Kellie Verne — Principal Product Designer

About

20+ years spanning product design, front-end engineering, enterprise design systems, and org building.

My background is deeply rooted in design, and for over two decades has been executed in code. Serving as the ambassador between software and design teams is where I excel most, bringing both disciplines into strategic alignment so that initiatives are technically solid, scalable, and built on real design craft.

I also build design organizations. Most recently I founded UX Engineering as a formal discipline at Boeing—authoring the business case, running the pilot, and establishing the org-level capability from zero.

I teach in both directions: I help designers build technical discipline and understand the engineering constraints their decisions land in, and I help developers understand how designers think and why design decisions are made the way they are. Working fluently in both environments is what makes the systems hold.

Kellie Verne, principal product designer and front-end engineer — kellie@kellieverne.com / LinkedIn

Skills & Tools

Strengths

Design systems

Component and token architecture, education, governance, adoption, and the design culture required to make systems actually work at scale.

Design-to-engineering

Front-end coding for complex business logic, feasibility collaboration, implementation accuracy, and drastically reducing middleware and back-end rework.

Org building & coaching

Cross-functional facilitation, designer and engineer mentorship, executive communication, and building design culture across distributed teams.

Design engineering

Designing in code as a primary practice — front-end prototypes, component architecture, and production-ready interfaces. Output has always been code, not static artifacts, across every role.

Tools

Process

JIRA, JAMA, Confluence, Azure DevOps, SAFe Agile

Development

HTML5, CSS/SCSS, Angular, Storybook, Git, IDEs

AI & Workflows

AI-ready token systems, AI-informed Figma architecture; coding and workflows with GitHub Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, Gemini

Designer Enablement

Designer mentorship, design process coaching, AI-assisted design workflows, Figma (Variables, Auto-Layout, Component Architecture), Adobe Creative Cloud

Case Studies

Boeing · Aug 2023–Nov 2025 · Design Systems · Front-End Engineering · AI Workflow

The Global Boeing Design System: Atmosphere

Serving as the coaching and implementation bridge between design and development on Boeing's global enterprise design system — from token governance and component documentation to AI-informed workflow integration.

Read case study

Boeing · Jul 2022–Aug 2023 · Org Design · Executive Communication · Discipline Founding

UX Engineering — Founding a Discipline at Boeing

Multi-year research into the design-engineering gap, followed by a C-suite business case, a one-year pilot, and the formal establishment of UX Engineering as an organizational discipline.

Read case study

2012 · Print Design · Editorial · Multi-Audience Communication

NASA Sustainability Base

A leave-behind brochure for one of the greenest federal buildings ever constructed — designed to work for government officials, scientists, and the general public alike, before the building itself was finished.

Read case study

Brand & Web

Every site in this portfolio was fully responsive — a practice adopted in 2012, years before it became standard. Clean, semantic HTML and CSS from the start: no frameworks, no bloat, just code that worked on every screen.

Packaging Design

DrinkUp — Nutravail Technologies Full brand and packaging system for a 9-flavor functional beverage line. Directed the photo shoot for each product, composited flavor-specific imagery, and applied a consistent visual system across canisters and single-serve packets. Each SKU required its own color palette and photography while maintaining a unified brand identity across the line.

Product Design

The Produce Partner Designed to show the absolute basics of getting fresh, in-season produce alongside a cooking tool. Large amounts of information needed to fit into a small space — typography and color played a huge role, making it as easy as possible to reference a recipe while propped up on the counter.

NASA Sustainability Base NASA leaders needed a leave-behind piece when speaking about Sustainability Base, one of the greenest federal buildings ever constructed. Used across a range of audiences — government officials, academics, partners, NASA employees, and the press. Challenge: capture the state-of-the-art essence of a building not yet built, within a very short production timeframe, while ensuring the design and messaging worked for both a scientific audience and the general public.

7thgen.jpg

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Web

drinkup_hp.png

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Identity

logos-albrecht.png

logos-aspenanglers.png

logos-bolder-lashes.png

logos-drinkup.png

logos-groundwork.jpg

logos-naihc.jpg

logos-opfree.png

logos-produce-partner.png

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Resume

20+ years spanning product design, front-end engineering, enterprise design systems, and org building.

Employment History

Senior Lead UX Engineer — Boeing

Jul 2022 – Nov 2025 · Englewood, CO

Founding team member on Atmosphere, Boeing’s global enterprise design system — serving as the coaching and implementation bridge between design and development for digital product teams enterprise-wide.
Built and documented Angular components, governed token systems, and coached designers on the design system team on semantic Figma architecture to ensure implementation fidelity.
Facilitated cross-functional workshops with designers, engineers, and software leaders to establish shared standards across distributed organizations.
Authored the business case for UX Engineering as a formal discipline, grounded in two years of research into the design-engineering gap; secured executive approval for a one-year pilot.
Ran the pilot, achieved formal establishment of the discipline, and secured headcount approval for Boeing’s first additional UX Engineer.

Lead UX Designer / Front-End Developer — Jeppesen Sanderson

Feb 2018 – Jul 2022 · Englewood, CO

Joined as a UX Design Specialist on contract; converted to FTE and promoted to Lead UX Designer / Front-End Developer.
Led design and front-end development across complex aviation data products.
Investigated the design-engineering gap across products, teams, and release cycles — building the foundation for the UX Engineering discipline proposal at Boeing.
Coached engineers and junior designers on design intent and implementation accuracy.

Senior Digital Experience Designer — Collective Goods

2015 – Jan 2018 · Louisville, CO

Led UX and UI design for enterprise digital products, owning both design and front-end implementation.
Delivered responsive, production-ready interfaces using HTML5, CSS, and Bootstrap.
Partnered with engineering on feasibility, design consistency, and brand standards across all product surfaces.

Founder & Principal Designer — Kellie Greene Design, Inc.

1997 – 2017 · Erie, CO

Delivered 160+ website launches for non-profits, mid-market companies, and Fortune 500 clients — 100% referral-based through long-term client trust and execution quality.
Served as strategic design partner to a Silicon Valley branding firm for 10+ years, contributing to brand and digital strategy for national and global clients.
Owned full delivery lifecycle: discovery, design, front-end development, client communication, budgets, timelines, and vendor coordination.