sign.
Do I use AI?
Yes. I bring my own tooling for hiring analysis, research synthesis, and documentation, and calibrate it to your roles, your product, and your bar. At Bubble, the pre-screen agreed with the eventual panel outcome on 94 to 96 percent of 400+ logged cases, and every miss got logged and fed back into the bar. The tooling is mine and stays mine; the retainer is for my time. What you keep is everything it produced: the role bars, rubrics, calibration record, and documentation, plus the process rules I write so your designers keep thinking instead of prompting.
Design work
Do I still do actual design? Rarely. I run design; I don't ship screens. I'll take an occasional concept project when it's the fastest way to unblock a team, but that's the exception.
Do I know any designers or researchers who can take on projects? Yes. Send me a note with what you're building, and I'll make introductions where there's a match.
Have a design function that needs a leader? Let's talk.