Derek Howles is a Staff Product Designer specializing in DesignOps and design systems at Datadog in New York, bringing seven years of focused product design experience and over a decade of involvement with the company across roles from product designer to design team lead. He combines hands-on visual and UX craft with operational rigor—scaling design systems, streamlining cross-functional workflows, and mentoring teams to maintain consistency at enterprise scale. As an entrepreneur and maker, Derek founded Blue is the Land and co-founded Rostercast, running end-to-end product, front-end development, and commerce operations, which informs his pragmatic, build-first approach to design. He also maintains a long-running freelance practice serving biotech, finance, and nonprofit clients, blending strategic communications background from his journalism training with technical implementation experience.
7 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Bachelor of Arts, School of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Contributions:4 commits, 4 PRs, 3 pushes in 4 months
datadog-agentagentintegrationsmonitoringdatadog
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Derek Howles - Staff Product Designer, DesignOps at Datadog