James Saras

Product Design & Management

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UX/UI Product Designer.
Based in Orange County, CA.

20+ years building products across proptech, fintech, banking, marketplaces, weather, and data software, leading design from strategy through engineering handoff and driving measurable business outcomes.

Projects & Case Studies

Work Experience

Own product and UX for the Ten-X auction and LoopNet marketplace platforms, setting roadmap priorities, running discovery sprints, and improving transaction workflows. Led a Stripe-powered earnest money deposit and bidder registration redesign: +21% deposit recovery, +16% processing speed. After CoStar's acquisition of Ten-X, led UX integration across broker, lister, searcher, and auction surfaces.

Tools

Figma
Jira
ADO
VS Code
Confluence
Visit CoStar Group

Owned product and UX for enterprise investment platforms, translating institutional equity and multi-asset strategies into scalable web tools like Asset Allocation Interactive (AAI). Partnered with Quantitative Research and Engineering to ship data-dense dashboards on Python-based backends, and managed the full ResearchAffiliates.com ecosystem. Results: +13% user growth, +16% returning visitors, +7% session engagement.

Tools

Figma
Adobe XD
Illustrator
Photoshop
After Effects
Premiere
AEM
VS Code
Visit Research Affiliates

Managed a team of five designers, owning UX direction for NCR.com with Marketing. Led information architecture redesigns to simplify key user journeys, validating each change through A/B testing. Results: +27% page views, +14% lead conversion, −9% bounce rate.

Tools

Sketch
Illustrator
Photoshop
Drupal
WordPress
Sublime Text
Subversion
Visit NCR

Grew from Web Developer (2006) to Director of Creative Services (2009–2016), building and leading an 11-person design and ad engineering team. Defined ad product strategy and delivered award-winning custom ad experiences across weather.com and iOS/Android, growing revenue from $7M to $11M. Streamlined production workflows (+9% efficiency) and built a high-performing team through mentorship. Early career: built rich media ads in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and ActionScript.

Tools

Sketch
Illustrator
Photoshop
Sublime Text
Notepad++
Drupal
Subversion
Jira
Confluence
Bugzilla
Visit The Weather Channel

Education

University of Arizona

B.A. Psychology · minor Media Arts & Design

Achievements

Connect

Feel free to contact me at