About Owen Williams

Owen Williams is a Product Design Manager at Stripe and former software engineer, technology journalist, and content designer—a path that shapes how he builds teams and tackles complex technical products.

Product Design Manager Stripe

2022 - Present

I lead product design for Stripe's developer experience, docs, and AI. We push the boundaries of developer tools to help our users focus more on growing their business, rather than building.

UX Manager Shopify

2019 - 2022

I led a large UX team working on developer tools at Shopify, from API design to the CLI, and deep in the weeds of extensibility. Most recently, I led the custom storefronts group working on Hydrogen and Oxygen.

Founder / Freelancer Charged

2017 - 2019

I helped brands with content, UX strategy and more. Working with a group of companies in every stage to help them get the most from their resources, and grow products with great copy.

Digital Director VanMoof

2016 - 2017

Built the digital marketing organization from the ground up to focus on data-driven decision making and moved app + web development in-house.

I led the engineering team, built out a digital marketing + voice strategy, and helped launch the brand into new countries (including Japan) online.

Editor The Next Web

2013 - 2016

Telling stories about the people behind technology, writing news and breaking down complex topics for wide audiences. Managed implementation of performance-focused overhaul of the site, slashing loading times 60 percent.

Infrastructure Engineer Xero

2011 - 2013

Engineer on critical infrastructure team responsible for scaling the platform to millions of users. Supported product team to debug issues on the platform, optimized performance and built out a deployment pipeline for high availability.

A little more personal

Beyond the work

The places, side projects, and people that shape the rest of my life.

A person standing on a wide beach at sunset

Home

A long way from New Zealand

I grew up in Wellington, spent five years in Amsterdam, and now live in Victoria, British Columbia. After years of big moves, Vancouver Island feels like home.

Building on the side

Always making something

Charged grew from a weekly technology newsletter for 15,000 readers into a publishing platform with 1,000 paying subscribers. Since then, I’ve kept experimenting with products like Write Together and plenty of smaller tools.

Visit the Charged archive →

Owen Williams, Femke, and Kaya hiking in the Rocky Mountains

Life outside work

Family, mountains, and very good coffee

Outside work, I’m usually with my partner Femke, our kids Saskia and Reed, and Kaya, our Duck Tolling Retriever. We spend a lot of time hiking, finding excellent coffee, and testing playgrounds across Vancouver Island.