Ross Popoff-Walker
Product Design Director
Design Philosophy
I approach design as a strategic multiplier: aligning stakeholders, untangling complexity, and shipping solutions that actually work.
I ask the hard questions early and make the invisible visible. Strategy before pixels.
Patterns and systems that scale beyond any single product or designer.
I shape what gets built, not just how it looks. Strategy and execution, together.
Experience
First Design Hire
Waabi · 2024 — Present
Design Systems & Data Viz
Netflix · 2021 — 2024
Design Lead, Tools
Waymo · 2020 — 2021
Design Lead, Consumer Products
Google Maps · 2019 — 2021
Design Pod Lead, Data Analytics
Google Cloud · 2017 — 2019
Lead & Co-Author
Google Material · 2017 — 2018
Mobile Product Design
Google Search · 2015 — 2017
2015 — Present
First product design hire at an autonomous trucking startup. Established design as a force multiplier across product, autonomy, and infrastructure teams. Designed internal tools for simulation, evaluation, and test operations. Emphasis on clarity, trust, and speed in safety-critical workflows.
UX lead for BigQuery, Google Cloud's flagship analytics platform. Grew UX from one to eight across design, research, and prototyping. Led a full UI modernization for data analysts. Research and vision work unlocked new revenue features and informed the $2.6B Looker acquisition.
Led design systems and product design for Netflix's internal data ecosystem. Built a scalable data visualization system adopted by a 500+ person Data & Insights org. Standardized patterns across 400+ enterprise tools. Improved findability, consistency, and time-to-insight for executives.
Core designer on the Maps platform and cartographic system. Simplified basemap color complexity and improved accessibility across light and dark modes. Defined motion tied to user intent. Launched large-scale data layers including COVID, Weather, and Air Quality. Helped frame Maps as a platform for contextual data.
Creator and co-author of Google's Data Visualization spec. Initiated a cross-company effort spanning 12 product orgs. Authored internal and public guidance published on Material.io. Seeded a dedicated data visualization discipline inside Google.
Get in touch
Available for part-time consulting.
Interested in iterative work with small teams.
