Derek Howles
Staff Product Designer, DesignOps at Datadog
New York, New York, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDerek Howles is a Staff Product Designer specializing in DesignOps and design systems at Datadog in New York, bringing seven years of focused product design experience and over a decade of involvement with the company across roles from product designer to design team lead. He combines hands-on visual and UX craft with operational rigor—scaling design systems, streamlining cross-functional workflows, and mentoring teams to maintain consistency at enterprise scale. As an entrepreneur and maker, Derek founded Blue is the Land and co-founded Rostercast, running end-to-end product, front-end development, and commerce operations, which informs his pragmatic, build-first approach to design. He also maintains a long-running freelance practice serving biotech, finance, and nonprofit clients, blending strategic communications background from his journalism training with technical implementation experience.
8 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Bachelor of Arts, School of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Spanish
Github Skills (7)
datadog10
dd10
hugo10
integrations10
documentation10
get-started4
react3
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
derekhowles/framerx-build-system
Sep 2018 - Apr 2021
A starter repo to get started with building a Design System within Framerx using production components
Contributions:1 push, 1 branch in 2 years 7 months
reactget-starteddesign-systemframerxproduction
DataDog/integrations-core
Jan 2021 - Jun 2021
Core integrations of the Datadog Agent
Contributions:4 commits, 4 PRs, 3 pushes in 4 months
datadogdatadog-agentddintegrations
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