# AJ Zichella — Senior Product Designer & Design Engineer

**Website:** https://ajzichella.com  
**LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-zichella/  
**Location:** New Jersey, USA  
**Availability:** Open to new opportunities

> For the fullest plain-text profile, see [resume.txt](https://ajzichella.com/resume.txt).  
> For URL index and agent notes, see [llms.txt](https://ajzichella.com/llms.txt).

## Summary

Senior product designer and design engineer with 8+ years of experience. I design end-to-end product experiences for developer platforms (IAM, RBAC, cloud infrastructure) and retail eCommerce. I lead cross-functional work from research through launch, mentor designers, and ship production UI.

## Current role

**DigitalOcean** — Senior Product Designer I, Design Engineer (July 2022 – present)

- Product design lead for Identity and Access Management (IAM), RBAC, org-wide permissions, and audit-friendly access flows.
- Led a team of 8 designers through a major RBAC launch (3 new predefined roles); ~23% month-over-month growth in security experience usage.
- IAM design lead for Custom Roles: guided creation flow, required/related permissions, assignment paths, post-create management.

## Prior experience

- **STORIS** — UI/UX Designer (2018–2022): B2B SaaS design system; B2C eCommerce checkout redesign.
- **AMD** — Lead product designer on a major product release (details under NDA).

## Selected work

| Case study | URL |
| --- | --- |
| RBAC Custom Roles | https://ajzichella.com/case-studies/custom-roles |
| RBAC Predefined Roles | https://ajzichella.com/case-studies/predefined-roles |
| Managed Kafka | https://ajzichella.com/case-studies/kafka |
| Enhanced Checkout | https://ajzichella.com/case-studies/enhanced-checkout |

## Skills

Product design, UX research, interaction design, design systems, prototyping, design engineering, IAM/RBAC, B2B SaaS, eCommerce, developer platforms, cross-functional leadership.

**Tools:** Figma, Cursor, GitHub, Jira, Confluence, Loom, Looker/Snowflake, Slack.