What I'm doing right now

Primo Surf Forecasts
My AI-native iOS app for San Diego surfers, live in the App Store, 4.2 stars. I designed and built the entire product solo in 8 months: app, backend, four proprietary prediction models, marketing site, AI character pipeline, content automation. My proof I can take an AI-native product from 0 to shipped without a team.

Scholars in Medicine
Lead designer (contract) on Ask Simon v2, an FDA-compliant clinical AI agent for healthcare providers. I'm also leading design strategy on a recommendation engine driving activation and retention, a 0-to-1 push notification framework, and a personalized learning experience (a first-of-its-kind in continuing medical education).

Looking for my next full-time role
Lead, Principal, or Staff Product Designer at an AI-native company. I want to bring 20 years of design judgment plus a current AI-native practice to a team that's building something that matters. Remote-first, hybrid or on-site in San Diego considered.

How I work

Design and engineering are one practice. Sole designer embedded next to backend engineers on RAG architecture, shipping production code. The boundary between design and engineering is gone.

Ship over perfect. Primo Surf went live with known gaps. I'd rather learn from real customer data than polish in Figma. Ship, measure, learn, iterate.

AI is leverage, not a replacement for judgment. Claude for architecture, Claude Code for engineering, Lovable then Claude Design for UI, Gemini for copy, Make and Supabase for orchestration. Every tool earns its slot.

Range, not generalism. Founder. Sole designer on engineering teams. IC inside large design orgs. Design leader managing at Salesforce and New Relic. I've worked at every level of the design function, and am comfortable slotting into any.

What people I've worked with say…

"Mark's long tenure in enterprise design makes him uniquely qualified to lead a diversity of opportunities. He led a portion of our largest revenue-generating business, Sales Cloud, both as an architect and as a manager. As an architect, he traversed complex problem spaces, carving out new solutions. As a new manager, he thoughtfully cared for the people on his team. I appreciate Mark's contributions to our team and our customers."

Kat Holmes
Chief Experience & Design Officer
Salesforce

"Mark has amazing technical expertise and extensive UX background. He has been instrumental in defining delightful user experience for our product suite. He is a self-starter and can manage UX projects from inception to product launch."

Siddharth Pande
VP, Product Management
Oracle

"Mark is an inspiring designer, team leader, and all-around teammate! He's gung-ho and flexible, with an eye on how to get things done via a strong partnership with his product teams "

Alex Noe
VP, Product Design, Sales Cloud
Salesforce

In the last year

Founder
Primo Surf Forecasts, 2025-present

Lead Product Designer (contract)

Scholars in Medicine, 2025-present

Lead Product Designer (contract)

DuploCloud, Apr-Jul 2025

Design leadership

Senior Director, Product Design

New Relic, 2023–2024
6 designers, Product-led growth, commerce, led through the $6.5B acquisition

Senior Director, User Experience
Salesforce, 2021–2023
6 designers + 1 director, $6B Sales Cloud, Shipped Salesforce Easy

Earlier IC

Principal Interaction Designer
Oracle, 2012-2020
Integration Cloud, API Platform, Predictive Analytics, Cloud Guard, Data Visualizations

9 earlier roles
In UX, UI, visual design, web design, web development, and marketing

4 Data Visualization Design Patents

US 10,642,471 - Dual Timeline data visualization

US 10,474,317 - Dynamic node grouping in grid-based visualizations

US 9,874,995 - Maintaining context for maximize interactions on a grid-based visualization

US 9,466,138 - Attribute-based stacking for diagrams

Education & certificates

Generative AI, Vibe Coding, Automation
Self-Taught, 2025–present

Leadership Principles, and Management Essentials Certification
Harvard Business School Online, 2022

Design Leadership Certification
Cooper Professional Education, 2018

Web Publishing
UC San Diego

AAS, Multimedia
Platt College San Diego

Fine Art
San Diego State University

Stack

Design: Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Claude, Claude Design, Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Midjourney, Nano Banana

Code: Claude Code, Lovable, VS Code, Capacitor, React, TypeScript, Tailwind, HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Backend: Supabase (Postgres, Auth, Edge Functions), Make.com, OpenAI embeddings, RAG

Services: Stripe, Google OAuth, Apple Sign-In, App Store Connect, Postmark

Analytics: GA4, App Store Connect

What I'm looking for

Lead, Principal, or Staff Product Designer roles at AI-native companies. Remote-first. Hybrid or on-site in San Diego considered.

I want to ship end-to-end on products customers depend on, and bring 20 years of design judgment plus a current AI-native practice to a team that values both.

Personally

I live in San Diego, Ca. I surf, and started Primo Surf Forecasts because I was tired of every other surf app. Walked up to surfers on the beach to ask what they actually wanted, and built it.

In the off hours: family, friends, surf, dogs, fish tacos, ski, bike, hike, beach, mountains, carne asada burritos.