Milly Schmidt

Experience Design Manager

Atlassian | April 2023 – Present

Skills: Design leadership, AI, People management, Research, Design systems

Australia's premier tech company. Worked across Search, Notifications, Teams, Links, Atlas, JWM, Jira, Automation and Rovo Studio — managing multiple design teams of up to 10 designers and leading cross-functional groups of 150+. Manage both product and content designers.

• Led design team across Rovo Studio, an AI-powered platform for Atlassian users to extend their software with Automations, Agents and Apps
• Part of the working group to upskill Atlassian's design org with AI tools and ways of working
• Delivered presentation skills training to the design and research orgs in partnership with Mike Monteiro
• Launched and oversaw SEQ research program, becoming a subject matter expert
• Co-created founder-facing strategy for Atlassian Teams; driven technically complex Business Process Automation work
• Hiring, performance management, contingent worker management and mentoring of designers outside my immediate team

Senior UX Designer

RMIT Online | March – October 2019

Skills: UX design, Research, Agile coaching, Management, Facilitation

Cross-functional Agile team building 6-8 week short courses in product management, blockchain, agile, Swift development and more. Managed two designers; integrated UX research into delivery cadence across three restructures.

• Designed and integrated a research approach for a highly constrained product pipeline, empowering designers, learning designers and customer support staff
• Created a theme system for a custom LMS enabling content editors to build visually pleasing courses without custom code
• Trained various staff in UX research activities; performance management of technical and non-technical staff

Director of Product and Design

RateIt | June – November 2018

Skills: Product strategy, Executive leadership, UX design, Design Ops, Coaching

Growth-stage, venture-funded startup offering CX feedback software globally. Managed product team including designers, developers and PM; reported to CEO as part of executive leadership team.

• Established Agile processes, Lean experiment framework and cross-functional approaches to problem solving
• Developed product management framework, tooling and roadmap; UX research and design practice including hiring
• Set up component-driven Design Ops approach with technical leads
• Acted as technical sales lead and product marketer; project managed and executed new marketing website

Product and UX Designer

EstimateOne | October 2017 – June 2018

Skills: Design leadership, UX design, Research, Facilitation, Coaching

Growth-stage, bootstrapped SaaS for the commercial construction industry. Developed design and research practice from scratch; helped transition from a visually-led company to cross-functional, audience-led squads.

• Transitioned organisation to Lean design processes; mentored junior designer in design thinking and UX skills
• Established usability testing and research interview practice; trained the wider team
• Assisted technical team's transition from Symfony/PHP to React/GraphQL with a component library

Founder

Estimate Work and Dim Valley | 2016 – 2018

Skills: Entrepreneurship, Product strategy, UX design, Front-end development, Consulting

Ran two businesses: a bootstrapped SaaS project management product focused on collaborative estimation (Estimate Work), and a UX consultancy (Dim Valley) consulting to startups including Circle In, IT Strategic and Tilista.

UX Engineer

Clover | November 2016 – September 2017

Skills: UX research, UI design, React, Design systems, Lean

Combined UX and front-end engineering role at an emerging Fintech startup offering a robo-advice platform for millennials. Overhauled in-app onboarding for higher conversion; refactored component-driven React architecture; conducted generative and evaluative user research.

UX and Content Strategy

Weave | August – November 2016

Skills: UX design, Content strategy, Information architecture

UX design and content strategy across multiple clients. Notable projects: State of the Bays report for Victorian CES (first digital delivery), EWOV complaint process redesign, Nando's Australia website redesign.

UX Lead

Equiem | October 2015 – July 2016

Skills: UX research, UX design, Design sprints, People management

Initiated and led the UX department for a PropTech scale-up. Hired and managed a team of three UX designers; worked with engineering on execution and with stakeholders on product strategy.

Front-End Lead

Equiem | February – October 2015

Skills: Design systems, Drupal, Sass, JavaScript

Comprehensive theme system refactor. Removed 40+ sub-themes, introduced component-driven Sass, built an extensible icon library and configurable colour picker enabling fast client white-labelling at scale.

Software Engineer

Godel | August 2011 – February 2015

Skills: Drupal, PHP, JavaScript, Sass, Client management

Progressed from generalist to lead engineer at a web development agency. Led projects end-to-end: design, development, client relationships, marketing, content strategy, SEO and team training.