Nov 2024 – Nov 2025 · 1 yr · Palo Alto, California, United States · Hybrid

Oct 2023 – Nov 2024 · 1 yr 1 mo · Copenhagen Metropolitan Area · On-site

• As Senior Director of User Experience & Brand Strategy at Maersk, I led a global team of over 70 designers, overseeing the end-to-end design process across more than 10 product areas. My role focused on scaling human-centered design in a complex maritime logistics and supply chain enterprise ecosystem, driving strategic alignment between UX, brand, and business objectives.
• Key Contributions:
• Scaled UX Strategy & Operations: Established a cohesive design framework across multiple products, ensuring consistency and efficiency in the design process.
• Led Multi-Disciplinary Design Teams: Managed teams spanning UX, UI, research, and brand strategy, fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation.
• Transformed Enterprise UX: Elevated customer-centric design in digital logistics, enhancing both B2B and B2C experiences.
• Executive Stakeholder Alignment: Worked closely with C-suite, engineering, and product leadership to integrate UX as a core business driver.
• Design System Governance: Standardized and scaled design systems, improving cross-product coherence and reducing inefficiencies.
• Talent Growth & Mentorship: Developed design leadership pipelines, coaching design managers and individual contributors.
• By embedding design as a strategic function, my work at Maersk contributed to a more seamless, intuitive, and brand-aligned digital experience for customers and stakeholders alike.

Jul 2021 – Present · 4 yrs 11 mos

• Currently Volunteering
• ADPList Super Mentor: Global May 2022 - March 2026 consecutive Top 1% Recognition
• 30000+ minutes of mentorship donated

Jan 2021 – Oct 2023 · 2 yrs 9 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Effectively managed and coached five UX teams, namely Design Foundation (System Design), Growth, Internationalization, Developer Platform, and Contents Design, with the goal of modernizing and enhancing the overall quality of Reddit’s product development experience.
• Spearheaded a team of designers in a complete redesign of Reddit.com’s web presence. Our collaborative work with design technologists and frontend engineers led to the overhaul of the frontend architecture, facilitating the integration of a modernized design system that is closely tied with our tooling and code.
• Successfully conceptualized and implemented a novel vision and strategy for our design organization’s operations. This included introducing essential UX design processes, such as review, sign-off, executive approval, and streamlining. Moreover, I’ve educated our designers to incorporate these modernized processes into their daily design work.
• My recruitment efforts have brought top-tier design talents on board, creating one of the highest-performing teams within our design organization. The team’s retention is largely due to our democratic design process.

Sep 2018 – Mar 2021 · 2 yrs 6 mos · San Francisco, California

• As a member of Splunk's executive team (Reporting to CIO), Takahiro successfully established and ran a large-scale design organization, responsible for all aspects of Splunk's product design and user research. The Splunk design organization is 70+ product designers, motion graphics designers, design technologists, UX researchers, and design program managers.
• Takahiro introduced modernized design processes and practices to a heavily engineering-centric product development environment while fostering a democratic design process. As a result, all designers and stakeholders share equal creative input and voice to form the best outcome.

Jul 2017 – Sep 2018 · 1 yr 2 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Experience Design Manager for UX Platform team. Responsible for Design System of Airbnb, Motion Graphics, Data Visualization, Accessibility, Illustrations and Shared Products

Oct 2014 – Jul 2017 · 2 yrs 9 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Creating design direction for all Sony Mobile UX / UI and manage designers to implement them
• Responsible for Sony Mobile Xperia smart phone UX
• Responsible for Sony Mobile Smartware (wearables) UX
• Responsible for Sony Mobile IoT (wearables) UX
• Concurrent AD role at Sony creative center (Sony Corp) user experience platform design group
• Responsible for presenting UI / UX direction and strategies to operators to deliver our UX initiatives.

Oct 2012 – Oct 2014 · 2 yrs · Mountain View, California

• Worked under Matias Duarte managing Android visual team for System, App, TV, Wear.
• Managed a system UI / App visual team as a Visual design manager
• Responsible for defining aesthetic / look and feel of Android operating system
• Directed Android side of Google's new design initiative "Material Design" concept and implementation effort
• Created visual design direction for Android version KitKat and Lollipop and managed a visual design team to implemented both versions
• Participated designing Android version Jelly Beans

Mar 2012 – Oct 2012 · 7 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Participated various concept creation activities for their Sense 5 UX.
• Established brand-new visual language for their launcher Icons for Sense 5, lead the design effort and provided a method to manage them.
• Helped scouting new UX talents to establish their San Francisco UX studio

Jan 2008 – Mar 2012 · 4 yrs 2 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Formulated design concepts and presentation approaches, and direct designers engaged in art work, interface layout design for visual communications in mobile phone devices and related services.
• Created their UX framework "UXP" and lead an implementation. Established their UX visual style and managed them for 4 product cycles (from 2008 to 2012)
• Directed, lead visual teams of Tokyo, San Francisco, Sweden and China.
• Assisted senior management for various operator ranging presentation and arranged UX workshops.

Jan 2008 – Sep 2009 · 1 yr 8 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Designed their UX framework "UXP".
• Sony's first User Interface Designer for Android devices
• Designed a series of their signature application software.
• Established their design languages.
• Established a new design language for Sony, Sony Mobile, and Sony Computer Entertainment.

Oct 2005 – Nov 2006 · 1 yr 1 mo

Jan 2003 – Jan 2008 · 5 yrs · San Francisco Bay Area

Mar 2001 – Aug 2002 · 1 yr 5 mos · Palo Alto, California

Nov 1999 – Apr 2001 · 1 yr 5 mos

Jan 1996 – Jan 2008 · 12 yrs

Mar 1994 – Jan 1997 · 2 yrs 10 mos