About.
Hey there. I'm James (JC) Zabel, a UX professional based in Charlotte, NC. I hold a BS in Industrial Engineering and an MS in Human Factors Psychology, both from Clemson University (Go Tigers).
With 15+ years of experience spanning corporate giants and scrappy startups, I've had the chance to work on everything from factory automation to green energy to defense contracting to IoT cloud platforms and consumer electronics.
I'm always looking for a challenge and looking to make a difference, building products that real people actually want to use.
Career
Senior Product Designer, Microsoft Azure
Microsoft
AI-native designer building agentic experiences in Azure Advisor that help enterprise customers cut cost and reduce risk. Earlier led a UX team of 6 designers and researchers across Azure Advisor and CX Observe and was recognized as Manager of the Year. Now back to shipping the product directly.
UX Engineer → UX Manager → Lead Data Analyst
SnapAV / SnapOne
Founding member of the OvrC team, starting as the lone designer and wearing every hat: design, user testing, front-end, back-end, QA, and feature development. Helped take it from an idea to the industry-leading integrator management platform supporting 20M+ managed devices globally. Built the design system across all product lines and provided strategic design support for the $150M+ Connected Device category. Later founded SnapOne's data team as Lead Data Analyst, turning insights from its connected platforms into product strategy and quarterly direction for executives.
Human Systems Integration Engineer
Lockheed Martin
Modernized combat system interfaces for the Aegis BMD 5.1 program, updating legacy systems to a more modern architecture. Cut my teeth on rapid prototyping, user testing with active duty sailors, and iterating based on direct operator feedback.
Human Factors Engineer
General Electric
Worked in green energy, focused on the wind sector. Led risk assessments and built mitigation programs to reduce issues across multiple sectors nationwide.
Skills
Available for the interesting stuff.