Resume

James C. E. Zabel

Senior Product Designer · UX Leader · 15+ Years

Experience

2022 – Present

Microsoft

Senior Product Designer

May 2026 – Present

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

Senior Design Manager

Apr 2023 – May 2026

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

Senior UX Designer

Feb 2022 – Apr 2023

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

2013 – 2022

SnapAV / SnapOne

Lead Data Analyst

2020 – Feb 2022

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

UX Manager

Feb 2015 – 2020

Led UX for OvrC, an IoT cloud remote management platform supporting 20M+ managed devices globally
Led OvrC Connect, 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
Grew UX from one designer to a team of about 6 across two time zones, through acquisitions including Control4; built a standardized design system across all software interfaces
Planned and facilitated regular usability sessions with customers across both platforms

User Experience Engineer

Aug 2013 – Feb 2015

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

2011 – 2013

Lockheed Martin

Nov 2011 – Aug 2013

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

2011

General Electric

General Electric (Axiem Engineering)

2011

Risk assessments, Root Cause Analysis investigations, and Preliminary Hazard Assessments for new product development across multiple GE business units