I’m Kriss, a Principal Product Designer. I left Belgium at 19, and my first job was at Microsoft, on the Encarta encyclopedia. Making complicated things feel easy has turned out to be what I do.
I lead design teams and help turn them into builders. A working prototype settles an argument faster than a deck, so we make one early, put it in front of people, and see what they actually do with it. I keep my own hands in the work, whether it’s starting the design system or building the tools that turn days of work into minutes.
At PayPal I designed in-store payments end to end and built two internal AI tools. Before that I led three design teams at NBC News, including the one that built the live results for the last presidential election, where we set traffic records and beat every direct competitor on user satisfaction and overall.
I forage mushrooms with the Snohomish Mycology Society and grow my own, make sourdough and pasta, and cook far too much for far too many people. I love automating anything that eats time: for our honeymoon I planned everything with AI and built an app to take the friction out, so there was nothing to look up or decide. Everyone who saw it begged me to turn it into a product. The honeymoon went fine too.
I’m looking for a Principal Product Designer role where I set direction and stay close to the people building it. Remote, hybrid, or on-site all work. Here’s what I bring:
Led and mentored three design teams, turning high-stakes ambiguity into a path they could execute against.
Aligned design, product, engineering, content and research around decisions that teams could actually act on.
Built prototypes at the fidelity each problem needed, from rough explorations to pixel-accurate flows.
Shipped generative AI features, built internal tools now in regular use, and taught teams to build with AI.
Built reusable systems that held design consistent and raised both quality and speed across web, mobile and TV.
Used research, analytics, testing and accessibility feedback to remove friction and make things usable.
Kriss is a powerhouse builder. He's great to work with and is proactive in wielding AI to create detailed and robust products and prototypes that help align stakeholders, from design leadership to PMs to engineers. He's also a delight to work with - positive, upbeat and enthusiastic, great at taking and giving feedback, proactively looking for opportunities to add more value to the team.
We have hired Kriss to work on multiple projects for Swordsweeper. I'm always impressed with his ability to grasp the bigger picture and fully understand the goals of the client in order to design the product to not only meet but exceed their expectations. Whether for the music industry here in Nashville or tolling operators around the globe, Kriss' expertise translates across industries to get the right product into the hands of the customers.
I worked with Kriss on the Money Movement Platform team at PayPal, where he owned In-Store QR design and visual QA. He migrated our Show-to-Pay flow from legacy to current architecture, designed the QR full-screen takeover experience, and built the Replit prototype we used for leadership demos. Beyond design, he raised dozens of visual QA bugs himself, catching issues before they reached customers.
Kriss also built two internal AI tools on his own initiative: a FigJam summarizer and a content accessibility checker, then ran pairing sessions to teach teammates to build their own. That combination, strong craft plus a drive to make the whole team faster, is rare.
He asked sharp questions before diving into a design and earned trust from engineering and content partners on judgment calls, not just execution. Any team would be lucky to have him. Great work Kriss!
I've had the great pleasure of working with Kriss for the past seven years at NBC News, where he has consistently proven himself to be an exceptional UX design lead and a trusted collaborator. Kriss brings a rare combination of creativity, adaptability, and thoughtfulness to every project he touches.
As a Software Engineering Lead, I’ve partnered closely with Kriss on numerous high-impact initiatives, including our election coverage experiences. His design insight and deep understanding of both user needs and technical constraints have been instrumental in creating interfaces that are visually compelling, highly intuitive, and beautiful. Kriss has an innate ability to balance aesthetics with usability; he always considers the bigger picture when pitching new ideas.
Kriss consistently goes above and beyond to ensure the end product meets the highest standards of quality. He’s someone you can count on to deliver smart, strategic, and user-centered design solutions, making him an invaluable asset to any team. I can’t recommend him highly enough.
Kriss is an incredible UX Design leader. My role at NBCUniversal was to build an enterprise accessibility program. I knew when I started in early 2020, that our success would depend on getting our Designers to the table - engaged, learning, and practicing inclusive design. Kriss was the first person at that table for our News group, and he stayed, and learned, and advocated, and led, and practiced, and shared, and modeled for his organization, and again, led.
I had the pleasure of working closely with Kriss on NBCNews.com through 2 major election cycles - first the 2022 midterm elections, and then the 2024 Presidential election. Each time, I saw Kriss not only tackling many complex design problems in general, but also leaning into inclusive design practices, directly engaging with people from the disability community, and integrating those learnings for his whole team.
I couldn't have asked for a better Design partner and leader than Kriss. The fact that he also happens to be incredibly fun and joyful to work with is just icing on the cake!