I’m Matthew Harwood, an Engineering Manager at Uber, where my teams run Uber.com and the authoring tools Uber publishes with. For 12 years I’ve shipped web platforms — at R/GA and AKQA for Google, Apple, and Target, then at Uber. These sessions are for engineers, designers, and design engineers early in their careers who want a straight answer from someone who hires, manages, and still writes code.
WHO IT’S FOR
Where do you live on the spectrum?
Drag to place yourself between engineering and design. We’ll aim the session at your end of it.
EngineerDesign engineerDesigner
Design engineer
Live in the seam between Figma and production.
Design systems, component APIs, and prototyping in real code
Motion, accessibility, and performance as craft, not afterthoughts
Carving out a design-engineering role on a team that lacks one
WHY ME
Receipts, not platitudes.
99%Cut Uber.com’s infrastructure bill from roughly $2M to under $100K a year.
SecondsBuilt a bot-defense framework that took DDoS response from minutes to seconds and cut unwanted automated traffic ~60%.
12 yrsWeb platforms for Google, Apple, and Target at R/GA and AKQA, then Uber — leading engineers, PMs, and designers together.