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Chad Stauffer

@chadstauffer

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Senior product designer for AI systems. Six years of AI product design experience.

United States

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a product team where I can design AI interfaces with real-world stakes—clear, testable, security-aware UX. I thrive owning end-to-end product decisions, building design systems, and iterating fast with engineering.

I'm a senior product designer focused on the human layer of AI systems. The part where powerful, complicated software has to make sense to the person actually using it.

I joined SAIC's Innovation Factory in 2021 as its first UX hire, walking into a 25-person AI division with no design function, no system, and no process. I helped stand up the design practice from there: the component library, the interaction patterns, the way user-facing decisions got made and remembered. By 2025 the team was 250+. My work spanned DoD, DOJ, DHS, and other federal programs, mostly on platforms where the model is uncertain, the action is irreversible, or the user is making a high-stakes call.

When that chapter wrapped, I wanted to prove I could ship something end-to-end on my own. HatchMatch is what came out of that — an AI vision product for fly fishing, designed and built solo from "eureka" to App Store. It's the clearest proof I have that I don't just design products, I own them.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Founder & Product Designer

Current

HatchMatch

Jan 2025 - Present (1 year 5 months)

Built an AI-first mobile app from zero to production, shipping the core identification UX that surfaces model confidence and decision rationale as first-class UI elements. Designed a unified multi-surface product experience and usage-based monetization UX, then launched to the App Store with iterative improvements based on live usage.

React Native OpenAI Vision Supabase Human AI Decision Interfaces Usage Based Monetization UX

Current

Founder & Lead Designer

Current

Stauffer Creative

Jan 2019 - Present (7 years 5 months)

Provided freelance product design and front-end development for startups and small businesses, designing and shipping responsive websites, mobile applications, and brand systems. Built component-based UI systems in Figma and implemented production builds with React and modern web technologies from concept through polished delivery.

Figma React HTML CSS JavaScript Responsive Web Design Product Prototyping

Senior Product Designer

SAIC

Jan 2021 - Jan 2025 (4 years)

Served as the founding UX designer in SAIC’s AI division, building design infrastructure from scratch as the team scaled from 25 to 250+ people across DoD and federal programs. Designed security-critical configuration and irreversibility workflows (ABAC), OPSEC-constrained geospatial UI patterns, and AI platform marketplace experiences, and established a Figma-based design system adopted across mu

Security Critical UX ABAC Configuration Interfaces Irreversibility & Warning Design Design Systems Storybook Integration OPSEC UI Patterns Geospatial Edge Product Design