Hands-on design leadership, simplifying complex enterprise workflows.
Coherent platforms at scale
As Senior Staff Product Designer for Google Cloud Platform (GCP), I was head of design for Cloud Hub, guiding 194 Googlers to launch in 6 months. It reached 4 million monthly users.
Earlier, I aligned 30 platform leads on a 3-year strategy for Google Cloud Console Page Components, which saved an estimated 85 person-years.
AI inside enterprise platforms
My prototype work helped win the Google Cloud CEO’s buy-in for GCP’s first generative UI proof of concept, and I led its design.
My writing on responsible AI has reached 95K+ professionals on LinkedIn.
From product definition to prototype
I was product, design and research lead for GCP’s AI Mainframe Modernization platform, with no PM for the first 9 months.
I build prototypes in code with AI tools, including the Mainframe demo below.
My role
As Senior Staff Product Designer for GCP, I led product, design and research hands-on for its AI Mainframe Modernization platform, with no PM for the first 9 months.
The platform shipped 2 products, the Mainframe Assessment Tool and Dual Run, which brought 4 new enterprise customer engagements to GCP.
- Platform definition and PRD
- Rapid iterative design with SMEs
- Prototyping
- Information architecture, interaction and visual design
- Early design system
I set how the whole platform looks and works, from the first concepts.
- Designed the application chrome and data visualizations that make a whole code estate legible.
- Turned JCL pipelines, COBOL copybooks, VSAM file sets and EBCDIC encoding into web patterns any cloud engineer can follow.
I designed how engineers work with Gemini, so they stay in charge of the modernization.
- Designed the AI interaction patterns across the platform.
I took on one of the platform’s hardest problems: making interdependent mainframe code readable.
- Designed the dependency map so engineers can zoom from a whole application into its functional groups and back.
I designed the flow for choosing which functional groups to modernize first, with Gemini’s suggestions built in.
The tool runs on the customer’s own network, so the design system had to work there too.
- Started a design system for air-gapped environments.
- Built it on Material 3 while the rest of the console was on Material 2, to get ahead of the console’s move.
- Chose compact controls because this is an expert tool.
When a Group Product Manager joined at 9 months, I partnered with them.
- My end-to-end journey map became their on-ramp.
- Led a 20+ person cross-functional team with them through both launches.
My own reimagining, coded with AI tools, of the prototype I designed at Google. The core matches the product, and the details are mine. It uses sample data, not Google’s code or customer data.
My role
As Senior Staff Product Designer for GCP, I was head of design and DRI for Cloud Hub, a 6-month build of 194 Googlers, including 28 UXers, working with 13 engineering teams.
- Concept and executive alignment
- Information architecture
- Interaction and visual design
- Design system
- Edge cases and degraded states
- Prototyping
I won the 2026 Customer Empathy Award with the Cloud Hub leadership team, presented by the Google Cloud CEO.
I owned Cloud Hub Home, the first dashboard operators see, and designed it hands-on. Before Cloud Hub, operators pieced together the state of each project one product at a time.
Hands-on, I designed the application chrome, scoping and the design system all 7 dashboards are built on, and made the day-to-day calls on the experience.
- A shallow information architecture, so no team could add its own pages and break up the one surface.
- Every state a dashboard can be in, from loading to missing permissions.
A Distinguished Engineer’s whitepaper set the goal: organize around operators’ goals instead of product teams. It was due at Google Cloud Next 2025 in 6 months, and I turned it into the product model and a plan a large team could build.
- Over many rounds of sketches with our executive sponsors, I narrowed the whitepaper to one model: Home, dashboards of cards and links into the console’s own hubs.
- I worked with our research lead through 7 rounds of UX research.
- About 2 dozen executives, including VPs, approved the plan and funded it with 194 Googlers.
13 engineering teams built the dashboards, each contributing its own data and cards. I made them work as one system.
- I partnered with all 13 teams, including the Cloud Hub core team, guiding the tradeoffs between their goals.
- My Figma prototype was the single source of truth. The UX team, 28 UXers in all, worked in it, so conflicts surfaced early.
- I owned the user guide and, as UX launch approver, reviewed every view before it shipped.
Cloud Hub went GA in December 2025. Almost a year later, nearly half of GCP console users were using it, and most were satisfied and coming back.
- From the beta to almost a year after GA, monthly users grew from 440K to 4 million.
- Satisfaction rose from 57% to 72% and returning visitors from 16% to 65%.
- As part of the Cloud Hub leadership team, I won the 2026 Customer Empathy Award, presented by the Google Cloud CEO.
Cloud Hub, as seen on the live Google Cloud console, with synthetic data.
About me
Move fast in the right direction.
Built from scratch
I grew up in poverty, with stretches of homelessness, and my favorite toys were a box of pencils and a screwdriver. In 1998 a friend loaned me a Pentium II running Photoshop; another bought me a one-way ticket west. By 1999 I was running my first usability tests at an ecommerce startup. It taught me what I still lead with: always talk to the people who use your product.
Make great things with great people
I’ve managed teams of up to 21 across Seattle, New York, Tel Aviv and Bangalore. When I took over Storage UX at Google Cloud, my team rated me 96% favorable as a manager, and I successfully sponsored two senior promotions. I hold a high bar, and I lead with the care and clarity that help people reach it.
Technology in service of people
I know firsthand what dehumanization feels like. I hear echoes of it when our industry dismisses AI risks as the fair cost of progress. In enterprise AI, I design systems that absorb operational toil while keeping human agency at the center. I founded GCP’s first AI Trust & Agency program. Speaking up about it is the most important work I do: my writing on responsible AI reached 95K+ professionals this year, 94% of them outside my network.
Acclaim
Tobi has that rare blend of keen insight, bias toward action, and the ability to translate deep research into practical decisions… Respected by her peers, Tobi is a force multiplier, consistently making every team she’s a part of more effective.
She combines strategic clarity with rigorous execution… She is particularly strong at managing through ambiguity, bringing structure and forward motion to problems that do not yet have a clear shape.
Tobi is also very strategic and always brings along people across many teams to tackle very difficult and ambiguous challenges… she is a wonderful and kind human being who would lift up everyone around her.
She is by far the best UX person I have worked with… She is truly a rare talent and the best collaborator you can ask for.
She is very strategic and understands the business needs and implications on any given project. At the same [time], she is extremely insightful about users and a champion of user-centered design.
Media & contact
Tobi Jo Lebron
All writing
- Why AI Won’t Replace UXYouTube · Mind the Experience podcast · October 2026 · 4,500 views
- Study reveals LLMs show clear traits of sadism towards humans. Now what?Medium · September 2026 · 1,040 claps
- Don’t lose your shirt on AI tokensMedium · August 2026 · 217 claps
- Why traditional UI will never dieMedium · June 2026 · 145 claps
- With all due respect, Mr. Nielsen, you’re wrongMedium and LinkedIn · May 2026 · 2 claps
- Build friendly helper robots, not a replacement for humanityMedium · April 2026 · 422 claps
- How to grow a set of responsible AI principlesMedium · March 2026 · 191 claps
- To AI or not to AI?Medium · January 2026 · 193 claps
- AI is the panacea. AI is the pandemic.Medium · December 2025 · 6 claps
© 2026 Tobi Jo Lebron
Thank You© 2026 Tobi Jo Lebron