About

Hi, I’m Kyle.

I’m the SVP of User Experience at Sovren, and I’ve been here since 2022, one of its first four employees. I still design and ship the work myself. I designed Triton Cloud, our cloud, and shipped the first build of its console with an engineer, and I’m design lead on Pay, the wallet every tip, order and payout in the ecosystem settles through. I find the problem, spec it, design it and write the code, and support reports to me, so I hear how it lands. If my team ships it, I’m accountable for it.

I’m the SVP of User Experience at Sovren, and I’ve been here since 2022, one of its first four employees. I’m a player‑coach who designs, manages and leads seven products along with internal tooling, dashboards, data, trust and safety. I still spec, design and write code, because the fastest way to hold a team’s standard is to show it. If my team ships it, I’m accountable for it.

Open to the right seat, hands on the work. First designer on a small team · Staff and Principal on a big one

Open to running a design org in a player‑coach position. Head of Design · Design Director · Product Design Manager

Kyle in a white t-shirt against a slate blue wall, smiling at the camera

How I think about the work.

Process, tools and time are all changing, and I’m changing with them. The right column isn’t ancient history, it’s the last two years.

What I believe

AI made design more valuable. Generating ten versions costs a minute now, so the scarce thing is knowing which one is right and being able to defend it. It also means I can’t hide behind how long something took.

Design system first, build it with AI second, Figma last. Figma stopped being where I imagine the product and became where I correct the one that already runs. It inverts how every team I have worked on is set up, and I have had to argue for it.

Most of my job is choosing which version ships. What I am actually paid for is rejecting nine of the ten things I just generated.

AI shortened every step except talking to people. That is still the only part that tells me something I did not already believe, and it is how I found the sixty‑year‑old the wallet had to work for: Pay.

What I used to

AI was going to replace designers. It replaced the part of the job I was slowest at and left the part I was actually hired for.

High fidelity in Figma, hand it to engineering, wait months to see it. Every assumption in the file survived all the way to the build, which is the most expensive place to find out you were wrong.

I used to win on speed. Now everyone has it.

Research was the step to cut when time was short. It is now the only step I cannot compress.

Off the clock

That’s the work. This is the rest of it.

Kyle and his wife on a sofa with their two young children, the older one laughing across both their laps

Four of us.

Wife, two kids

I’m a husband and a father of two. Everything I do is for them. Everything else on this page comes second.

Kyle and his twin brother in black tie, side by side on a garden path

I have a twin.

Same company, other craft

My twin brother does what I do, from the product side. The person who understands my work best has never once needed it explained to him. We make a good team.

Kyle’s dog, brown and white with pale blue eyes, sitting on the grass in a fenced back yard

This is my dog.

Plus a long list

I love my dog, building things, working out, traveling, music and podcasts. The Morning Brew and How I AI are the two I keep up with.

If my team ships it,
I’m accountable for it.

Ownership doesn’t get delegated.

The rule

Three photographed, one that needs none