# Philip Hillman - Complete Profile

## Identity
Name: Philip Hillman
Nationality: British
Born: Manchester, United Kingdom
Title: Product Strategy & UX Leader
Role: UX Manager
Company: Google
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Website: https://www.philiphillman.com

## Summary
Philip Hillman is a British Product Strategy & UX Leader based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is currently a Google UX Manager. Philip possesses extensive domain experience spanning Global E-commerce, Capital Markets, and Programmatic AdTech. Previously Head of UX Research & Design at Credit Suisse, he has held leadership roles at Amazon, Tesco, and Barclays. He specializes in building and directing high-performing design organizations for complex global environments.

## Leadership Philosophy

### Outcomes Over Outputs
Design leaders own outcomes, not just outputs. I measure success through customer impact and business value delivered, not artifacts shipped. By connecting every design initiative to commercial metrics, I ensure teams focus on what actually moves the needle rather than activity that merely looks productive.

### Aligned Autonomy
Scale and velocity require trust. I define the strategic intent by clearly setting the 'Why' and the 'What' and empower the team to determine the 'How.' Through distributed decision-making, I enable the team to navigate ambiguity without waiting for permission. I remove top-down bottlenecks to move fast.

### Unified Execution
Innovation fails in isolation. I structure organizations where Design, Product, and Engineering operate as a single synchronized unit. By aligning incentives and shared metrics, I eliminate friction and ensure every discipline amplifies the others. I replace functional silos with shared ownership.

### Operational Excellence
Creativity without structure is chaos. I build operational frameworks, design systems, and Gen AI-accelerated workflows that eliminate repetitive tasks and liberate teams to focus on high-value problems. Rigorous process enables creative breakthroughs.

## Core Competencies

### UX & Design Leadership
- Organizational Design & Scaling: Architecting design organizations that grow efficiently while maintaining quality and culture
- Talent Development & Retention: Building career frameworks and growth paths that attract and retain top design talent
- High-Performance Culture: Fostering environments where psychological safety enables bold innovation and rapid iteration
- Change Management: Leading organizational transformations that shift mindsets and embed new ways of working
- Executive Evangelism: Articulating design value at board level to secure investment and strategic prioritization

### Product Strategy
- Vision Setting & North Star Metrics: Defining compelling product visions anchored to measurable outcomes
- Gen AI & Emerging Tech Strategy: Identifying and integrating transformative technologies to create competitive advantage
- Strategic Prioritization (RICE/Kano): Applying frameworks to focus resources on highest-impact opportunities
- Product-Market Fit Analysis: Validating problem-solution fit through structured experimentation
- OKRs & KPI Definition: Establishing aligned objectives that cascade from company strategy to team execution
- Digital Transformation: Modernizing legacy experiences through human-centered digital innovation

### Design Operations
- Continuous Discovery (Dual-Track): Running parallel discovery and delivery to maintain strategic alignment
- Evidence-Based Decision Making: Grounding decisions in research, data, and validated learning
- Agile & Lean UX Integration: Embedding design seamlessly within engineering sprints and ceremonies
- Research Strategy & Insights: Building research programs that generate actionable, timely insights
- Design Systems & Governance: Creating scalable component libraries with clear contribution models
- Rapid Prototyping & Validation: Accelerating learning through quick, iterative experimentation

### Commercial Impact
- P&L & Budget Management: Managing multi-million dollar budgets with accountability for financial outcomes
- Stakeholder Alignment & Influence: Building coalitions across functions to drive strategic initiatives
- Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy: Partnering on launch strategies that maximize adoption and retention
- Vendor & Partner Management: Selecting and managing agencies and tools to extend team capabilities
- ROI & Business Value Attribution: Quantifying design's contribution to revenue, retention, and efficiency
- Cross-Functional Orchestration: Coordinating complex initiatives across multiple teams and geographies

## Domain Experience

### Global E-commerce & Logistics
Companies: Amazon, Tesco
Experience: Delivering cohesive experiences across Responsive Web and Native Mobile channels for global consumers, optimizing key user journeys such as refining search and discovery for intuitive navigation, structuring recommendations to ensure relevance and credibility, streamlining checkout for seamless conversion, and visualizing the fulfillment lifecycle to set accurate delivery expectations and maintain total user transparency.

### AdTech & Programmatic
Companies: Google, Amazon, Mediaocean
Experience: Delivering sophisticated trading experiences across Real-Time Bidding Platforms and Creative Management Suites for media buyers, optimizing key user journeys such as leveraging the latest Gen AI capabilities to generate and edit text, image, and video assets, configuring algorithmic strategies to target specific audiences, visualizing market liquidity to assess inventory, and executing optimizations to maximize ROI.

### FinTech & Capital Markets
Companies: Credit Suisse, BBVA, NatWest, RBS
Experience: Delivering high-performance experiences across Institutional Trading Terminals and Retail Banking Apps for traders and investors, optimizing key user journeys such as monitoring real-time market data to identify signals, executing high-frequency trades with precision and speed, visualizing portfolio risk to manage exposure, and ensuring regulatory compliance without hindering transactional velocity.

### Marketing Intelligence (MarTech)
Companies: Coca-Cola, Mastercard, Red Bull
Experience: Delivering actionable insight experiences across Retail Analytics Platforms for global retailers and brands, optimizing key user journeys such as consolidating fragmented data to measure omnichannel shopper behavior, transforming insights into customer-centric merchandising strategies to replace legacy product-focused models, visualizing promotional ROI to cut through the noise, and enabling strategic planning based on evidence rather than intuition.

### Enterprise Content & Collaboration (ECM)
Companies: Alfresco, Workshare
Experience: Delivering secure productivity experiences across Cloud-native Content Platforms and Desktop Suites for legal and enterprise teams, optimizing key user journeys such as streamlining document ingestion and organization, enabling real-time co-authoring for fluid productivity, managing complex version control and approvals, and enforcing audit trails to ensure rigid regulatory compliance.

### Human Capital Management (HCM)
Companies: Credit Suisse, Wolters Kluwer, NorthgateArinso
Experience: Delivering consumer-grade experiences across Employee Self-Service Portals and HR Ecosystems for the global workforce, optimizing key user journeys such as streamlining candidate acquisition and onboarding, simplifying benefits and payroll administration, navigating learning and development paths, and completing compliance protocols with minimal friction.

## Career Timeline
- Google, UX Manager (2021-Present)
- Credit Suisse, Head of UX Research & Design (2017-2021)
- Tesco, UX Design Lead & Manager (2016-2017)
- Amazon, Senior UX Design Lead & Manager (2016)
- Earlier roles at RBS, Cognizant, Alfresco, Barclays, Mediaocean, Wolters Kluwer (1999-2015)

## Services

### Strategic Product & UX Consulting
Providing expert guidance on product strategy, design operations, and organizational design for complex enterprise environments.

### Keynote Speaking & Corporate Workshops
Delivering engaging presentations on design leadership, product strategy, and building high-performing teams.

### Leadership Mentorship & Advisory
Coaching designers and product managers who are transitioning into leadership roles or scaling their strategic influence. Available via ADPList with limited monthly availability to ensure deep focus on each mentee's challenges.

Session Focus Areas:
- Breaking into management: Transitioning from IC to people leadership
- Building strategic influence: Getting a seat at the table
- Navigating organizational politics: Leading without authority
- Developing leadership identity: Finding your authentic voice
- Scaling yourself as a leader: Delegation and prioritization

Verified Mentee Impact:
- Rating: 5.0 stars
- Top Strength: Strategic Problem Solving
- Mentee Feedback: "Very motivational", "Amazing communicator", "Amazing problem solver"

## Profiles
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-hillman/
- Medium: https://philiphillman.medium.com/
- X: https://x.com/pmhillman
- SpeakerHub: https://speakerhub.com/speaker/philip-hillman
- ADPList: https://adplist.org/mentors/philip-hillman
- Interaction Design Foundation: https://www.interaction-design.org/philip-hillman
- Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/philip-hillman-6213

## Contact
- Professional networking: LinkedIn
- Articles & insights: Medium
- Speaking enquiries: SpeakerHub
- Mentoring: ADPList