PEDRO ARDILA
Principal Design Manager
Seattle, WA | pedro.ardila@gmail.com | (305) 498-3736 | pedroardila.com

SUMMARY
Design leader at the intersection of AI, cloud reliability, and engineering systems. 18 years at Microsoft shaping Azure and Windows products, from billion-user experiences to $1B+ cloud businesses. I turn complex technical systems and fragmented organizations into coherent product and design strategies.

SKILLS
AI & Agentic UX | Cloud Reliability | Engineering Systems | Trust & Safety | Design Strategy | Organizational Leadership

EXPERIENCE
Principal Design Manager, Microsoft Cloud UX    2023 – Present
Directed design strategy to reduce production outages across Microsoft's cloud deployment pipeline, unifying fragmented risk and change-approval tools into one lifecycle model across 4 CVP organizations.
Applied AI to automate build risk assessment and approvals, cutting deployment-approval time from hours to 8 minutes and saving hundreds of manual-review hours monthly.
Institutionalized security-by-default across the studio, making Secure by Design audits standard practice for all designs before implementation.
Built an AI upskilling program combining hackathons and recurring training, moving the design org from ad hoc AI use to baseline AI fluency across the entire team with GitHub Copilot and Copilot Cowork.
Shaped executive Azure and Windows narratives for Scott Guthrie, Panos Panay, and Satya Nadella, accelerating critical security and sustainability features in Windows.
Delivered AI-generated content transparency standards (C2PA), reaching 500M+ people and safeguarding elections worldwide.
Led Copilot in Windows Admin Center design, achieving high AI Trust Scores and boosting enterprise IT adoption.
Directed Windows sustainability features for 1.5B users, improving power management and advancing climate goals.

Principal Design Manager, Microsoft Internet of Things    2018 – 2023
Led Azure IoT Hub onboarding strategy around highest-leverage journeys and platform standards, raising SUS from 73 to 82 and first-time setup success from 31% to 92%.
Directed GA launches for Azure IoT services and new design-system components adopted across 4 services, supporting a $1B+ business and improving customer satisfaction by 15%.
Led storytelling and narrative design for executive partnership pitches that helped secure VW, Stellantis, Unilever, and Gojo as Azure and Azure IoT customers.

Senior Design Lead, Microsoft Azure Data & AI    2008 – 2018
Pioneered Azure ML Workbench's getting-started experience and free-to-paid upgrade path, driving 40% conversion lift and 3 patents (1 granted, 2 pending) as named inventor.
Ran 15+ design sprints and 100+ user interviews with data scientists, improving concept-to-prototype speed by ~50% and shaping product direction.
Designed Azure Search's configuration and core experience during incubation, informing V1 direction for a product that scaled to hundreds of thousands of monthly users by GA.

EDUCATION
Stevens Institute of Technology 2008
B.S., Computer Science (Honors)

CONTACT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pardila/
Email: pedro.ardila@gmail.com
Website: pedroardila.com