Senior Product / UI/UX Designer

Ten years designing the systems people have no choice but to use.

Platforms where one workflow reaches tens of thousands of users, permissions decide what anyone can see, and every screen carries a compliance constraint. I design for four o’clock on a Friday, not for the screenshot.

Parminder Sandhu, Senior Product and UI/UX Designer
10 years designing high-stakes products

Herndon, VA · Open to senior product and UX roles · Remote, hybrid, or relocation

  • 68% Reduction in task friction, measured across three PURE rounds
  • 30% Estimated reduction in data-entry errors, from caseworker feedback
  • 111 Documented frames in a design system built from nothing
  • 6 Federal coding challenges, sole designer on the GSA win

Selected work

Where the constraints were the design brief.

2017 – present
01

From Findable to Answerable

GSA / IT Vendor Management Office · Information architecture · Conversational AI

An IA rebuild that cut task friction 68%, and the source-constrained assistant that followed.

  • Source-constrained retrieval architecture
  • Responsible-AI framework, co-authored
  • 68% less task friction on the rebuilt site
02

Shepherd Case Management System

HHS / Administration for Children and Families · Case management · Service design

Redesigning the system that connects survivors of human trafficking to federal benefits.

  • 30% estimated reduction in data-entry errors
  • ACT-IAC Igniting Innovation, 2021
  • Four agencies reconciling one case file
03

Examiner Portal

OCC / Department of the Treasury · Regulatory workflow · Appian

Task routing, approvals, and audit-ready histories for examiners reviewing the largest US banks.

  • Appian Certified Lead Developer
  • Interaction design lead
  • 27 journey stages mapped, 7 reframed the program
04

HRSA Grant Application Redesign

HHS / Health Resources and Services Administration · Salesforce · Enterprise workflow

The full applicant journey, plus the internal approval portal on the other side of it.

  • Sole designer on the application journey
  • 16 documented variants across three screens
  • Salesforce
05

Financial Management Tool

Capital One · Consumer fintech · iOS

Budgeting, goals, and bill tracking for people managing money on their phone.

  • A/B tested CTAs and navigation
  • iOS component library
  • 29 features prioritized, 8 advice features cut
06

REI Design System

Cross-program, REI Systems · Design systems · Figma to React

Tokens, components, and versioning conventions built from nothing, then adopted across the practice.

  • Figma to React, with Storybook
  • WCAG 2.1 AA
  • 111 documented frames
07

Six Coding Challenges

GSA and other federal agencies · Rapid prototyping · Angular and React

Blank page, hard deadline, working prototype. Six times.

  • Sole designer on the GSA COMET win
  • Angular and React, built directly
  • Eight hours, blank page to working prototype
08

The CX Playbook

Cross-program, REI Systems · DesignOps · Practice leadership

A 37-page operating manual that turns repeated customer-experience work into five sequential Plays.

  • 37-page shared operating manual
  • ClearMark Award, 2024
  • Co-authored by six

About Parminder

Most of my work has been for people who didn’t get to choose their tools.

From a human-trafficking case-management platform to a source-constrained AI chatbot, I design systems where clarity isn’t cosmetic. It changes what someone can do next.

Caseworkers, bank examiners, grant officers, federal buyers. The software was assigned to them and they have to make it work, which is a different design problem than software people choose. I care more about whether someone can finish the task at four on a Friday than whether the interface photographs well.

Most of this work is federal and confidential, so I show the reasoning rather than the screens: the journeys, the constraints, the patterns, and the decisions behind the interface.

I got Appian Lead Developer certified because the handoff was slow. Workflow questions were taking days to resolve across a translation gap, and learning the platform turned out to be faster than writing longer specs. Same instinct took me to Tableau training when the dashboards needed it.

Product design

  • End-to-end ownership
  • Complex workflow design
  • Interaction and visual design
  • Information architecture
  • Service design

Research and testing

  • Discovery
  • Stakeholder and domain-expert interviews
  • Usability testing, moderated and unmoderated
  • A/B testing
  • PURE method evaluation

Systems and platforms

  • Design systems and DesignOps
  • Salesforce
  • Appian, Certified Lead Developer
  • Tableau
  • Figma
  • Axure RP
  • Design QA and engineering handoff

Accessibility and AI

  • WCAG 2.1 and 2.2
  • Section 508
  • ADA
  • Conversational UI
  • Source-constrained retrieval
  • Responsible-AI guardrails

Testimonials

“We needed an Appian designer, so he went and got certified. We needed Tableau help, so he went to class. Parminder is hands down one of the MVPs of our CX team.”

Clients and employers

Designing alongside teams at organizations responsible for public health, financial oversight, technology acquisition, and national service delivery.

  • U.S. General Services Administration
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  • U.S. Food and Drug Administration
  • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
  • REI Systems
  • Capital One
  • Northrop Grumman
  • AOL

Experience

Ten years, four employers, one kind of problem.

Regulated environments, complex workflows, and users who inherit the tool rather than choose it.

  • 2019 – Present

    REI Systems

    Senior UI/UX Designer

    Salesforce, Appian, and Tableau platforms · HHS, Treasury, GSA

  • 2018 – 2019

    Northrop Grumman

    UI/UX Designer

    USCIS workflows, Tableau standards

  • 2017 – 2018

    Capital One

    UI/UX Designer

    iOS financial management · A/B testing and analytics instrumentation

  • 2016 – 2017

    AOL

    UI/UX Designer

    CMS components and content governance

Recognition

Awards

  • 2021

    ACT-IAC Igniting Innovation

    National recognition for the ACF case management redesign, selected from 169 nominations.

  • 2024

    ClearMark Award

    CX Playbook, co-authored. Now the operating standard across six or more programs.

  • 2019 – 2025

    GEM Awards

    Four wins. Different teams, different challenges.

Certification

  • 2025

    Appian Certified Lead Developer

    Certified to close the gap between design and engineering.

Find me online

Let’s stay connected.