Leading and building the Citrix Analytics Design team

Citrix | UX Design Manager | 2019 - 2021

The challenge

When I stepped into the manager role at Citrix Analytics (CAS), the product was scaling rapidly, and the design team needed to grow along with it.

My responsibility was to:

  • Build and scale a design team in a distributed, global environment.

  • Align design with product, engineering, and brand leadership during a period of transformation.

  • Foster a healthy, creative culture while keeping execution grounded in business needs..

Hiring & Onboarding

I built and scaled a team of 5 designers who contributed across CAS features, dashboards, and the broader Citrix product ecosystem.

  • Partnered closely with recruiting to identify, interview, and hire designers across locations (Santa Clara, Bangalore).

  • Sought trusted referrals while striving to build a diverse, inclusive team.

  • Designed onboarding materials and frameworks so new hires could quickly ramp up and deliver consistent work.

Recognition & Impact

  • First Citrix product team to adopt the new Citrix brand identity, influencing design language across other product lines.

  • Regular design critiques with VP of Product Management, giving the team executive visibility and validation.

  • CAS design patterns became references for other Citrix teams, extending impact beyond our product.

Planning & Cross-Functional Leadership

  • Represented design in quarterly planning workshops alongside leaders from product, engineering, data science, legal, and marketing.

  • Captured design requests, assessed scope, and aligned them with team bandwidth.

  • Delivered clear quarterly plans that mapped priorities, ownership, and timelines.

Team Rituals & Retrospectives

  • Facilitated bi-weekly retrospectives, encouraging learning and open dialogue.

  • Used structured prompts (“What went well? What didn’t? What can we improve?”) to surface challenges.

  • Leveraged Jira story points to improve estimation accuracy and spot patterns of over/under-scoping.

Culture & Creativity

  • Introduced a “free sprint” at the end of each quarter, where designers pursued passion projects.

  • These projects sparked innovation, uncovered new ideas, and strengthened morale.

  • Encouraged creative freedom within structure, balancing enterprise rigor with space for exploration.