Director of Product Design

Hi, I'm Jerome.

I build the operating system design organizations need to ship at scale. Currently shaping the design organization at Oodrive.

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Jerome Athier, Director of Product Design

Now @ Oodrive: Europe's leading sovereign collaboration platform for regulated enterprises (defense, financial services, public sector). Director of Product Design, building the design operating system for a smaller team in a French-language environment: measurement (SUS, CES, a north-star metric for the design organization in flight), rituals (calibration, critique cadence, growth maps), partnership with Product and Engineering at the senior level. Alongside the operating work, I co-authored the new Product vision with the Head of Product, owning the design and research inputs. Different stage from the GoTo years; same operating discipline.

Selected work

Case study 01

Bringing a 15-year-old product back to the front of its market

GoToMeeting next-gen rebuild: returned to Gartner's Leaders Quadrant, zero forced upgrades, Chameleon design system spun out.

Case study 02

Unifying four products into one suite, and the org redesign behind it

+20% session-share lift in 6 months, +4.18% CES, and the design org restructured to make it possible.

More work available on request.

How I lead

Most design-leadership pages are slogans on a beige background. This is mine, with the operating choices behind each, the examples that make them real, and the things I'm still figuring out.

I've led design teams for over a decade, across two continents and four companies. The work the team produces matters; the operating system the team runs on matters more. Charisma will get you through the first quarter. Operating discipline carries you through the third year, when the founder energy runs out and the org has to keep shipping.

At GoTo I built or rebuilt each ritual over four years, sometimes more than once: critique cadence, calibration windows, onboarding course, growth maps, the handoff frame from design to engineering. At Oodrive, I'm re-standing versions of each, adapted to a different stage and environment. The point isn't that the templates transfer. The point is that a design organization without rituals is held together by individual goodwill, which is the thinnest binding material in the world.

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What I’m thinking about right now

The frame I use: I think about AI's contribution to design in three layers, research synthesis, early-stage exploration, and final visual / interaction decisions. Each layer asks a different question, the maturity of the tooling is different, and the right operating posture is different. Treating "AI for design" as one thing is the first move that gets you stuck.

Last updated: May 2026.

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References

With his guidance, I grew from a mid-level UX Designer to a Senior UX Designer and further into the role of Accessibility Lead. Jerome's mentorship and leadership played a big role in helping me develop and achieve my professional goals.
Anna Mészáros, Accessibility Lead (former direct report)
His ability to bring people together, align with one another, and motivate team members to contribute their best even in difficult times makes him an excellent manager. He did not hesitate to have long, lasting discussions to make sure everyone was on the same page, and went above and beyond to make sure UX had a seat at the (remote) table.
Linda Kessler, UX Research (peer, GoTo)

Others available on request.

Get in touch

Currently Director of Product Design at Oodrive; open to Senior Director / Head of Design conversations at Big Tech and late-stage scale-ups.

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