About
I go looking for the complicated stuff.
Howdy — I'm Michael Rossi, though most people just call me Rossi. Product designer and front-end builder in Dallas. My best work happens where product complexity, systems, and actual shipping code overlap.
From Fortune 500 floors to a studio of my own.
Twelve-plus years designing and shipping enterprise software: healthcare, fintech, SaaS, consumer. I've done it inside Fortune 500 companies, led design at a high-growth company, been the lead designer on big consumer brands, and started Push Refresh to take on the complex product problems I find most interesting.
The range is the point. The same person who runs the strategy session with executives can sit with a user to untangle a workflow, define the design system under it, and write the front-end that ships it. Most people do one of those. I like doing the whole line.
How I work
The handoff is where intent goes to die.
Most product work leaks. Strategy hands off to design, design hands off to engineering, and by the time it ships it's a blurry copy of the original idea. I close that gap by doing more of it myself.
I design with the build in mind, because I'm often the one building it. When I hand something to an engineer, it's because they'll do it better than me, not because I've run out of road. That's usually why the thing on screen matches the thing in the file.
Leadership
I've led people, and I've led the work.
- Ran the web and product design teams at Hubilo, with four designers reporting to me.
- Led cross-functional teams of designers and developers at Push Refresh, discovery through launch.
- Mentored designers and set the quality bar across projects at Bottle Rocket.
- Sat across the table from founders, executives, compliance, clinical folks, PMs, and engineers, and kept them pointed the same direction.
Current focus
What I want next.
A Staff or Principal role where I stay close to the work. I'm happy to lead — strategy, direction, systems, mentoring — but I'm not looking to trade the craft for a calendar full of meetings. The best version of me still has hands on the product.
Expertise
Where I go deep.
- Strategy
- Product strategy, UX strategy, Product discovery, End-to-end product design
- Research & systems
- User research, Information architecture, Interaction design, Design systems architecture
- Leadership
- Executive stakeholder partnership, Cross-functional leadership, Workshop facilitation
- Craft
- Accessibility, Rapid prototyping, Front-end development
Tools & technical
Figma, Framer, Webflow, React, Next.js, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, plus an AI-assisted stack (Cursor, Claude Code, v0) when it makes the work faster.
Webflow Certified Expert · Framer Enterprise Certified Partner
If you're hiring for a Staff or Principal Product Design role, or you have a knotty product problem, I'd like to hear about it.