Dan Sim

Product Design Leader. Design Systems Specialist

Leviathan OCC Ovation Domain Group Design System Westfield Wayfinding

I design systems, then I build them. I started in graphic design, moved into front-end engineering, and never really left either. Most recently I architected a design system for a financial market utility, and now I'm working on product at an early-stage infrastructure startup.

Experience

  1. Leviathan

    Founding Designer

    2026 – Present

    Early-stage startup automating workload placement, scaling, and optimization of cloud infrastructure. A long-horizon, part-time venture built alongside cofounders.

  2. OCC

    Led design strategy and team development for a systemically important financial market utility through a 5-year re-platforming initiative (joined midway), consolidating 4 platforms into a unified system.

    Design Team Lead / Manager

    2024 – 2026
    • Restructured an 11-person team of designers and contractors into a focused core team of 3 ICs + 1 intern, reducing contractor spend while raising output quality and consistency
    • Founded collaborative design studio practice with open, constructive team dynamic to speed up problem-solving and cross-pollination of ideas
    • Co-founded ACCESS employee network group, raising accessibility standards across products, running educational events, and volunteering with Chicago community organizations

    Associate Design Principal

    2023 – 2024
    • Established design system architecture for the 4-platform consolidation, achieving near-100% adoption across product teams and continuously expanding into new patterns
    • Presented design system progress and benefits to leadership, gaining buy-in and establishing expectations for design quality and consistency
    • Created icon system and loading mechanisms, extending third-party libraries with custom solutions
    • Defined information architecture library grouping commonly used patterns for easier implementation
    • Promoted to manage design team on the back of design system success and process improvements

  3. Domain Group

    Senior Designer (Design System)

    2020 – 2023
    • Drove design system adoption across 5 product teams, leading a cross-functional working group of designers and engineers to align on shared patterns and design quality
    • Accelerated major rebrand 4x (from a 12-month estimate to 3 months) through strategic design system planning across 5 brands and multiple platforms

  4. Thinkmill

    Senior Product Designer

    2019 – 2020
    • Served as lead designer for Vocal.media through early audience growth to ~1M daily users, launching writing challenges feature and ensuring product scaled gracefully with efficient iteration
    • Defined the system and designed components for Atlassian's first Forge UI design system

  5. Westfield

    Senior Product Designer (Mobile Apps)

    2017 – 2019
    • Served as lead designer for iOS and Android apps, maintaining a 4.7-star rating
    • Ran design sprints to prototype, validate, and ship new parking and dining features

    Senior Engineer

    2014 – 2017
    • Led mapping & wayfinding engineering team, developing custom WebGL-based mapping engine and CMS
    • Led front-end engineering for touchscreen kiosks deployed in London, LA, and World Trade Center NYC
    • Developed multi-floor indoor navigation system and piloted robotics program for wayfinding and same-day delivery experiments

Earlier career

  • Design Lead / Frontend Engineer → Levo Group

    2012 – 2014

    Designed and engineered UI for Vodafone, NBNCo, and AMP progressive web apps

  • Founder → Exploding Box

    2010 – 2014

    Developed system for automating promotional campaigns on Facebook, licensed to major agencies (Publicis, M&C Saatchi) driving campaigns for Kleenex, AirAsia, and Apple

  • Designer / Frontend Engineer → KND Digital

    2008 – 2010

    Web app design and frontend development

  • Graphic Designer → Neilson Design

    2007 – 2008

    In-store installations and packaging for Nintendo, SEGA, Ubisoft

Skills

Design Management & Operations
Team leadership & people development, stakeholder alignment, product strategy, design system strategy & architecture, process & frameworks, project management
UX/UI
Accessibility & usability, advanced Figma/Penpot/Adobe CS, Figma plugin development, user research & usability testing, workshop & design sprint facilitation, art direction
Product Engineering
HTML/CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, React/Vue/Svelte/HTMX, AI-accelerated development & prototyping

Education

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Communication Design
Queensland University of Technology. Major in Human-Computer Interaction, sub-major in Advertising
AWARD School
Top 3 placement at leading Australasian advertising creative school