Anne Birzin
Senior Staff Product Designer
Summary
Senior staff product designer, 15+ years across enterprise software and developer tools. Currently the sole product IC designer at Cockroach Labs, leading design across managed cloud and distributed SQL experiences. Lately I've been working on AI and agentic surfaces. I've also rebuilt my design workflow around Claude Code and other AI tools. I prototype in code, ship alongside engineering, and like owning ambiguous problems start to finish.
Experience
Cockroach Labs
Senior Staff Product Designer
- Leading design across CockroachDB Cloud and self-hosted UI on AI surfaces, billing, and observability.
- Designing Agent Roach for query diagnosis. Shipped a navigation redesign with global search.
- Rebuilt the design system component library in Figma with Claude Code and the Figma MCP.
- Designing directly in the DB console and SU dashboard production code with Claude Code.
Senior Manager, Product Design
- Managed 3 product designers across activation, security, disaster recovery, and cloud platform. Continued shipping IC design alongside, including the fault tolerance demo in CockroachDB Cloud.
- Set up design review and critique rituals, and coached designers through the work they shipped.
Senior Staff Product Designer
- Owned design for free trial and billing in CockroachDB Cloud, working closely with PM and engineering through launch.
- Set visual and interaction patterns for CockroachDB Cloud, and maintained design system components used across product teams.
Staff Product Designer
- Designed observability and SQL query performance tools for CockroachDB Cloud.
Squarespace
Senior Product Designer
- Led design for Squarespace Member Areas, bringing gated content, paid memberships, and subscriber management into the existing site builder.
Percolate
Senior Product Designer
- Led the redesign of Percolate's content planning tools and shipped new project management features for enterprise customers.
Product Designer
- Designed and shipped Percolate's original campaign planning suite, including the marketing calendar and brief builder. Both became core to the enterprise CMP.
Scripps Networks Interactive (CityEats)
Product Designer
- Designed CityEats' table management and reservation booking system across web and mobile.
Design agency work
Visual Designer
- Visual design, typography, and layout across digital, print, and brand campaigns at Publicis, IridiumGroup, FourDesign, and Ogilvy CommonHealth.
Education
Virginia Tech
BFA, Visual Communication Design. Blacksburg, VA.
Skills
- Design practice
- Product design from 0 to 1, enterprise workflows, developer experience, information architecture, interaction design, design systems, accessibility
- AI and agentic UX
- AI surfaces, agentic patterns, conversational UX, human in the loop workflows, trust and citation patterns, MCP, AI tooling for design
- Prototyping in code
- Prototyping in production code, working directly in product codebases, React and Tailwind prototypes, design handoff, partnering with engineering through launch
- Leadership and craft
- Setting design quality, running design review and critique, mentoring designers, framing ambiguous problems
- Recent tools
- Figma, Claude Code, React, TypeScript, Tailwind, Astro, Git, Playwright