Resume
James C. E. Zabel
Senior Product Designer · UX & Design Leader · 15+ Years Experience
Experience
Microsoft
May 2026 – PresentSenior Product Designer
- Lead UX for AI-powered, agentic experiences in Azure Advisor, Microsoft's recommendation engine that helps enterprise customers cut cloud cost, reduce risk, and modernize their workloads
- Design workflows that turn long, generic recommendation lists into prioritized, contextual actions, so customers know what to fix first
- Helped modernize authoring and governance for a catalog of ~1,700 recommendations, introducing AI-assisted drafting with human review to raise quality and consistency
- Partner with platform and engineering teams to align AI interaction patterns, accessibility, and Responsible AI standards; also drive UX for CX Observe, internal tooling for customer-health insights
Microsoft
Apr 2023 – May 2026Senior Design Manager
- Managed and coached a multidisciplinary team of 6 designers and UX researchers across Azure Advisor, CX Observe, and customer-health products
- Recognized with Azure X Manager of the Year for delivery results and people leadership
- Translated ambiguous, cross-organization priorities into clear product direction and execution plans; influenced roadmap and investment decisions
- Built alignment across product, engineering, research, and leadership while empowering the team to own major workstreams; elevated visibility through executive-ready storytelling
Microsoft
Feb 2022 – Apr 2023Senior UX Designer
- Led UX for internal Azure field platforms serving 4,000+ users across 10+ Microsoft organizations
- Drove 175% monthly-active-user growth post-launch; supported outcomes tied to $25M+ projected revenue and $3M annual cost savings
- Trusted IC partner to senior PM and engineering leaders; contributed to early AI/LLM exploration that shaped later agentic work
SnapOne (formerly SnapAV)
2020 – Feb 2022Lead Data Analyst
- Founding member of SnapOne's data team, turning insights from its connected IoT platforms into product strategy
- Designed and launched data-insight experiences for customers, end customers, and internal stakeholders across SnapOne's platforms
- Served as team scrum master, prioritizing product-development requests and partnering with product managers to define and refine asks
- Delivered quarterly insight presentations to executives, proposing strategic decisions across all major SnapOne brands
- Ran regular competitive analysis to keep brands market-relevant, and stood up NPS monitoring to channel customer feedback to product managers
SnapOne (formerly SnapAV)
Feb 2015 – 2020UX Manager
- Led UX for OvrC, an IoT cloud remote management platform supporting 20M+ managed devices globally
- Led OvrC Home, a residential consumer app enabling homeowners to monitor and control smart home devices
- Strategic design support for the $150M+ Connected Device category, driving double-digit growth annually
- Managed onshore and offshore design teams; created standardized design system across all software interfaces
- Planned and facilitated regular usability sessions with customers across both platforms
SnapOne (formerly SnapAV)
Aug 2013 – Feb 2015User Experience Engineer
- Early team member helping launch OvrC, a device management platform now supporting 20M+ IoT devices
- Led offshore UI team utilizing AngularJS, HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, and WebSocket technologies
- Created wireframes, prototypes, and flowcharts; conducted usability studies with clients to iterate design
Lockheed Martin
Nov 2011 – Aug 2013Human Systems Integration Engineer
- Principal investigator on usability assessments for Navy Ballistic Missile Defense 5.1 program
- Used iterative design and heuristic evaluations to develop new GUIs introduced to fleet architecture
- Gathered input from active duty sailors to resolve novel interface and layout problems
General Electric (Axiem Engineering)
2011Human Factors Engineer
- Risk assessments, Root Cause Analysis investigations, and Preliminary Hazard Assessments for new product development across multiple GE business units