Ruben Cespedes
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I studied graphic design in New York and spent my early years at agencies, where I often built what I designed. That habit stuck. Today I lead design on enterprise AI at Dell and build working prototypes with Claude, because a working version settles debates faster than any slide. Outside the day job, I teach: I create educational content and run events for Adobe, mentor designers, and I wrote The Self-Made Portfolio.
Based in Pennsylvania, working remotely. Open to Principal and Staff roles.
01
Product & Experience Design
I design complex products from zero to ship, enterprise platforms, mobile apps, and data-heavy systems where clarity and usability directly drive business outcomes. My process moves from early discovery through final execution, with research, interaction design, and visual systems always in service of the same goal: decisions that are faster, smarter, and better for the people making them.
02
Design Systems, Architecture & Scale
I build design systems that scale with the product and the team, not just component libraries, but the governance models, token architectures, and contributor frameworks that keep quality consistent as organizations grow. I've owned systems end-to-end across multi-product cloud environments, balancing engineering alignment with the flexibility teams need to move fast without breaking things.
03
Strategy, AI & Cross-Functional Leadership
Leadership & Impact
Design leadership isn't just the work on screen. It's raising the quality of the people, systems, and decisions around you.
Inside organizations, I've led cross-team design initiatives, driven alignment between product, engineering, and design, and presented design strategy directly to executives. At Dell, I helped define the foundational navigation, chat, and response patterns that every Synapse capability now builds on. Across teams, I've introduced Figma migrations, design-to-dev handoff processes, and critique frameworks that were adopted as standard practice, and I've authored design principles, onboarding documentation, and decision frameworks that outlasted my time on specific projects.
I've mentored hundreds of designers through my Adobe partnership and ADPList, helping them land roles at top companies, pivot into design, and ship their first professional work. I've spoken publicly about design, run community critique sessions, and authored The Self-Made Portfolio.
