Lead the team.
Build the thing.

Role Product Design Manager driving AI enablement, design systems, and data & insights across enterprise SaaS, with a team of six.
Approach I explore new tools, shape the strategy, and build the parts of the product that matter most.
Now Always paying attention.
01

Selected work

01 2025–26

Nexus Registration Agent

An autonomous tax registration system embedded in the Vertex product. Multiple interaction patterns working together, with humans involved wherever the decisions are consequential.
02 2025–current

AI Decision Framework & Interaction Patterns

A two-part framework for deciding if and how AI should land in a product, paired with a vetted pattern toolkit. Built as an agent in Microsoft Agent Studio. Used across the org.
03 2025–current

Design System as Product Infrastructure

Made the case to leadership that the design system needed to become product infrastructure, not a visual toolkit. The team rebuilt it as a closed loop where designers, engineers, and AI tools all ground in the same authoritative source. Validation cycles compressed from weeks to days.
02

About

I'm a Product Design Manager at Vertex, leading design across AI Enablement, Design Systems, and Data & Insights with a team of six. Eight years i the work I care about most hasn't changed: building thoughtful products and helping designers do the best work of their careers.

I push my team to challenge their own thinking, never at the expense of the human experience the design is meant to serve. I'll steer the ship when it needs steering, and I try to be the kind of designer my team can model their practice after. The best design leaders never fully leave the craft. I haven't.

Outside work, my two kids come first. After that: chasing waves up and down the New England coast and camping when I can. I'm slowly bringing my 1920s cottage back to life with my own hands. Old Lyme, CT is home.

Surfing the New England coast
Vertex Inc.
Product Design Manager, AI Enablement / Design Systems / Data & Insights
2025 – Now
Vertex Inc.
Lead Product Designer
2024 – 25
Vertex Inc.
Senior Product Designer
2022 – 24
Travelers Insurance
Senior UX Specialist
2020 – 22
Travelers Insurance
UX Specialist
2018 – 20
03

Principles

How I lead, how I design, how I expect the work to feel. Four positions I keep returning to.
01
The work is the artifact.

A prototype tells you more than a deck. A working demo tells you more than a Figma flow. I lead by building alongside the team, not by reviewing what they bring back.

Validate before you build.

Every efficiency gain in modern tooling exists for one reason: so we can put real things in front of customers before we ever spend code on them. If we're not doing that, we're just shipping the wrong thing faster.

Human experience over feature velocity.

The fastest way to ship a feature is to skip the parts that make it usable. I push my team to challenge their thinking without sacrificing the experience the design exists to serve.

Use the new tools to ask better questions.

AI didn't make us faster at making things. It made us free to spend that time figuring out what's worth making in the first place. The teams that win with AI aren't shipping more, they're shipping the right things.

04

Thinking

Essay 2026

Should we build?

The cross-functional model isn't dead. The circles got closer, the edges blurred, and the work now happens in the overlap. Here's how I think product, design, and engineering need to work together now, and why "should we build it?" is the question worth keeping at the center.
Essay 2025

Dear Self.

I built a journaling app with Claude because I needed something between a notebook and a therapist. What designing for the most personal kind of context taught me about restraint, trust, and the model as a design decision.
05

Contact

Open to a good conversation about where design is going.
Mostly because I'm trying to figure it out too.

Email
jerryhoglen@me.com
→
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/jerry
→

Reply within 48h