Andru Dunn

Head of Design Engineering

About Me

I'm Head of Design Engineering at Personio, on the design leadership team in a 40+ person design org. My focus right now is AI — making the way we design and build AI-native — and I serve a cross-functional design-system community of 200+.

I work in the space where design and engineering meet. My background is design foremost, and I feel just as competent writing software as designing — bridging the two has been the throughline of a career spent with retailers and products around the world.

I lead teams and partner with product and stakeholders to shape programs of work, balancing customer needs with business outcomes — crafting digital experiences that are inclusive, scalable and resilient.

I'm Head of Design Engineering at Personio, on the design leadership team in a 40+ person org. I own Design Infrastructure: the visual language, the design system and the tooling the whole org builds with, and I set the standards and direction that keep our product consistent and accessible as we scale.

I lead as a player-coach — directing a team of design engineers while still shipping — and I serve a 200+ cross-functional Design & Engineering community. I partner with product and stakeholders to shape programs of work across teams, balancing customer needs with business outcomes.

My background is design foremost, and I'm just as comfortable writing software as designing. Bridging the two has been the throughline of a career spent with retailers and products around the world.

I'm a design engineer — design foremost, and just as comfortable writing software as designing. Over thirteen years I've set the patterns behind most frontend concerns: design systems, accessibility, performance, interaction and motion, headless content, localization, instrumentation and resilience.

I've spent that career with retailers and products around the world — John Lewis, Waitrose, Woolworths, ASOS and now Personio — shipping inclusive, scalable, resilient experiences where design and engineering meet.

Today I'm Head of Design Engineering at Personio, on the design leadership team — leading Design Infrastructure and our shift to an AI-native way of designing and building.

My focus right now is AI. As Head of Design Engineering at Personio I'm making the way we design and build AI-native — building our Claude infrastructure (a marketplace, skills, MCPs and cloud agents) and reshaping how we prototype, generate and review UI, with the standards and guardrails that keep the product consistent and accessible as we ship faster.

I lead Design Infrastructure on the design leadership team in a 40+ person org, and serve a 200+ cross-functional design-system community.

My background is design foremost, and I'm just as comfortable writing software as designing — my career has been spent where the two disciplines meet, with retailers and products around the world.

Responsibilities

Over the years I have been instrumental in establishing patterns for most frontend concerns:

Design Systems — strategy, framework and implementation
Accessibility — WCAG AA compliance and testing
Interaction design — motion, micro-interactions and HCI
Performance + CWV — standards, metrics and budgeting
Data visualization — interactive, real-time and generative
CMS — architecture and structured content modelling
Localization — i18n infrastructure and multi-locale content
SEO — structured / open-graph data and best practice
Analytics / Instrumentation — OTel, Datadog, Amplitude, GA
CRO + MVT — feature flags, cohorts, Split / Harness
Testing — unit / integration / E2E, a11y and visual regression
Resilience — shielding customers and self-healing
CI/CD — efficient developer experience, path-to-prod
Monorepos — Turborepo, Nx, lerna
GDPR — cookies, consent and permissions

Creating with

TypeScript
React
Claude
Figma
Next.js
Vercel
Motion
Superset
Storybook
Tailwind
Supabase
Resend
Playwright
Testing Library
Axe
Nx
Turborepo
Kubernetes
Datadog

Interests

A few things I enjoy making, learning and admiring
outside of work

Photography
Pottery
Interior design
Shaders
Micrographics
Typography

Work History

Personio

2025 — Present

Head of Design Engineering · London

Leading Design Infrastructure and solidifying the design team to be AI-native — a player-coach now leading three design engineers while still shipping code daily. I look after our visual language, the design system and the tooling that lets everyone build with quality.

Across our AI and design tools I've shaped how we prototype, generate and review UI — building Claude infrastructure (marketplace, skills, MCPs and cloud agents) and turning recurring patterns into reusable systems, with the standards and guardrails that keep the product consistent and accessible as we ship faster.

2023 — 2025

Staff Engineer · London

Engineering lead for Personio's rebrand — making deep customisation and theming possible across the product, powered by our design system. I built the theming architecture and design-token pipeline (Style Dictionary, a generative colour engine) that let the whole UI re-skin from a single source of truth, then drove its adoption across teams.

Before that I led the Design System team, overhauling the components where design and engineering meet and raising the bar for accessibility, contribution and craft.

Upgrowth

2021 — 2023

Staff Design Engineer · Sydney

Led the Woolworths Group Design System — extending it to BIG W's mobile app — and was a principal engineer on the BIG W website. Solo design engineer on Watchtowers — a research-led wildfire command platform (Next.js, GraphQL, AWS) now used by Australian fire agencies.

2020 — 2021

Senior Design Engineer · Sydney

Drove BIG W's digital transformation: decoupling the UI from a monolith into TypeScript with Next.js and Nest.js, an initial design-system setup, a move to headless AEM and a refined shopping journey. I also led product design across cyber-security, online publishing and ag-tech.

ASOS

2019

Senior Web Engineer · London

UI lead on the ASOS Marketplace re-platform — a full rewrite into TypeScript with Next.js, Algolia and Amplience, tested with Jest and Cypress. I upskilled the team across the frontend, running workshops on architecture, accessibility and cross-browser testing.

John Lewis & Partners

2016 — 2019

Senior UI Developer · London

Led UI for the John Lewis website and partner apps — the Pentagram rebrand, the “Mono” design system, and the move to a React, Node & Kubernetes stack. I introduced React to the business and led the CMS upgrade.

2015 — 2016

Web Designer · London

Design owner for the homepage, app content and the Electricals area.

Waitrose & Partners

2013 — 2015

UI Designer & Frontend Developer · Bracknell

Online designer and frontend developer for Waitrose's new online services — Cellar, Kitchen, Florist, Gifts, Pet & Garden — plus Telegraph Wine from Waitrose.

Personio

2025 — Present