Designing and launching products for startups and Fortune 500 companies since 2004. Currently at GitHub designing the future of developer experiences.

Recent roles

Role: Interim Head of Design at GitHub
2025

Led the design organization through transition while measurably improving team health and quality execution

Samia GitHub Leadership
Screenshots of a mobile app settings menu for a dating profile, showing options like profile, your captions, your fans, your sponsors, upgrades, feature preview, settings, appearance, accessibility, and sign out. The second screenshot highlights the 'sign out' option with a warning icon and an 'Upgrade' button at the bottom.
Copilot in Markdown
Bar chart comparing two scores: white bar with 69, green bar with 72 labeled eNPS +3.

Summary

Six months after joining GitHub, I stepped in as Interim Head of Design during a critical leadership transition, providing continuity for the design organization while sustaining delivery across key product, systems, and platform initiatives.

Key impact areas included launching a company-wide quality initiative to drive weekly production paper-cut fixes, helping establish a formal Design Engineer job family, and leading monthly Design Town Halls to maintain organizational clarity and alignment. During my interim tenure, the design organization's eNPS increased by 3 points, reflecting measurable gains in engagement, clarity, and leadership confidence.

Design Team

+ Myself
+ 2 Senior Directors
+ 4 Design Directors
+ 4 Design Managers
+ 60 Product Designers
+ 12 Design Engineers
+ Customer Research Team

Skills

+ Design Org Leadership
+ Change Leadership
+ Org Transformation
+ Cross-Functional Exec Partnership
+ Experience Quality Programs
+ AI-Enabled Product Design
+ Design Engineering Collaboration
+ Design-to-Production Acceleration

Role: Senior Director, UX Design at Nike

2020 - 2024

Standing up an Enterprise Design Function for Nike & scaling the Design Org from 3 to 30+

Design Thinking
Samia Saleem
Nike Enterprise Design System Prez
Dashboard screen of a Nike online store website featuring a male athlete's profile, navigation menu on the left, and various product images and order details.

Summary

I was hired to lead Design for Nike’s Enterprise Experiences, part of a new initiative to bring the user to the center as Nike goes through Digital Transformation within Global Technology. My remit included creating the Nike Enterprise Design Thinking Toolkit, scaling up the Enterprise Design organization from 3 to 30 within eight months, hiring top talent with diverse backgrounds, and placing designers in priority areas across company key initiatives, including Developer Tools, Digital Supply Chain, HR Experiences, and the Enterprise Design System.

Design Team

+ Myself
+ 3 UX Design Directors
+ 1 DesignOps Director
+ 7 Lead UX Designers
+ 18 Senior UX Designers
+ 5 Design System Engineers

Skills

+ Vision Setting
+ Design Strategy
+ Funding & Hiring
+ Leadership Buy-in
+ Cross-Functional Collaboration
+ Design Thinking
+ Experience Metrics

Role: Head of User Experience at Unity Technologies
2017 - 2020

Helping support the growth of Unity and its customer base by creating delightful user experiences

Screenshot of a website displayed on a tablet and a smartphone showcasing Unity's development platform with sections for games, automotive, film, and architecture.
Silhouette of a person walking through a dark industrial space with large windows and overhead lights, overlaid with text promoting Unity for all and various categories like Games, Automotive, Film, and Architecture.
Screenshot of the Unity website homepage showcasing Unity Core Platform with a background image of mountains, navigation menu, and sections for release notes, roadmap, demos, and beta program.
Screenshot of a website and mobile app interface for creating VR solar systems, featuring navigation menus, categories, and project examples.

Summary

At Unity, I was a player-coach managing a global team of UX Designers focused on Unity’s Online Consumer Experiences, including Unity.com, The Unity Asset Store, Unity Learn (0-1 product I helped ship), Made with Unity, and Unity Events. During my time at Unity, we reported over 1.5 million monthly users. I helped support the redesign and rebrand of Unity’s online experiences and a backend infrastructure that allowed internal teams to market quickly to launch user-specific content based on learnings from user testing and usability tests.

Design Team

+ Myself
+ 6 UX Designers (global team)

Skills

+ Growth Design
+ Product Marketing
+ GTM Strategy
+ Leadership Pitches
+ Cross-Functional Collaboration
+ A/B Testing
+ User Testing

Role: Director of UX & Design at Moveline/OneMove (a TechStars co.)
Logo featuring a house inside a black box on the left and the words 'ONE MOV' with a stylized arrow on the right.
2014 - 2016

Giving Consumers the ability to track their moves and later pivoted to an internal tool for Movers

Screenshots of a mobile app interface for scheduling and managing FaceTime calls, showing options to select date and time, a FaceTime inventory, and a message confirming follow-up with a captain.
Web page for scheduling a video chat with a Move Captain, including options for FaceTime, Google Hangouts, and Skype, with input fields for Apple ID, name, email, and phone number.
Screenshot of a home inventory management application showing details of items in the Master Bedroom and Living Room, including item names, notes, quantities, and pictures, with options to add or update items.
Screenshot of the MOVELINE website interface showing options to submit an inventory for home quotes, with sections for different rooms like Kitchen and Living Room, and a list of items.

I joined Moveline’s product team as their Director of UX and Design, where I continued the work that had been in flight from my time as a HackStar there. My role included managing various contract Designers with different skills, from icon designers to illustrators to web designers to front-end engineers, to ensure the company continued to ship and move forward for their web and mobile experiences. Moveline pivoted to OneMove, which was focused on Movers, a platform for local and independent moving companies to perform interstate moves.

Summary

+ Myself
+ 4-6 Contract Designers
+ 6 Senior Software Engineers

Product Team

+ Lead Generation
+ Mobile Applications
+ User Experience Design
+ Visual Design
+ Branding
+ Dev handoff

Skills

Role: Co-Founder at Karta
2012 - 2014

A social mapping tool that allows users to create collaborative maps to share and find very cool stuff

The word 'KARTA' printed in uppercase letters.
Laptop displaying a social media profile page with user posts and activity.
Map of Williamsburg highlighting popular Wi-Fi spots such as Sweetleaf, Toby's Estate Coffee, Modca Cafe, Verb Cafe, Oslo Coffee Roasters, Black Brick Coffee, T.J. 4th Bar & Cafe, Blue Collar, Variety, Gimme Coffee, and Internet Garage, with descriptions of nearby coffee shops and cafes.
Pop-up window showing recent photos from Brooklyn, including Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn Bowl, a dinner, Crown Vic, Radagast, and Fette Sau, with options to add or remove spots and view all photos on a map.
Two smartphones displaying city guide app screens with locations, reviews, and a map of NYC.

Summary

Working on and creating Karta was one of my favorite experiences early in my career. I love to travel, try different restaurants, and explore new places. My Co-Founder and I wanted to create an online experience where we could capture and share those experiences with people whose opinions and styles we valued. The problem we were trying to solve was that there just wasn’t a great place to gather and share your resources around the places, experiences, or trips you’ve been on (let’s face it, Yelp and TripAdvisor still don’t do justice when it comes to asking your friends what they did on a recent or a local jaunt). We launched in 6 months, with 500 users in our invite-only private beta in our first week. Karta participated in the NEA Studio and First Growth's 6th Vintage in NYC. We also got published in some local mags.

Start-up Team

+ Myself
+ Designer Co-Founder
+ Offshore Dev Team
+ CTO

Skills

+ MVP
+ User Experience Design
+ Visual Design
+ Product Development
+ Budgeting
+ Project Management
+ Pitch Decks

Contact:

samia@aplural.com